SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon. Others at SN have also voiced similar opinions so I thought this might be an interesting read for our members.
The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.
But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons.
Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.
Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
[Related]: ‘National Security and Double Government’
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Tuesday October 21 2014, @07:23PM
Institutions are set up to reduce critical thinking skills and civil discourse (I'm looking at you Department of Education), to suppress intellect and disadvantage us until we are acting like easily controlled cave-men. "But we be smart, we is graduates!" Yup, you sure are, congratulations, go back to your TV. As cliché as the word "sheeple" is it is astonishingly accurate.
There is so much pride and ego up there that they can't see us as human, we are like animals to them, livestock, breed the sheep, shear some sheep, kill some sheep. This is why slavery happens so easily so often. They also believe that we can't think for ourselves and we need them to protect us from us. While we as society lose our civility we are not helping our case.
Every crazy theory about "Double Government" or some such is rooted in truth, some more than others. How bad you think power and government is compared to what it really is, is like what you thought of the NSA before Snowden.
Thankfully not all rich guys are like this. Some are cool and down to earth and have a good head and respect for humans. They are very rare and are fantastic leaders.
I better leave it at that for now. I have a delivery of soapboxes to go collect.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 21 2014, @08:41PM
Yes, minister [wikipedia.org] was funny. Too bad the bureaucracy is generally humour-impaired.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0