On secrecy, privacy and dignity

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The other day I heard some hired gleeman whining out Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”, and smirked a bit to myself as he sang the line, “You’re invisible now, you have no secrets to conceal.”

So how does it feel?

How does it feel to be on the wrong end of warrantless wiretapping, illegal surveillance that would have been a felony in many a previous decade, and the continued off-the-rails abuse of power wielded by law enforcement and governmental agencies?

I am reminded of one of my favorite series of novels, the long out-of-print Rissa Kerguelen trilogy by F. M. Busby. In the first book, the protagonist – the orphaned daughter of political activists who died protesting the interplanetary totalitarian corporate entity which now controls most of the known systems – is raped, systematically and daily by one of her captors. Over the years this heinous daily ritual becomes so routine that eventually when Rissa wins an interplanetary lottery that frees her from her otherwise permanent status as a welfare state slave laborer, the jackass has the audacity to ask for one last go ’round “for old time’s sake”.

Rissa, now a young woman, simply says “No” and walks away. The man is flabbergasted, and when he asks why Rissa is turning him down, her reply is direct and to the point: “YOU NEVER ASKED.”

Rissa most certainly held back a secret from this rapist of hers, despite her position of powerlessness and quite literal nakedness before the man. The secret she held back was a fundamental truth that he just never wanted to know. The deceit that was perpetrated on the man was one that he did to himself.

The key to defeating the tyranny inherent in a lopsided balance of secrecy and privacy is to understand that if you are part of the disenfranchised, you still retain the power of… invisibility.

If someone wants to attempt to make a good and worthwhile person powerless, they will ignore the valid contributions to society of that person. They will dehumanize that person. They will lie – they HAVE to lie in order to pull the whole con-job off, and the lies that these power-mongers and hypocrites tell themselves and others about you are how they can be defeated. Ignorance and arrogance work against themselves. It’s a cliche because it works – you really CAN’T keep a good man down.

There are fundamental truths that you possess about yourself that no one can deny. Those who would keep you down can WORK to deny it to self and others – contrive, scheme, spin, create theater, set ambushes, gaslight, propagandize, spread rumors – THEY’RE STILL LYING. They’re lying to anyone who will listen, and they’re CERTAINLY lying to themselves about your right to be a child of the universe.

“You’re invisible now”?

Good. Use it. I certainly do.

“You have no secrets to conceal”?

That’s just another BULLSHIT LIE.

The secrets I have to conceal are fundamental truths my enemies just don’t want to know, and those truths are going to bite them in the ass someday. I am so confident that this will happen that I don’t even mind posting this message here where no small few of them are certain to read it. The beauty of this situation is that I could tell these sad, greedy, pathetic power-trippers exactly what they are doing wrong – AND THEY WILL STILL KEEP DOING IT, because they just can’t help themselves. They’re incapable of learning, incapable of growing, incapable of truly working for the greater good, incapable of understanding that the power they have stolen from the American people is something they HAD TO STEAL. Liars and hypocrites are what they ARE.

I live for the day when I take a sledgehammer to the first of many NSA warrantless wiretapping appliances. I swear it here before Gods and men upon my sacred troth – I will do this, or I will die trying.

Until that day, every dime I wrest from the land on MY terms is payback, and payback is a bitch.