Freedom–The Myth?

You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That’s a typo. Orwell is here now. He’s livin’ large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless! –Cereal Killer in Hackers

I’ve had these thoughts about the U.S. for a while. Looking back through history, it’s stained rusted red with the blood of fallen soldiers, innocents caught in the cross-fire and it’s all in the name of what? Is it really freedom anymore? If the country is freed with our iron fist and then we have to stay to implement freedom in our image, is that really free?

I was browsing the Googlenets today, and I wrote about the CNN Poll taken that states that 86 % of Americans believe the government is broken.  Of course, I definitely take into consideration that the majority of those who felt that way were well-off (gotta hate those increase in taxes) and mostly rural areas (which from my personal experience isn’t always the most kind to darker skins). However, this lack of confidence in the government didn’t start with Obama. And I doubt it’ll end there either.

The Center for Public Integrity issued a report about how screwed the G.W. administration was, which I don’t think really surprises anyone, except maybe the extent of issues. And I’m sure if I wanted to go I could keep going, looking further and further back into our government’s history seeing where think tanks issued No Confidence reports on one issue or another. I don’t think Obama realized the stronger the light was shown on the capitol the more the shadows would be seen. Even Obama supporters feel vague twinges of discomfort every time there’s something about the War continuing and Gitmo not being closed. So, Alex Jones tried to documented his current observations of the White House and then tried to distribute the movie on a Google site.

Alex Jones is a sometimes described as a whistle-blower in one breath and a fanatic in the next. His missions seems to be to cause controversy and shine a spotlight on what he perceives as wrongs. Click to view a video of Jones being interviewed about this.

Again, the idea of freedom. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to criticize the president? Part of the process of being an elected official is having your (in)actions scrutinized by your constituents. Race shouldn’t have been an issue here.

Google is acting as a gatekeeper? Are you comfortable with that? Owning your internets, feeding your broadband, in your emails, trying to sneak into your social networking–right now failing but they’ll find the combination that will attract the audience that they’re looking for. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the biggest issues that people seem to have with the Google products are in terms of privacy. Too many people being able to access your info and you not having enough options to stop it. We’re a culture of voyeurs and exhibitionists, but only for who we select.

I could go on and on about the Patriot Act, how it was foolheartedly passed without any thorough reading. I could mention how your home isn’t really yours, your phone records, hell, even your library records do not belong to you.

How about the Philadelphia high school that is currently being investigated by the FBI for allegedly issuing 1800 lap tops to high school students and then spying on them at school and home? Could that happen with adults or are we too knowledgeable for things like that to occur?

When looked at as a whole, along with the myriad of other incidents that could be quoted here, that uneasy feeling surfaces again. What does this mean for the future? I’m not sure yet, but when you start looking at it all in context, it paints tomorrow with a bleak brush.