Tell me again why we're supposed to trust that our government has our best interests at heart. Because I'm having a hard time reconciling that worldview to reality.
Let's go down the list, shall we? Nile Gardiner at the London Telegraph had made it really easy for us, with a nice, easy to follow list.
1. The American public is losing trust in Obama.
Frankly, Obama's adminsitration has given us no reason to trust them. Regularly they insist on conducting their business behind doors. Whether it's the clandestine seizure of journalists phone records and the subsequent closed-door briefing to issue guidelines to journalists on how they should behave in leak investigations, or it's classification of drone activities, or completely redacted FOIA requests, Obama's administration has made it clear that they have plenty to hide. This coming from the "most transparent administration".
And it doesn't stop there. I'd like to expand that to cover the rest of our government. Congress has repeatedly approved of the measures Obama has used to spy on American citizens, hunt down people on American soil, and the indefinite detention of terror suspects.
Tell me how we're supposed to trust them? Our government has declared they are above the law, even as they impose new and more onerous regulations on citizens.
The coincides perfectly with number:
2. The Obama Administration is imperial in style and outlook.
I'd once again like to expand that to cover the rest of our government. This isn't an issue of Republican versus Democrat or right versus left. It's an issue of a rapid expansion of powers coinciding with an increase in abuse of those powers. Consider the PRISM program that forces internet providers and major internet companies to provide direct access to their servers and through that the data of millions of American citizens. The defense is that it's perfectly legal and the real problem is the fact that issues pertaining to national security were leaked to the media.
Let me restate. The problem isn't that our government has granted itself unrestrained powers to monitor and spy on its citizenry. The problem is that someone let us know about it...
I wish I was making this up.
Obama's further defense is that these programs weren't secret because "hey, we told Congress about it, and they said it was cool. Don't worry. We're using this information in the right way. We've established our own oversight, and they said we're cool."
...
I'll be unpacking some of the other points later either tonight or this week. So stay tuned for more outrage to come.
