By Chris Hedges
Truthdig - Monday, 06 January 2014
This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion
into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the
challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in
outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free
expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of
captives.
The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent
terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his
supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the
massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the
point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry,
any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate
through control of information, any state that has the tools to
instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may
not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a
population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting
repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that
truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total
surveillance will be thrust into overdrive.
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