Fixer speaks

The following floated in from an undisclosed location:

Dear friends, family, and acquaintances,

After 9-11, when I was bitching at anyone who would listen, everyone was all too eager to give up their rights so they felt 'safe'. I was looked at like a worrywart and pollyanna. When I raised concerns about the Patriot Act and the loss of our privacy, all I heard was "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

NOW you're all worried about your privacy? All these years later? Feeling safer now, are you? Or is it because you don't like the current president? Listen to me, NO president, of either party, should have the powers usurped by the office over the past 12 years. Neither Bush nor Obama, or subsequent presidents, should have been allowed so far into our personal lives, regardless of the reasons they give for doing it.

Once surrendered, rights are very difficult things to retrieve. The infrastructure for the NSA spying program has been in place for a long time and it won't be dismantled anytime soon. If you are truly worried about the loss of your privacy and many of the rights we once took for granted, you're about a decade too late. I bitched at the time and was called a coward, traitor, and un-American. Go figure.

I think, if you're seriously outraged by the situation, you might want to pay a little more attention to how your government is run and a little less to cable news, all of them. It's time to pay attention to what the people you vote for REALLY stand for instead of what they want you to think they do (look at who contributes to their campaigns and believe none of their bullshit commercials). This is your own fault, boys and girls, and, for the indeterminate future, it's something we're all gonna have to live with, regardless of which political party is in power.

I did my bit (and so did a buncha other old soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines) when there was time to stop it but we failed because most of you didn't want to know what was going on as long as you were able to get on a bus without being blown up. We saw what was coming and knew the United States we put our asses on the line for would probably be irrevocably changed. It was and now we have what we have, a President with powers closer to a dictator's and a Congress that's essentially a buncha dysfunctional teenagers.

I hate to break it to you all, but almost a dozen years after 11 September 2001, we have the government we deserve. You don't like it? Start paying a little more attention. There's a reason we had civics classes in school. Stop complaining and DO something.

Regards,

Fixer

PS: I'll let you in on something, the arguments about taxes, and abortion, and gayness, and guns, and all the other bullshit is just shiny shit both sides want you to see so you don't look any deeper. It's about money and power ... always.