Watching responses to the revelations about the NSA this week has filled me with despair. It has left me feeling completely powerless and hopeless. I have seen the following:
1) People defending the surveillance arguing that this is legal because the law says so, apparently failing to distinguish between legal and illegal, just and unjust laws. Apparently these people must also feel that pre-civil rights laws that institutionalized racist and sexist oppression were just hunky dory. Apparently these people must also think that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were just fine because the law said so. There are few lines of defense that I find more stomach churning than this.
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2) I have seen people defending these policies on the grounds that there are professionals and lawyers are overseeing them, so there's no danger of them being abused. In a country where organizations such as the NSA infected African-Americans with syphilis, where people were kept drugged on LSD and other drugs for weeks, and so on, this is an amazing thing to say. I have no idea how to respond.
3) I have seen people argue that there's nothing to worry about here, that we're all safe, apparently forgetting that with programs such as this it's a perfectly easy affair for an official to dip into data to gather information to smear, say, a political opponent during elections or an outspoken critic of certain government programs. This also seems completely blind to how surveillance has been used against activists involved in anti-globalization movements, OWS, animal rights groups, environmental groups, etc.
4) I have seen people attack Snowden, calling for his arrest and punishment, rather than recognize the service of civil disobedience he's done in bringing attention to this, how he's a true defender of democracy, and how he is in the tradition of great breakers of the law in the name of justice such as Ghandi, MLK, Rosa Parks, and a host of others.
5) I have seen people object to uncivil language rather than recognizing the fundamental indecency of programs such as these, and who have tried to portray ire against programs such as this as resulting from visceral hatred of Obama, rather than as commitment to liberty and democracy.
The reason I feel despair is not so much over this particular issue (I've been aware of things such as this for years, but am glad greater public attention has been drawn to it). Rather, it is what this style of argument suggests about the democratic party. The only conclusion I can draw from these sorts of arguments is that democrats don't stand for anything, that they can't be trusted to have our backs, that they can't be trusted to remain committed to their promises and positions, and that so long as something advances the party-- not the positions the party is supposed to represent and defend --everything is negotiable.
If that's true-- and given a number of comments and diaries I've read here over the last few days (not to mention issue after issue over the years), I think it is --then the only conclusion that seems to follow is that the democratic party is not a reliable platform for the set of issues that most of us, who belong to the party, hold dear. Given that the democratic party is really the only viable game in town for leftists in the United States (despite the fact that it's not really a left party), this entails that we are completely powerless and are represented by no one. Crushed and anguished by this thought, I can't help but wonder what the point is. If my alleged "friends" will sell me down the river like this, why bother at all? Why not just follow Voltaire's advice and ignore it all while tending my garden? I mean seriously, with friends like this, who needs enemies?
The response to my expression of despair here will be predictable. "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" "Purist!" "Idealist!" "But republicans are worse!" "You have to understand change is slow and incremental" (we don't have time for incremental change anymore given climate change, btw). "You have to be pragmatic!" My only hope, I guess, is that some of the Alamo-Democrats who defend every policy no matter how much a violation of the platform it is, might reflect on how their arguments and forms of defense diminish voter turnout. In the last election 57% of the population voted. That was pretty high. Where were the other 43%? Were they apathetic? Ignorant? Perhaps they just feel that the entire system is rigged, that neither government nor party represents them. Are they truly far off the mark? Do defenses such as those we've seen in the last few days suggest a party that's willing to represent the interests of the American people?