From the Chateau: Americans are more ideologically and culturally polarized now than at any time except perhaps the decade before and after the Civil War. A shared vision for the future seems impossible, but there are issues, if you search hard enough, that can bring together the Left and the Sane, allies for at least one important cause.
That common cause is the malignancy known as the Surveillance State. The Chateau has been against the emerging Surveillance State for a long time. Post-Snowden, it’s no exaggeration to say that Orwell’s vision of a Big Brother watching your every move has become a reality in America. It would not have been too long ago when most Americans would’ve been creeped out and enraged by giant corporations collecting personal information to deliver tailored advertisements through home entertainment devices, and by government snoops recording everyone’s phone conversations. But here we are, that dystopian scenario come true.
The Surveillance State is a direct consequence of the additive powers of Diversity™ and SCALE. The more competing, often antagonistic, ethnies and races within the borders of a nation, the lower the inter- and intragroup levels of trust, and the greater the need, real or perceived, for monitoring potential flash points of violence/corruption/terrorism/rebellion/crimethink. SCALE is simply a nation and its attendant governing bureaucracies that have gotten too large to benignly manage. An overly large and contentious Diversitopia like the US, where everyone feels like a stranger in their own land, will slowly succumb to various illiberal intrusions into personal freedoms. (This trend accelerated with the Civil Rights Act which supplanted the right of free association with a right to equal opportunity and then to equal outcomes).
As CH wrote about the SS as one plank of a four-plank Dissident Party political movement,
We’re living in Big Brother’s world, just as Orwell described. I continue to be amazed that the average American isn’t more incensed than he appears to be by the constant surveillance. Bottom line: It needs to end. No more marketing firms collecting reams of personal data. No more Facebook shenanigans. No government snoops reading your late night pervy sexts to plate number three. Triple layered encryption should be the default condition for all consumer electronics, built right into the firmware. Eyes in the sky should be ripped from their street corner perches. I don’t want to live in a surveillance state; I want to live in a cohesive society with high trust levels that obviates the need for mass surveillance.
There are stirrings that the Left is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the Surveillance State. (Maybe they got the hives when their online shaming and doxing SJW campaigns were turned against them.) For instance, here is a story in the Washington Post-Op about “techno-skeptics” on the Left fearing the omnipresence of Big Data and invasion of privacy.
They are right to worry. The British government is using internet surveillance powers to “unmask online bullies”. It’s easy to foresee a small hop from that superficially noble goal to the government using those same powers to silence its critics under threat of public exposure, job loss, or even imprisonment.
This is what happens when you give globohomocorps and governments wide-ranging powers to surveil private communications under the auspice of thwarting Muslim terror attacks: eventually those powers are turned against everyday citizens. (Hint: the answer isn’t surveillance, it’s closing the borders to Muslim immigration.)
The Dissident Right (including yours truly) has been sounding the alarm about the Surveillance State for years. The Left is just now hearing that alarm. Better late than never. And better united than apart when confronting a beast as tentacled and ominous as the one Edward Snowden heroically revealed when he became a necessary traitor to a country that long before him became a traitor to its own people.
Almost forgot……
TRUMP2016
Trump, are you reading? You should be. CH is here to help get you to the White House.
