I opened today’s Standard Times to see – not in the opinion section but in the news – a piece entitled “Attack on Free Speech.” The article refers to the killing of a filmmaker and the attempted murder of another at what the AP called a “free speech” event. The Associated Press boldly jumped from journalism to propaganda when it neglected to inform readers of details of this supposed “free speech” event.

The victim, 55 year-old filmmaker Finn Norgaard, like most attendees, was probably there just to see what it was all about. Norgaard was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was an inexcusable murder that could have happened to any curious person who went to see what all the fuss over insulting cartoons was about.

The “free speech” event was organized by Helle Merete Brix, the author of numerous books and articles critical of Islam and Muslims. Sort of a Danish Pamela Geller, Brix has made a career of being a professional Islamophobe. In one of her books, “I krigens hus” (“In the house of war”) she maintains that Islam has colonized the West – despite historical proof of the opposite. Norwegian social anthropologist Sindre Bangstad identifies Brix as one of Denmark’s most rabid Islamophobes and notes her influence on mass-murderer Anders Breivik.

Niels Ivar Larsen was a widely-quoted witness to the attack. Larsen is a well-known writer and translator who has called for forcing mixed sexes at mosques and mandating female imams. There is no evidence Larsen has similarly called for a female pope or demanded that Orthodox Jews tear down their mechitzas or ordain female rabbis. It’s fair to say, like Larsen, the audience was largely fixated on expelling Muslims from Europe – not a group of people like, say, James Risen. Risen’s predicament really is about free speech.

The intended victim, Lars Vilks, is a Swedish conceptual artist who, in a dispute with Sweden over two large sculptures, declared the area around them to be a micro-nation he named Ladonia. Between 2007 and 2010 “Sovereign Citizen” Vilks became notorious for creating films of Muhammad, first depicted as a dog, then visualized in a gay bar, employing other devices designed for one purpose only – to insult and marginalize Muslims.

It was at the appropriately-named Krudttønden (Danish for “powder keg”) cultural center in Copenhagen that Brix and Vilks staged their provocation. I use this word because, if words are to have any meaning at all, it is dishonest to claim it had anything to do with “free speech” or an exchange of ideas. They literally wanted to light a match in a powder keg. And they succeeded at the cost of a human life.

What happens if you insult Pope Francis’ mother? The pontiff has already told you. He’ll punch you out. While it is reasonable to lay blame for violence at the feet of a perpetrator, provocations designed to produce violence make provocateurs part of the crime. “Incitement to riot,” for example.

So were these racists, xenophobes, and sovereign citizens really pursuing “free speech” – or were they poking not only Muslims but the rest of civil society in the eye?

If exhibiting hate toward minorities is how a society exercises “free speech” (while actual free speech is limited for “security reasons”) Western democracy is built on an extremely shaky foundation.

This was published in the Standard Times on February 19, 2015
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150219/opinion/150219344

Jay Ambrose’s editorial (“Colleges need more conservatives,” December 12, 2014) begins, incensed at a “pledge of allegiance” to a right-wing Christian state used by a Colorado college professor in his “American Civilization” class to get students talking about – well – American civilization.

See? he says: Colleges are filled with Democrats, liberals, Marxists, and moral relativists rejecting “Western values” – and we need more diversity to “offset such influences.”

Odd. I didn’t think Conservative liked Affirmative Action or meddling with the “free market” of ideas.

Ambrose is unhappy that most professors are Democrats. That may well be. But they’re also PhD’s for the most part – independent thinkers who don’t hate science or get most of their information from scripture and lobbyists.

It’s probably the “independent thinker” part that has Ambrose so riled.

His essay is filled with bizarre claims, figures, and logic. He objects to a Marxist professor on the grounds that millions were supposedly killed “in Marx’s name” – forget that Marx, who predicted socialism replacing advanced capitalism in modern Europe, had been dead for about 40 years when revolutionaries in feudal societies in Asia seized on some of his ideas.

But Ambrose, a bible-thumping Tea Partying Kentuckian, characterizes the new far-right Conservatism as “a sense of the world that appreciates the best of the past.”

Maybe that was true in Eisenhower’s day. But since when are fracking, filling the environment with CO2, giving corporations human rights and taking them away from people, endless welfare programs for defense contractors, preservation of advantage for the white male super-rich, attacks on immigrants, misogyny, and classism – “the best of the past?”

Assuming liberal universities do adopt “Affirmative Action for the Koch Brothers” plans and invite more conservative visiting professors, where’s the reciprocity in Christian madrassas like Bob Jones University or Liberty University?

More insidious than propagandizing college students, the New Conservatives want to reach even younger minds. Many high schools run ROTC programs and, as part of No Child Left Behind laws, are obliged to host military recruiters. These are schools that still can’t manage to completely steer clear of religion, are constantly reacting to conservative attacks on books, sex education, evolution, and on teachers who try to challenge their students to think.

What Ambrose really wants is right-wing political orthodoxy to be dispensed to the young through preferred hiring of people like him. When education starts bending to creationism, climate change denial, and militarism, we might as well all take the “pledge” that irked Ambrose so much.

This was published in the Standard Times on December 17, 2014
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20141217/opinion/141219568

The patriotic-sounding “USA Freedom Act” currently working its way through Congress is intended to blunt some of the nation’s anger at the warrantless surveillance of American citizens disclosed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Previous NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake characterizes the Act as “faux reform” and he knows a thing or two about the subject. As a crypto-linguist during the Cold War he studied how the East German Stasi spied on an entire nation and he found the NSA’s techniques chillingly similar.

Of all the Amendments to our Constitution, the Fourth is possibly the most important to individual liberties: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” “Effects” and “persons” still have the same meanings today as in 1792 when they were added to the Constitution, and the meaning is quite clear, yet the Fourth Amendment has never been violated as savagely as it is today.

After decades of warnings of a “creeping Security State” by Drake, Senator Frank Church, and others, we have finally arrived at the Police State. Unchecked surveillance of every citizen; police powers and technology increasing daily; police agencies and officers operating with relative impunity. Evidence obtained through warrantless surveillance is passed along to prosecutors. Defense attorneys are wiretapped. Gag orders prevent the accused from discussing details of their cases with lawyers or spouses. Kidnapping, torture, extortion and murder by faceless agencies and the executive branch go unpunished. Trade agreements are negotiated in secret, keeping even legislators in the dark. FISA courts rubber-stamp the illegal surveillance that normal courts would deny. The CIA spies on the Senate, and the Supreme Court’s mission seems to be making life great for corporations while rolling back the social gains of the last century.

In this “democracy” the very wealthy go largely unpunished while the very poor are hounded by arbitrary searches in communities with increasingly militarized police. Twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners are caged in our country. Thirteen states have passed laws making secret the mystery cocktails they inject into those condemned to death. Children are charged as adults and held in solitary confinement. Drones, cameras, bag checks, Shotspotters, cell tower dumps, cellphone “stingers,” license plate readers, fingerprint readers, retina scans, DNA registries, face recognition, kill switches on phones and cars, lie detectors, drug tests, stop and frisk, tasers, SWAT teams dispatched for minor crimes – this now characterizes law enforcement’s relationship to the public.

In 2010 Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin counted some 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 corporations feeding at the homeland security trough in over 10,000 locations across the United States. DHS and Fusion programs grant police departments the latest military and surveillance gadgets. Ignoring Eisenhower’s warnings, the military-industrial complex has become a dangerous, bi-partisan revolving-door to corporate riches for every director of the DHS and countless program directors. This half-trillion dollar industry (apart from the Defense budget) includes many specialized lobbying groups such as the Secure Identity and Biometrics Association, which advocates for a biometric-based national identity card. Over five million Americans have security clearances and serve a Police State that the Stasi would have envied. And almost all of this is being deployed, not against terrorists, but against us, the American public.

In this year’s mid-term elections 33 Senate seats and 435 Congressional seats are up for grabs. To date only a handful of politicians have questioned the wholesale assault on democracy underway since 9/11. Virtually all, Republican and Democrat, just want the issue to go away because, hey, who wants to take on lobbyists from powerful industries?

It will take more than fake, patriotically-themed reform laws to do it. The “Patriot” Act must be repealed, not amended; the FISA courts dismantled, not tweaked; and spy agencies must be neutered and brought under meaningful Congressional control.

We need to bring democracy back.

This was published in the Standard Times on May 22, 2014
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20140522/opinion/405220357

This morning’s paper brought us Steve DiMarzo, Jr.’s piece (“Liberals throttling right-wing views”) – in which he argues that liberals prevent climate change deniers from expressing their own opinion in the “debate.”

Sadly, climate change deniers – and science deniers, in general – keep pretending there actually is a debate, and that their views have equal scientific weight. But, to illustrate how ridiculous this is, geochemist James Lawrence Powell recently reviewed every scientific study published in peer-reviewed journals in 2013, finding a total of 10,885. Of these, only two challenged man-made global warming. Some “debate.” And DiMarzo fails to demonstrate that science deniers have truly lost their First Amendment rights rather than simply being embarrassed by real science.

One suspects that, for the Right-wing, science plays a subservient role in culture wars, in continuing to justify tax breaks for oil and coal companies, and in keeping corporations from paying for remediation or carbon credits.

Corporate interests, people like the Koch brothers, have plenty of money, media, and opportunity to present their views to the public. And, now thanks to the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling that corporations are now people, we can barely hear the voice of the average citizen for the roar of corporate lobbyists and their propaganda.

True censorship, on the other hand, is fairly easy to find. Just this week a notable Republican seeking the blessing (and a handout) from casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson had to backtrack on calling the West Bank “occupied territory” – which of course it has been for several generations. Unfortunately unprincipled groveling and denying reality is not just a Republican trait, but it seems to have been perfected by the GOP.

No, if you really want freedom of speech in this country, you have to buy it. Not for the average citizen. Both the print and electronic media continue to be consolidated, almost exclusively in the hands of corporate interests – guaranteeing that you’ll never hear all sides of an argument.

What? In the USA? Internet companies are forbidden from revealing the scope of federal spying on civilians. PBS cancelled the broadcast of a documentary on the Koch brothers (turns out they were corporate sponsors). There are now several liberal journalists (not right-wingers, Mr. DiMarzo) who are currently living abroad because of harassment resulting from their investigations of government wrongdoing. Cities are prevented from disclosing – to their own taxpayers! – the purchase of “Stingray cell tower simulators” – surveillance devices an increasing number of police departments use to capture citizens’ “metadata” without warrants.

Freedom of speech and assembly? Peaceful demonstrations are frequently broken up with heavily militarized police, whose implements of war are funded by federal Fusion centers. Progressive organizations are disrupted by police informers. Citizens on the Mexican border are subjected to warrantless searches – hundreds of miles from Mexico – as are minorities with warrantless “stop-and-frisk” searches. When the Fourth Amendment is violated so routinely, it has a chilling affect on the ability of citizens to exercise their First Amendment rights. That’s censorship too.

Sorry, Mr. DiMarzo. We should be worried about climate change. But we should worry even more about the scope of the police state erected since 9/11. The NSA (part of the military) collects civilian data based on four different authorities – not the Constitution – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, Executive Order 12333 of 1981 (modified in 2004 and 2008), Section 215 of the Patriot Act of 2001, and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008. These orders have superseded the Constitution – a document that is supposed to guarantee many more civil liberties than just the right to carry assault weapons or deny science.

So, if we’re going to talk Censorship – by all means, let’s do. But let’s not pretend that science denial is free speech under attack. All it is – is willful ignorance and corporate propaganda being rebutted by real science. There is plenty of REAL censorship we should all be alarmed by.

This was published in the Standard Times on April 8, 2014
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20140408/opinion/404080301

When the American war of choice in Iraq began, and the French opposed it, Congressional Republicans gave the french fry a new name. What a love-hate relationship we have with the French. One day it’s Freedom Fries, the next it’s nous sommes tous Charlie Hebdo. But long before Charlie Hebdo, the press in general had proven to be a disappointing pack of cowards. Today’s paeons to murdered satirists seem to reflect some guilt by mainstream journalists for never, truly, doing their jobs.

One expects it of the war mongers, but even the liberal press now preaches that an attack on a satire magazine is an attack on journalism and secular liberalism. Everyone seems angry that, as a consequence of the terror attacks, people living in Western “democracies” – getting weaker by the minute as Americans shed the Bill of Rights and Europeans move to the Right – are forced to feel the same fear as victims of our drones, torture, and extraordinary rendition.

The Parisian terrorists may have been monsters, but they were monsters who correctly recognized Charlie Hebdo as part of a greater – in this case cultural – war by the West on the Muslim world. It seems our historical insecurities about Mohammedan hordes storming the gates of Vienna just won’t go away. Gratuitous insults to Islam are nothing new, and are part and parcel of an ongoing war on many fronts. It is no coincidence that insult to Islam was also part of a system of abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and implicit in illegal FBI and NYPD harassment of Muslim communities domestically.

As Juan Cole, a Middle East scholar, notes: “Having American troops occupy [Iraq] for 8 years, humiliate its citizens, shoot people at checkpoints, and torture people in military prisons was a very bad idea. Some people treated that way become touchy, and feel put down, and won’t take slights to their culture and civilization any longer. Maybe the staff at Charlie Hebdo would be alive if George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney hadn’t modeled for the Kouashi brothers how you take what you want and rub out people who get in your way.”

Indeed, besides Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, former Abu Ghraib prisoner and now the head of ISIS, Abu Ghraib is the gift to terrorism that just keeps on giving. Sharif Kouashi, one of the Paris killers, was radicalized in 2003 by the invasion of Iraq and specifically by the U.S. torture facility. Long before Charlie Hebdo began running insulting cartoons, Kouashi began the all-too familiar transformation from native-born, dissolute, disaffected man into seething religious fanatic, and then into a terrorist.

One need only look as far as Charlie Hebdo itself to discover that selective insult – not “journalistic courage” – was the point of its satire. In 2009 Maurice Sinet wrote a column for the magazine which some regarded as anti-Semitic. He was fired tout de suite by Charlie Hebdo’s editor, Philippe Val. Here in the United States the press routinely launders almost all criticism of the Jewish state, accepting charges it is anti-Semitic or a “blood libel.” It is impossible to have a full, public discussion about the Israeli occupation in this country, thanks to the self-censoring press. There is also a journalistic double standard if a Judeo-Christian religion has to take it on the chin.

Likewise, we will never have a completely open discussion in the press of poverty, racism, climate change, militarism, religion, or our native oligarchs. Ultimately, journalists draw a paycheck from businesses owned by rich white guys with friends in powerful places. No need to offend them. Fact and analysis are simply replaced by platitudes. Let us agree that this is just the way it is in a “market economy” – but, please, let’s not hype the journalistic courage possible in such a system.

We have never seen the photos of the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib or held to account the monsters in our own midst – the torturers, invaders by false pretense, assassins, those who have subverted our democracy. With some exceptions, the press just isn’t interested in it. From the moment journalists became “embedded” with the military in the first Gulf War, self-censorship began. In the last two wars reporters couldn’t or wouldn’t run pictures of flag-draped caskets. ISIS videos are sanitized. Journalists and editors routinely agree to embargos, gag orders, or censors. Fear of the domestic security apparatus, including the Justice Department, makes journalists think twice before telling certain stories or penning certain sentences. Government attacks on real journalists like James Risen are increasing so quickly one would think we live in Russia or Mexico. Why has this provoked no soul-searching?

It is not unfair to accuse journalists, as a profession, of failing to do their jobs, of holding their tongues, of playing along, of failing to speak truth to power, of choosing their themes timidly, of holding back, and pulling their shots. As the NSA affair demonstrates, journalists – even the brave ones at the Guardian in Britain – had to be grabbed by their collars and noses firmly rubbed in the facts for the story to be reported aggressively.

The slaughter of twelve people of any kind is horrific and society rarely knows how to react, other than to mouth platitudes or come up with odd symbolic gestures. Let France bury the martyred satirists – for that’s what victims of culture wars are, martyrs – in the national Panthéon, as has been suggested. For that matter, we could set aside a grave for Larry Flynt, the Hustler publisher, in Arlington National Cemetery.

But journalistic freedom is more than defending tastelessness and mouthing fancy French paroles. If courage means anything to journalists, I suggest we say instead:

“I am James Risen.”

As I read this morning’s editorials it seemed odd for part-time journalist Lauren Daley to be advocating for press censorship in the case of Rolling Stone’s cover photo of Dzokar Tsarnaev. But that’s apparently where American journalism is headed.

Given the magazine’s overall style, one could argue that putting anyone on a Rolling Stone cover tends to glamorize them. There was similar whining in 1970 when Rolling Stone’s cover featured Charles Manson – something TIME Magazine did as well, along with placing the Columbine killers on their cover.

And speaking of TIME Magazine, many of its “Man of the Year” issues have been fairly controversial. In both 2000 and 2004 the “Man of the Year” was George W. Bush; in 2007 Vladimir Putin; in 2008 Barack Obama; in 2010 Mark Zuckerberg. Rather than Man of the Year, “Rogue’s Gallery” would be more like it. But perhaps the lesson here is that the public wants to read about fascinating people, not necessarily morally upright ones.

Daley spent more than a few column inches portraying the cover as a desperate attempt by the magazine to be cool, relevant, “with it,” etc. She practically ran out of adjectives after starting with “vile.” She applauded CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Kmart, and Tedeschi’s taking the magazine off their shelves. I suppose as long as the government doesn’t do it it’s not censorship in her mind.

So let’s extend Ms. Daley’s censorship to all forms of media, not just magazines. Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” (the film version won 4 Academy awards) would never have passed the “Daley Test” because it put a human a face on the cold-blooded killers of the Clutter family. There are literally thousands of books, films, and television series that feature what we can kindly term “anti-heroes” – people like Tony Soprano, Walter White, or Dirty Harry.

But putting a human face on the monsters among us, and trying to understand how they come about, is precisely the point of the Rolling Stone article – should Ms. Daley have actually bothered to read it. Especially here in Massachusetts, many wonder how a sweet, popular, curly-headed kid – yes, the one in the picture – could have become a mad bomber. Was it simply by reading Islamist propaganda? Was it just his brother’s influence? The answers, as always, are more complex. But apparently Ms. Daley isn’t even a wee bit curious.

This was published in the Standard Times on July 19, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20130719/opinion/307190349

It is surprising that more high-school dropout CIA/NSA contractors making $200K a year haven’t come forward like Edward Snowden – but perhaps the money and the Hawaiian paradise are intended to salve itchy consciences. Though elected officials and, shamefully, the press routinely call whistle-blowers “self-styled” or “narcissistic,” and their motives, stability, and loyalties questioned – rarely are the ethical issues surrounding the disclosures taken at face value. 

It is instructive to recall a time when the United States actually admired whistle-blowers. I found this account, which was all the more interesting to me because it takes place literally in our own backyard. It might be worth re-telling the story for readers of your paper:

http://fairwhistleblower.ca/content/whistle-blowers-1777

Highlights:

“In the winter of 1777, months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American warship Warren was anchored outside of Providence, R.I. On board, 10 revolutionary sailors and marines met in secret — not to plot against the king’s armies, but to discuss their concerns about the commander of the Continental Navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins. They knew the risks: Hopkins came from a powerful family; his brother was a former governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the declaration.

“Hopkins had participated in the torture of captured British sailors; he ‘treated prisoners in the most inhuman and barbarous manner,’ his subordinates wrote in a petition.”

“One whistle-blower, a Marine captain named John Grannis, was selected to present the petition to the Continental Congress, which voted on March 26, 1777, to suspend Hopkins from his post.”

Fortunately, many in the fragile, new nation realized that “misconduct” and cover-ups could easily undermine a budding democracy. The first whistle-blower protections were passed almost immediately following attempts to quash an investigation. Here it is, in language that holds up even today:

“Resolved, That it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other the inhabitants thereof, to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these stats, which may come to their knowledge.”

Two years ago “national security” hampered Congressman Ron Wyden’s ability to debate a government program called PRISM in Congress, this week identified as the domestic spy program that puts electronic “back doors” in sites like Facebook, GMail, and DropBox for government “monitoring.” This week, following a whistleblower’s disclosures, politicians scrambled to offer apologies to their constituents for keeping them in the dark, or lying, just as the new security state had kept them in the dark.

In 2010 Dana Priest and William Arkin from the Washington Post produced a series of articles called “Top Secret America” (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/) which detailed the scope of the security state built after the “Patriot” Act. 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies now run “national security” programs. A million people hold security clearances.

And this vast apparatus is just getting bigger. Next September, a $2 billion NSA data center, the largest in the world, opens in Bluffdale, Utah to begin collecting data. The million square foot facility is expected to use 5% of the state’s energy – to spy on you and me.

In 1990, after East Germany ceased to exist, former citizens discovered that their government had been spying on a third of them. Well, American spymasters beat that. Last year NSA whistleblower William Binney revealed that his former employer was collecting information on, and communications from, virtually every American citizen, including phone conversations and emails. This week Edward Snowdon, a whistleblower from Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense contractor, disclosed details of the PRISM program and the extent of domestic spying.

Americans rightly distrust spy agencies. From the FBI’s inception in 1908, it has spied on – not just criminals – but socialists, anti-war, animal, and human rights activists, conservationists, community organizers, American Indians, Jews, Muslims, farm workers, Martin Luther King, and most of the civil rights movement. In the 1970’s we learned the extent of domestic spying via COINTELPRO and similar programs.

In consequence laws regulating domestic surveillance were passed under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton. Yes, Reagan.

The CIA and NSA were created in 1942 and 1949, respectively. The National Security Act of 1947 specifically barred intelligence agencies from operating domestically – all the more remarkable because the US was still at war.

In the past Americans never willingly surrendered their privacy rights. But then came the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of – and, recently, a Supreme Court that has neutered the Constitution. An attack no more shocking than Pearl Harbor somehow convinced some Americans to trade the Bill of Rights for a spurious guarantee of “safety.”

Since passage of the “Patriot Act,” we now have “Fusion centers” which “coordinate” police departments and spy agencies without much accountability, often exceeding their mandates. The NYPD, for example, in conjunction with the CIA, has a Tel Aviv office. Through “Fusion” programs police departments receive funds to buy drones, tanks, military weaponry, and surveillance gear. In Boston we have seen spy gear used against Occupy Wall Street protesters and other citizen groups. License plate readers routinely track your whereabouts. We have unexplained flights over Quincy.

Last December Julia Angwin reported in the Wall Street Journal that Attorney General Holder, without debate or consent of Congress, had expanded the National Counterterrorism Center’s ability to store data on citizens, even those not suspected of a crime. A former White House staffer called this expansion of “Total Information Awareness,” which had already been attempted and rejected during the Bush administration, “breathtaking in scope.”

The rationale for this loss of rights is “safety.” But compare the 3,000 people who died in 2001 with the more than a quarter of a million people killed with guns since 9/11. The Second Amendment seems to be the only left one standing.

Big Brother? Detentions without trial? Extraordinary renditions? Assassinations? Offshore gulags? Corporate Personhood? This is not the same country I was born in.

If this is how you want to live, friends, then you deserve the loss of every right you’ve surrendered. But if you lament the loss of what we once had, then make this your top political priority –

Repeal the Patriot Act. Fire the Attorney General. And prosecute the people who have been lying to us.

What nation permits the secret police to spy on its regular citizens with little oversight, cultivates informants, infiltrates cultural and political organizations, and turns neighbor against neighbor?

If you immediately thought of East Germany and the Stasi — go to the back of the class! This is happening in your own country.

The New York Times reports today that the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide will be modified to make unconstitutional fishing expeditions easier for the FBI. The relaxed rules permit investigations:

• without any evidence of wrongdoing or criminal activity
• without recording their reasons for doing so
• administering lie-detector tests more easily
• permitting more aggressive dumpster-diving
• relaxing use of repeated surveillance squads
• making it easier to infiltrate activist organizations
• reducing restrictions on use of informants
• permitting informants to permit in religious services

What with the new fears of terrorists, illegal immigrants, and nationalized health care, it is easy to forget that we have actually been a nation of frightened cattle for a very long time. This could have been my 4th grade class:

There is a scene in the film A Few Good Men in which Jack Nicholson’s character, Colonel Nathan Jessep, must answer for a soldier’s hazing death. He explodes, “You can’t handle the truth!” before his classic monolog, explaining how lesser men will never understand the darker side of what it takes to create an effective military.

This scene absolutely nails the American relationship to authoritarian power, but it applies equally toward foreign policy and our rapidly expanding security apparatus. Guantanamo, the end of habeas corpus, imaginary WMDs to justify war, lying at the UN, airport scanners, and now the Wikileaks revelations all illustrate the same principle with painful clarity. We just want mommy to make it better. We don’t care how she does it. Maybe Colonel Jessep had it right: we can’t handle the truth.

Pundits have had their fun with the Wikileaks disclosures. If you’re on the left, they are a confirmation of everything we have learned about our endless wars and the hopeless prospects for “democracy building.” If you’re on the right, they justify a third American war in a decade in Iran. The Wikileaks documents portray compulsive data-gatherers sitting in their offices trying to fit what they have learned into neat little boxes reflecting American interests. Or of dispatches from diplomats who only hear what they want to hear. Or — as former ambassador Charles Freeman notes — who are often told only what they want to hear by their foreign contacts.

Why do we accept military and foreign policy conducted in an antiseptic environment, free of “trivial” moral concerns or inconvenient transparency? We may not usually get it, but we have an expectation of transparency in our elections, economics, health care, tax laws, banking, and other domains. Why should disclosures of foreign policy missteps by both the Bush and Obama administrations be so violently attacked?

Yes, violently. Canadian Conservative Party advisor Tom Flanagan called for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s assassination, as did Bill O’Reilly, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin. National Review Author Jonah Goldberg asked why Assange hasn’t been garroted yet. Daniel Ellsberg, no stranger to leaks himself, believes Assange is in physical danger. Senator Joe Lieberman pressured Amazon.com to stop hosting Wikileaks in the United States, and domains throughout the world have been under constant denial of service attacks.

Wikileaks have provided many opportunities for political posturing. For example, Senator Charles Schumer, who wants the US to release Jonathan Pollard, a spy in federal prison for revealing military secrets to a foreign country, now wants new laws to prosecute Assange (an Australian) for publishing military statistics and embarrassing diplomatic cables.

The mainstream press can’t quite believe its good luck at the endless stream of stories Wikileaks has generated. In general it has shown more interest in what is “newsworthy” than what is valuable to an informed public, depending on “embedded” reporters, softball questions, remaining addicted to talking heads instead of reporting real news. The Rolling Stone’s interview with Stanley McChrystal was a striking exception, and it occurred only after the public really started questioning the war. The truth is: it has taken a dramatic flood of documents from Wikileaks to really get the mainstream media to focus on what is really happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, rather than focusing, much of their attention is on the salacious details of Assange’s whereabouts, his safety, or the raciest snippets from the cables. But, like any business, the media only give us what we really want.

Wikileaks was founded in 2006 by political dissidents. Within a year it had already published over a million documents. As long as those documents related to China, Somalia, Peru, Iran, Ivory Coast, Kenya, or non-Western states, Wikileaks garnered approval from human rights groups, Western governments and the mainstream media.

But last April Wikileaks posted a video of the wanton killing of a number of Iraqi civilians in July 2007, including two Reuters photographers, by American Apache helicopters. In July Wikileaks released 92,000 documents from Afghanistan. Last October Wikileaks released 392,000 documents from Iraq which provided a glimpse into the war between 2004 and 2009. Both collections of documents painted a picture of the failed use of force in nations we simply do not understand. Then this month the first of a quarter million diplomatic cables began to be released. And they haven’t been flattering either.

China, Somalia, and Burma don’t have anything on us. Murder, torture, terror, repression, duplicity, lying, and all the things that Colonel Jessep hinted at do not apply to just our enemies. We can do them as well as anybody.

Transparency. We have a right to know. And I believe we can handle the truth.

When Americans go to the polls on November 2nd, we will drag along considerable anger into the voting booths — anger at incumbents, anger at the economy, anger at the decline of American power, and anger at a growing sense that the country has run off the rails. As angry as we are, we will lash out at everyone and do anything but look in the mirror at the quite unflattering image before us. For, in reality, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the mess we are in.

True, incumbents from both parties voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and now Pakistan — wars which have accounted for $1.1 trillion of our $1.3 trillion deficit. But it was the average citizen who wanted to lash out at someone — anyone — after 9/11. It was we voters who put in motion wars signed off by politicians from both parties who replaced their own consciences and judgment with polls and focus groups. Besides, haven’t all our wars been slam-dunks?

It was we ourselves who gutted state governments, schools, libraries, and added to our own insecurity by choosing to slash taxes and support services. This winter if we break a strut in an icy pothole we can only blame ourselves for neglecting infrastructure. If grandma has to start eating pet food or choosing which medication to take because retirement benefits have not kept up with inflation for two years — we can blame ourselves for insisting on fiscal restraint for everything except wars, spying, and police services. Some of us want to smash the gods of government by dismantling the EPA and the Department of Education because we have lost our faith. The new watered-down health care bill is an abomination at the altar of Free Market Capitalism.

Angry people are seldom rational people. Americans are not unique in grasping at easy answers, quick solutions, the quarterly return, the unstudied decision, and even at straws. The lure of the Tea Party has both Democrats and Republicans scrambling to share some of their radical rhetoric. It may feel good to scream for the death of government, but if we throw the baby out with the bathwater, at the end of the day one out of ten of us will still be sitting, unemployed, in a recently foreclosed house, without any rational plan by a government to get us out of this mess — and still waiting for the Free Market to help out.

Whoever survives the next election is going to be there with agendas set — not by some cabal of “special interests” — but ultimately by us, the voters. If we see a rise in demagoguery, an increase of hate directed against gays, Latinos, Muslims, Blacks, Mormons, liberals, or some “other,” we need only look in the mirror to see the cause. We ourselves have permitted a new generation of Gordon Gekkos to wreck the economy by rewarding corporations for sending jobs offshore or literally gambling with our money. Some want to expel all foreigners and abolish the 14th Amendment. Hate won’t bring the jobs back from China but tough talk apparently sells at the polls. But talk is cheap.

If all this rage produces a series of poor choices, don’t expect the politicians to save us from ourselves. We citizens may have no interest in forcing election reform, but we sure like to whine about craven politicians whose votes reflect our own views — those of us who bother to vote or to express them. Don’t expect the news media to inform us of anything other than what’s “newsworthy.” We can’t understand economic analysis or international news — we don’t even know where some of these countries are — and besides, we have short attention spans; half of us think we need another war with Iran. We’d much prefer Talking Angry Heads, conspiracy theories, and Reality TV. And even though it’s stealing trillions of dollars from our future, we don’t really want to see stories about Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan on the 11:00 news. We want to know about warehouse fires and dog bites. And so that’s what we get.

And in the end we get the democracy we deserve. If we are well-informed and work at understanding the roles of government and business and can appreciate the function and limits of both, our elected representatives will formulate sensible economic, environmental, educational, and foreign policies. But if all we are capable of expressing is anger and rejection, the search for easy answers will only lead us deeper into the swamp.