Righteous indignation is an interesting thing. Almost every liberal, progressive, Democrat politician, journalist, citizen, whatever, is expressing outrage over the reports that the Federal government collects telephone usage data without the specific prior knowledge or permission of the American people. That the government is possibly peering into our every email or website visit.
We become righteously indignant when we feel we have the moral high ground on an issue. Once we reach the moral high ground we will not cede it lightly. We may look down from our perch atop the mountain at the feckless peons below but the one thing we won’t do is look into any mirrors.
Believe me there has been a lot of shock and anger expressed by progressives toward the Obama Administration over the National Security Administration (NSA) data mining program “revealed” by fugitive Edward Snowden.
How dare the Government steal our information? We’ve got to do something about this! Thank goodness that whistleblower fellow told us what was going on so we can start have an open discussion about Privacy and our rights!
While we’re having that national conversation can we have another one about all of the data progressives are obviously sharing with each other about me? I am on so many progressive email lists I want to scream, “Stop sending me emails! I don’t have any money!”
I didn’t sign up for this. I’m not even a Democrat; I’m Independent-ish. (It’s hard to be independent when you don’t have any parties to choose between).
So from my viewpoint, righteous indignation isn’t the place progressives should be. They should be checking out that mirror. From my perspective I’m more afraid of them because they know how to find me and they’re after my wallet.
The day I’m writing this I received two emails from Progressives United asking for money donations. Former Senator Russ Feingold, its founder, is from Wisconsin. I’m not and as far as I know, I’ve not ever given Feingold or his organization any indication I had any interest in them. Yet here they are begging me for money.
Now the fact that these unsolicited emails from Feingold’s organization keep showing up in my inbox is interesting in that Feingold was one of the early progressive critics of the NSA program obtaining unauthorized information from Americans. Earlier this month, the former senator who was the only one to vote against the Patriot Act, called the NSA “revelations” “deeply troubling”, according to news reports.
I got plenty of emails from the Ed Markey for Massachusetts Senate campaign although I no longer live in Massachusetts and have never expressed any kind of interest in his campaign.
Al Franken and I have become close acquaintances although I don’t live in Minnesota or wherever it is he represents and I’ve never given him any money no matter how hard he’s begged. I don’t know how I got on his email list but I’ve resisted unsubscribing because last November Franni Franken sent a great recipe for Aunt Carla’s Pumpkin Cornbread that was a huge hit with my housemate and I don’t want to risk missing another gourmet delight.
I’ve received donation requests from Tom Harkin. I’ve heard of him but I couldn’t tell you a thing about him. So, when I see at the bottom of the email:
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I’m pretty sure someone’s lying.
Then there was the Sierra Club, which I’ve never shown any interest in, as I’m not much into hugging trees. At least they had the decency not to claim that I was receiving the emails because I had requested them.
Another progressive organization I am very certain I didn’t invite into my email inbox is, ahem, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). While I was brought up in an uber-liberal tradition which held that the ACLU was the ultimate defender of freedom, I have never forgiven them for defending the American Nazi’s right to march through the heavily Jewish Skokie , Ill. So, once again I know they didn’t get my information from me.
Now, I love Sherrod Brown, politically speaking, and I actually think he’s kind of cute, but I didn’t sign up for the Friends of Sherrod Brown email list, at least I don’t remember doing so. There wouldn’t have been any reason for me to do so because I don’t have any money!
Perhaps the Federal government collecting information about Americans – which by the way I contend they’ve always done to the best of their ability – is a part of the “national conversation” we need to be having right now. I think we needed to have it before we passed the Patriot Act in the first place. But given that the American public acquiesced to being stripped of both their common sense and their civil rights in exchange for an elusive fight on terrorism this NSA policy is not a surprise to me nor should it be to anyone else. Neither does it scare me.
To me as it is currently purported to operate it seems little more than a giant telephone book which the Government can access under certain strict legal guidelines. Can that program be abused? Of course. Did Edward Snowden provide us any evidence that it has been? Not that I’ve seen. Do we need to know more about what keeps it from being abused? Perhaps. I screamed about every aspect of the Patriot Act from before its inception but I lived in Texas so no one heard me. But I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying, we let this happen with our silence. We let this happen with our fear that those radical Islamists were going to come after us again. We cannot claim now, Rachel Maddow, that we didn’t know what the government was doing. We might not have known the exact methods but we provided the means.
That said, let’s have this conversation, belated though it may be.
Sen. Alan Grayson, has been quoted as saying the NSA data mining program:
“It is completely wrong and utterly unconstitutional. It’s the Big Brother state come to life. The government has no right to get our email records.”
The NSA isn’t the only organization spying on you.
Well, Sen. Grayson that is how I feel about you and your friends. It is wrong for political organizations to get a hold of whatever records you have gotten that gives you the right to keep emailing me asking for money. While we’re having conversations, looking at privacy laws and thinking about changing laws can we take a look at all of the myriad ways the political system is invading our electronic privacy, please?
Oh, and if anybody’s looking for a great recipe for pumpkin cornbread but doesn’t want to end up on anybody’s mailing list, drop me a note.
thevoiceandthevision 