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• Friday, November 21, 2008 10:55 AM

  Slow day

  ...John Brennan is a different matter. [...] someone [...] who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), [to support his appointment] is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. [...] Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years. -- GlennGreenwald

  And yet, it will probably go through with little notice. Even the more "liberal" members of our population are inured to the freedom-destroying innovations you listed. I don't know why.
  I think it may be the entertainment media; they've promoted a very dark view of power, policing and international engagement for a couple of decades now. You almost need to be a media-hermit like me to have been untouched by the memes they've spawned.
  Also, a lack of personal experience with oppression, or the isolation of those who have experience with it. It's usually "your own fault" in this country when you (a white, middlish class guy) fall afoul of our security forces. That results in a very different sense of right to liberty. It's pretty clear cut that your human rights have been violated if some irregular soldiers bust into your hut in the western Congo, steal all your food and money and burn the place down.
  It's quite a bit less clear if you lose your over-sized stucco & SIPs board hyper-shack to foreclosure, because some slick spiv in a polyester suit lied to you about the potential risks in the contract you signed. See, it's all "your fault" in the latter case. Even when your government uses your tax money to prop up the financial companies that underwrote your toxic deal.

  The distinctions between "not your fault", "all your fault" and "partly your fault" matter.

  The "company" our government now keeps is partly our fault. There is no way out of that fact.

  —Holly McLachlan Read Holly McLachlan's other letters
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