an obvious entailment of the nsa situation is that, in fact, we have no idea who is running our government and hence, more or less, our lives. indeed, we have no idea what our actual form of government is or who holds the real power, like egyptians who were under the delusion that they'd elected their president. this should please liberals, for example, who regard the constitution as a ridiculous anachronism that keeps us from helping everyone through universal coercion. well, the constitution and the form of government it prescribes has been a joke for a long time, as anyone can now see thanks to snowden; certainly it has no resemblance whatever to the Thing currently running our lives: they leave some little institutions and phrases in place as a kind of show or historical re-enactment: that capitol, white house, supreme court in dc: it might as well be colonial williamsburg.
anyone who in fact controls a system of universal surveillance - i mean who has day-by-day management of the thing - can control anyone they please and make them do what they like. if keith anderson is in the mood, he's riding obama as in a performance of dressage. he controls who is in or out in the joint chiefs, the state department, justice, congress. he's in control of what limitations other branches of government impose on him. whoever or whatever the fisa rubber-stamp system is, it will end up doing precisely what he tells it to do. i'd recommend violent insurrection if it didn't seem entirely hopeless. so what i'd say is: just go limp, cultivate radical passivity: give up. this america thing was never going to work out anyway. people don't want to be free. and even if they do, they definitely don't want anyone else to be.
