The US security state laid bare
Philip Cunningham says the exposure of the dark undercurrents of the American security state has fuelled outrage at its double standards, but will it force a needed change of course?
Sales of George Orwell's works are said to be enjoying a small boom ever since the National Security Agency spy story broke, suggesting that, in confusing times, people still find solace in aphorisms and essays, fiction and fantasy, seeking to get a better grip on the uncharted and unclear dangers of the present.
America is going through a rough patch, engaged in a contentious national debate about how best to balance freedom with security, and how to handle secrecy with accountability. It's a time of excess, a time in which the word "traitor" will be brandished at those who dare to blow the whistle on wrongdoings or challenge the sacred cows of a smug, elitist security state.
The current era of governmental overreach, fired up by false notions of patriotism, may, in retrospect, be regarded as an aberration akin to that of the fear-mongering McCarthyism that dimmed the lights in the land illuminated by the torch of Miss Liberty. It, too, will pass.
China has known rough times, times far rougher than anything the relatively privileged young nation of America has had to face, but in recent years, the tide has begun to turn. The two nations are closer to parity than ever before, not just because America is at war and in decline, but because China is at peace and on the rise.
America may be the wealthiest nation in the world, but most of the wealth is greedily held in the hands of a few, while public expenditure is mostly funded by the taxes paid by people of lower and middle income. The US administration cries poverty when it comes to fixing America's 18,000 broken bridges and pot-holed highways, but it extorts from the taxpayer funds for a bottomless purse when it comes to blowing up bridges and replacing them in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's a time of high-dudgeon hypocrisy, when the world's most formidable hacking state, bar none, chides others for doing what it does on a larger scale; when the world's most aggressive interventionist regime with an awesome network of military bases spanning the globe rains bombs on relatively defenceless countries, to exert its will and a warped vision of the American way.
What NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden seems to be telling us is that the American security state is guilty of excess yet unable to correct itself. Policy has broken free of democratic safeguards and is racing out of control. The ship of state is listing dangerously and someone has to blow the whistle.
