Splendid Isolation III: Silent in America

You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.
–Edward Snowden

We’ve moved operations to the bedroom and setup a makeshift office by the window where we can smoke.   Our absence from this blog is no different from the absence of any outrage or protest from citizens in the Land of the Free.  What came downwire 5 days ago is some very dirty business, terrifying enough to make even the most paranoid conspiracist seem rational and sane.
We can deal with the recent revelations that America isn’t much better than China when it comes to protecting the privacy of its citizens in one of two different ways.  We can get wise, slowly move up the ranks of American democracy and ultimately become a government of, by and for the people.  We can take it to the street and protest while assembling the new party.  It will be a thankless struggle and it will take years.
Or, we can just let this whole thing blow over.  Get back to work.  Carry on with our punchdrunk lives and continue sleeping while the nightmare continues.  Shrug while the United States of America tightens its grip of Empire and the New World Order finally comes home to roost.
My money’s on the latter.  Life’s too good here in the states to be bothered by what the big bad government is up to.  Pass the pitcher of margaritas and turn up the corporate rock.
I’m kinda diggin this global warming thing
-Steve Earle

It’s hot out there and I’m tired.  We lost this battle on a dark day in October 2001 when a President we didn’t vote for signed away any rights we still had to our own privacy.  We lost it a long time ago and there is no turning back.  Obama’s a shill.  This country is fucked.  To think that just 15 days ago your flags were flying so high I couldn’t take a piss without it getting on your patriotism.  What do two dumbshit Chechnyans have to do with the reams of information the US government is collecting from our private lives every day?

We are no safer now. Abroad. In our own country.
-from the Philadelphia IMC’s Wire 

…the most crucial issue of our time is the regulation of information.
-from Splendid Isolation II, The Unemployable Journalist

I am saying that I told you so.  Let it crumble. Let it fall.  I’m perfectly happy up here in the high rooms, stupefied all day Sunday with a beer hangover and a hardon.  Go ahead, raise your voices and show your outrage (on Facebook), as we sink down into a life lived&handed over with ever diminishing returns.  Welcome to the Chinese Century.

See you in Hong Kong motherfucker.

Splendid Isolation II-The Unemployable Journalist

I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O’Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street

Tragedy, it’s nothing new.  It’s hard to take.  Hard to process.  Me, I’m too far removed.  And jaded.  I don’t get angry or upset with God or Al Qaeda.  I save all my outrage for you.  That’s right, oh diligent and moral upstanding citizens of the free world.  My reaction to the horror of senseless death and murder is anger and that anger is focused squarely on you.  While I’m sure your sentiments come from the right place, they are by rote and repeated ad infinitum a midst a fucking blizzard of assumptions that initially and individually, you did not make.  I guess that’s ok if you have a target for your outrage.  Just don’t make the mistake of assuming that your outrage is mine, Brother.  And consider that the big business of news reporting is pandering to what is accepted as truth even though they’ve told you what to accept as truth at the beginning of the news cycle.

Seeking justice has proven to cultivate a climate of herd-thought which in turn is used to justify:  War, genocide, starvation, unsustainable economic&world orders and the erosion of our liberties.  Ok, maybe not justify-that’s a pretty strong word.  How about divert or ignore?  The “worst privacy disaster our country has ever faced” passed through the House of Representatives last week, with a vote of 288 to 127.
In my line of work the most crucial issue of our time is the regulation of information.  But you don’t have to be a hack journalist like me to see that if transparency&public accountability are lost then all else will soon be coming down the shitter.
How is it any worse when channels of communication are clogged with sterile, mass -morality and assumptions?  Assumptions repeated until they are thoughts-your thoughts, repeated until they are mantras-your mantras, repeated until they become reality-yours and mine.  Thanks allot.
I’m upset when the world we’re creating is predicated on assumptions.  The fact is, there’s too much madness and too much sorrow for simple answers; let alone a headline or byline in a sentence or less.

I try to extract information from the “news” outlets.  Then I address my own personal wisdom& take my own counsel.  Then I think about my loved ones.  About how good it’ll be to connect with them again.  I remind myself and then I shut off the radio and get out of bed.  I close all the windows and I close all the blinds.  I fire up the Yerba Mate and I brace myself for the next hit.
I must willfully insulate myself from the world that we are creating with our thoughts; our own and original thoughts or otherwise.
This is our world.  At least it could be.  You must disengage and shut the fuck up for 5 minutes.  You must quiet your own mind.  But don’t do it for your own sake.  Do it for mine.

I think people…it’s like they’re living in a movie.  They just don’t think anything is real.  But shit is real.
-Ian MacKaye, EDGE The Movie

I’m putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don’t want to see their faces
I don’t want to hear them scream
-Warren Zevon, Splendid Isolation

Yrs,
The Outsider
Austin, TX