Tuesday, December 20, 2005
I always feel like, somebody's watching me (oh-oh-oh)
It's rather hard to get too excited over this USian brawl over the state wiretapping and spying on it's citizens, while privacy may be in the Constitution or whatever, in the UK it's not written in our unwritten consitution with non-invisible ink, so every few years we get to chuckle over news reports about how some incredibly right-wing MP like Peter Hain was once thought to be a dangerous Trot.
Still, Shrubya's defense, to basically take the position that the office of the President and the person holding that Office are Perfect in all Their Forms, is no defense at all. Shrubya seems to have moved beyond simply believing that God speaks unto him, into believing he is God, and therefore His Pronouncements are to be followed for the good of mankind. And yay, verily did Shrubya say unto the masses:
"As president and commander in chief, I have the constitutional responsibility and the constitutional authority to protect our country. Article 2 of the constitution gives me that responsibility and the authority necessary to fulfil it,"
And unto the doubting Thomases did he say: "To say unchecked power basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject," he told a White House press conference.
Because if a Perfect Being does it, how can it be bad? And his attacking of those reports that told the American public that they were being spied upon. How exactly is that helping terrorism? Is there a terrorist cell in downtown Manhattan saying "Damn, we were planning to drive trucks of explosives into Congress, but the one thing we didn't plan for was that the FBI had tapped our phones"? Perhaps one of the terrorists was planning to phone his Mum to fill her in on all the details of his Holy Jihad but thanks to this careless reporting will keep quiet instead?
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, whether Americans are more concerned with the unlikely possibility that the FBI are listening to their mundane conversations than with innocent people with funny names being tortured to death in places far, far away.
Still, Shrubya's defense, to basically take the position that the office of the President and the person holding that Office are Perfect in all Their Forms, is no defense at all. Shrubya seems to have moved beyond simply believing that God speaks unto him, into believing he is God, and therefore His Pronouncements are to be followed for the good of mankind. And yay, verily did Shrubya say unto the masses:
"As president and commander in chief, I have the constitutional responsibility and the constitutional authority to protect our country. Article 2 of the constitution gives me that responsibility and the authority necessary to fulfil it,"
And unto the doubting Thomases did he say: "To say unchecked power basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject," he told a White House press conference.
Because if a Perfect Being does it, how can it be bad? And his attacking of those reports that told the American public that they were being spied upon. How exactly is that helping terrorism? Is there a terrorist cell in downtown Manhattan saying "Damn, we were planning to drive trucks of explosives into Congress, but the one thing we didn't plan for was that the FBI had tapped our phones"? Perhaps one of the terrorists was planning to phone his Mum to fill her in on all the details of his Holy Jihad but thanks to this careless reporting will keep quiet instead?
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, whether Americans are more concerned with the unlikely possibility that the FBI are listening to their mundane conversations than with innocent people with funny names being tortured to death in places far, far away.
