2010 Vs 2011: Same As It Was, Same As It Will Be

The following struck me as the very essence of the (now past) first decade of the 21st century, in effect constituting at the same time a resounding call that will define this second decade that is just beginning (emphasis added):

“If the president says ‘I can’t deal with this guy as a terrorist,’ then he has to be able to deal with him as a criminal, otherwise the world is laughing at — at this paper tiger we’ve become,” Darrell Issa, incoming chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, said of Julian Assange.

(...) The new Congress would also have to craft whistle-blower legislation to set policy on those who report government misconduct, under the new circumstances created by WikiLeaks, Issa said.

“The next whistle-blower bill has to deal with WikiLeaks and the loss of these classified documents in a mature, bipartisan way,” he said.

What do you do when you find out that your government has been illegally and indiscrminately spying on you?

You re-write the laws after the fact to make such acts legal.

What do you do when you are too afraid to use your legal system to prosecute people accused of terrorism, thus having to apply rule of law, rule of trial and due process for them as in the case of anyone else?

You re-write the laws after the fact to create military tribunals in order to deal with such cases.

What do you do when due process is continually set aside via indefinite detention, even for those "terrorists" that have been found innocent or citizens that have leaked classified documents (except, of course, when high-ranking members of the government are implicated)?

You re-write the laws after the fact to deny them, and everybody else, habeas corpus. If push comes to shove, you use Presidential Decrees Writs Directives.

What do you do when you want to tighten security during high-profile public events by circumventing laws and the constitution allowing the illegal search and detention of folks that wish to exercise their fundamental right of assembly, protest and freedom of expression?

You write new secret laws to this effect.

What do you do when your current laws do not define as a crime the dissemination of leaked documents to the public by a third party (i.e. other than the original leaker)?

You first try to call the dissemination of leaked documents as crime nonetheless. Then you try to redefine said act of disseminating leaked documents as terrorism - you know, so that the previously mentioned re-written laws may be applicable. If push comes to shove, you do what was done already over and over again: you simply re-write the laws after the fact - or at least attempt to do so.

And what do you do when members of your government and military facilitated or enacted or allowed or encouraged or turned a blind eye to practices of torture, all acts defined by your laws as crimes, and/or committed war crimes as again defined by your laws?

You first seek to redefine such torture practices as enhanced interrogation techniques. Then you try to write down such redifinitions into laws. If this doesn't work, then you simply ignore the laws by either pretending that such atrocities never happened or by convincing yourself that these were (or still are) necessary to ensure security because after all, you are the "good guys" and consequently have a right to do what is necessary in "good faith". Alternately, you interpret the laws (without going through the judicial process) in a way that suit your purpose - including of course allowing for the delusion that no crime was actually committed.

And what do you do when your corporate/mainstream media class reliquishes its role as 4th estate watchdog on your government, thereby requiring other watchdogs for government transparency such as WikiLeaks?

You call for laws that will entrench and legitimize full and complete government secrecy.

In the end, what do you do when someone does nothing illegal but yet angers the government?

You unquestioningly accept that said someone is guilty, period.

In other words: throughout the first decade of the 21st century and, it would seem, already still in the beginning of the second one, we have fully accepted and embraced the idea that our governments have the right to know everything about us, but that at the same time we have no right whatsoever to know anything about our governments. Concomitantly, the quaint concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has been set aside completely, flushed down the toilet of history, in order to be replaced by the freshly recycled "guilty until proven guilty".

Canadians, Americans, Britons, Australians, all of us who live in a society based on democratic principles - this is now who we are, this is now what we are.

So the question is: where did we go wrong?

And my answer is: everywhere, in every which way possible.

Have a nice second decade of this 21st century, folks ...


(P.S. No, I did not provide any links in this post except for the initial quote. If you do not know what I am talking about herein, their either you haven't been paying any attention whatsoever for the last 10 years, or you have been drinking abundantly the kool-aid of Fox News and other conservative media outlets. Either way, you only emphasise the points raised herein, as well as too numerous times throughout virtually every post on this blog written by yours truly.)