Monday, June 10, 2013

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.

6 comments:

Syrbal/Labrys said...

Thank you for reminding me of all the folks in civics class who bitched and moaned about "Why we gotta do this stuff?" cramming and then forgetting it all after graduation. If it really gets down to cops even more routinely head-walling folks? I hope they get theirs FIRST!

CAFKIA said...

I hate to break it to you all, but almost a dozen years after 11 September 2001, we have the government we deserve.

For many years I have suggested to people that they pay more attention because I would get the government that THEY deserve. And so it has come to pass, those of us who fought the idiocy, who suggested that liberty for security was a bad trade, are governed by the immoral morons with good hair that the others so richly deserve. Mores the pity.

Anonymous said...

What would you have done to fight it for real, voted for the other guy? The other guy made it worse, vote for the "libertarian" who had no choice and come to think of it would have made it worse???

Phil said...

Some people were surprised that I knew about The FISA court.
I learned all about it from BushCo when all this spying bullshit got started for real.

Thanks for sticking your foot back in the water, it's been a long time and I for one have missed your cranky ass.

Seriously.

Phil.

CAFKIA said...

Yo Anonymous,

It isn't about what I would have done. It is all about what WE should have done. All leaders lead with the permission of the led. As such they are susceptible to such pressures as those led are willing and able to bring to bear. In the absence of such pressure the leader is able to choose their own direction. One person or one tenth the population is generally insufficient to direct the changes nor, is that desirable. What we would ideally want is a fully involved and informed populace that the leaders have no choice but to take orders from.

Gordon said...

The power structure is scared to death of a "fully involved and informed populace". That would be the end of the gravy train.