But! I never get to know about this, the 'target' never knows about this, and my phone company gets to decide if the calls get reported.

Your phone company can make no such decision - it must comply, and it must keep the surveillance secret between itself and the authorities. All it may do is challenge a directive to supply data/access/etc. in FISA court, and even these proceedings are conducted in secret, without the target's knowledge or involvement, and with a very high level of deference to the program.

Yup.

What causes international militarism to become the predominant, "establishment" philosophy of the foreign policy community and political leadership, across parties? I think the answer is relatively straightforward and simple.

First, it is highly tempting to use or advocate the use of the world's most advanced, expansive, and mobile military (however ill-equipped it is to handle insurgencies and civil wars).

Second, the rationales for military intervention vary widely, and across standard partisan spectrums. One need only look to the ever-shifting reasons offered for the Iraq War. "Liberal" advocates of humanitarian interventionism join with "conservative" advocates of geopolitical dominance or racist subjugation of third world assets. Students of international "realism" convince themselves that US security is in imminent danger, and that the costs of swift intervention outweigh the predicted risks of non-military efforts. Combined with the powerful incentive to use latent military power, and the consistent track record of being able to topple conventional militaries and political systems with relative ease, it's easy to see how a perverse sort of establishment "consensus" can form around militarism, even in the throes of a bloody and indefinite counterinsurgency and political quagmire (part of the reason why some new war seems an appetizing alternative to the emotionally unrewarding, hard slog of our ongoing occupation).

This self-destructive pattern will likely continue for as long as we maintain such a disproportionately enormous military, and do not question the twin assumptions that (1) contemporary threats to our security are best dealt with by military means, and (2) we must behave as an active hegemon in all our foreign relations and domestic priorities.

Ironically, a much-needed paradigm shift in philosophy and attitude will help to stave off or otherwise soften our inevitable decline as a hegemon, whereas maintaining the entrenched attitudes of the current era will hasten and worsen our collapse. Accordingly, being less belligerent on the world stage is in fact the most pro-American, patriotic course of action we can pursue. But, alas, this does not comport with the John Wayne narrative that our leaders and prognosticators have clung to so emotionally and subconsciously, for so long.

I didn't see this new post, and had some thoughts on this general topic, so you'll forgive me for reposting them here.

What causes international militarism to become the predominant, "establishment" philosophy of the foreign policy community and political leadership, across parties? I think the answer is relatively straightforward and simple.

First, it is highly tempting to use or advocate the use of the world's most advanced, expansive, and mobile military (however ill-equipped it is to handle insurgencies and civil wars).

Second, the rationales for military intervention vary widely, and across standard partisan spectrums. One need only look to the ever-shifting reasons offered for the Iraq War. "Liberal" advocates of humanitarian interventionism join with "conservative" advocates of geopolitical dominance or racist subjugation of third world assets. Students of international "realism" convince themselves that US security is in imminent danger, and that the costs of swift intervention outweigh the predicted risks of non-military efforts. Combined with the powerful incentive to use latent military power, and the consistent track record of being able to topple conventional militaries and political systems with relative ease, it's easy to see how a perverse sort of establishment "consensus" can form around militarism, even in the throes of a bloody and indefinite counterinsurgency and political quagmire (part of the reason why some new war seems an appetizing alternative to the emotionally unrewarding, hard slog of our ongoing occupation).

This self-destructive pattern will likely continue for as long as we maintain such a disproportionately enormous military, and do not question the twin assumptions that (1) contemporary threats to our security are best dealt with by military means, and (2) we must behave as an active hegemon in all our foreign relations and domestic priorities.

Ironically, a much-needed paradigm shift in philosophy and attitude will help to stave off or otherwise soften our inevitable decline as a hegemon, whereas maintaining the entrenched attitudes of the current era will hasten and worsen our collapse. Accordingly, being less belligerent on the world stage is in fact the most pro-American, patriotic course of action we can pursue. But, alas, this does not comport with the John Wayne narrative that our leaders and prognosticators have clung to so emotionally and subconsciously, for so long.