Surveillance Revisionism

I happened to catch some Newsmax on a recent night and couldn't help but grin listening to the commentators drone on about the surveillance state and how the citizenry shouldn't have to give up so much of its personal data.

Many will have no problem with giving up their data to corporations - who in turn affect and shape state policy and effectively lobby the government.

But more than that, the state has since 2001 simply appropriated the information the corporations have. It's so strange to hear all this coming from Republicans. They have (it would seem) forgotten that it was GW Bush that empowered the government to monitor personal data, phone calls, emails, Internet search histories and the like. Additionally the state uses your info and cross-references it with others and is able to construct dossiers on its own people - known associations, movements, habits, what one reads, buys, watches, and who we talk to. Given the sheer size of the Patriot Act and how quickly it was rolled out after 9/11 - it's obvious that it was already in the works, just waiting for the right moment.

Additionally, using the Five Eyes network, the US is able to spy on its own citizens by outsourcing the task to its Anglosphere allies - and it certainly returns the favour, even while spying on their populations and politicians as well - as well as NATO members.

The warnings were sounded at the time but they were dismissed by the GOP in the name of national security. Even as leaks emerged and whistleblowers spoke out - nothing was done. Even after Edward Snowden revealed how the scope of these projects had grown in the years following Bush's exit - nothing was done. The American Right continued to support these measures - spelled out in the Patriot Act and other legislation.

But a decade later all of that history has been erased and now these same politicians and media figures can feign outrage and pretend they oppose these measures on the basis of principle.

Where's the Democratic indignation? You would think the Left-wing media would be calling them out on these points - but instead they too defend the programs as indeed the Right under Bush is more or less embedded in today's Democratic Party. Have these folks shifted to the Left? Hardly, the DNC has in fact shifted to the Right - at least on issues of economics, national security, and foreign policy. The Right for its part has fallen off the cliff - into dark chasms known to the students of history.

I just find it incredible that in 2025 this revisionist tripe can be put forth on Newsmax - a far right media outlet. Is there no one in those circles with enough memory to think back to events not even 25 years ago? As someone in my 50's, I remember these events like they were yesterday.