Glenn: Why is the unprecedented increase in domestic surveillance and a corresponding increase in prosecuting whistleblowers not a campaign issue?

yes... why indeed...

glenn greenwald...

[I]ssuing subpoenas to journalists to force them to reveal their sources is now obsolete — unnecessary — because the U.S. Government’s Surveillance State is so vast, so comprehensive, that it already knows who is talking to whom. It now subpoenas and harasses reporters simply to force them to confirm in court what they have already learned through surveillance, but the limitless Surveillance State it has created has rendered undetected whistleblowing — or undetected anything — virtually impossible.

[...]

[I]t’s just as necessary for a government to shield its own actions from any transparency and scrutiny as it is to know everything which citizens are doing and saying. That’s the one-way mirror which all authoritarian regimes attempt to construct: those in power know everything about the conduct of those who are ruled, while those who are ruled know nothing about the conduct of those in power. That’s what keeps the power dynamic so imbalanced in one direction. But this unprecedented attack on whistleblowers, as obviously significant as it is, also enjoys full bipartisan support (as well as the indifference of a supremely passive media), and so it, too, will be completely ignored by the grand Election-Year clash of America’s two great and oh-so-fundamentally-different political parties.

here's glenn's take on how all this plays out in our election year politics...

Even for those issues that are actually significant and receive election-year attention — such as, say, America’s oligarchy and the economic policies that sustain it — the differences are largely symbolic, just substantive enough to keep tribal loyalties high and to maintain the illusion of real choices (watch how often Obama supporters defend him from GOP attacks not by rejecting their premises but by insisting that he’s adopting conservative policies). The differences which are genuinely stark — Supreme Court choices, reproductive rights, marriage equality — are relegated to mere sideshows, exploited as tactics for maintaining acute cultural divisions and keeping certain base factions loyal, invested, and energized.

i can't count how many emails i receive each day imploring me to reject the evil republicans and to loosen my purse strings and toss a few dollars to white hat democrats... yeah, right...

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