Obama's Drug of Choice: Power

Dear Mr. President,

I listened again to your Friday press conference reassuring America that the NSA surveillance programs and bulk collection of data are both legal and tightly controlled. How you’re consulting with Congress and outsiders on tweaks to the programs to ensure even greater oversight and safeguards, how you called for a complete review of the NSA program before the Snowden leaks, how we must have greater transparency, etc. etc. etc. You are one slick dude, Mr. President. Your smooth confidence and certainty, that voice of authority—like Moses handing down the 10 commandments to the people of Israel—is mesmerizing and you want to believe…but then you think about all the broken promises, betrayals and lies of the past 5 years and your words turn to dust. The oversight you say we have through the FISA court is non-existent—the court operates in total secrecy, no opposing side to the government is ever heard, and in 20 years the court has rejected only 11 requests in 34,000. As for oversight by Congress, that too is a fiction. In an interview yesterday on DemocracyNow! Sen. Wyden’s former chief of staff, Jennifer Hoelzer, said your administration blocked every attempt at debate over the Patriot Act, the FISA Court and the NSA. (http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/12/senate_insider_speaks_out_ex_wyden) Also yesterday, the Guardian reported that Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) said the Intelligence committee withheld a key document on the NSA’s surveillance program that the Administration declassified and gave to the intelligence committees prior to the vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act. When even members of Congress can’t know what’s going on, when the justifications for all this remain secret, when more and more illegal activity by the NSA is revealed, you expect us to trust you? When Gen. Alexander makes statements like this: “I can’t defend the country until I’m into all the networks,” we’re supposed to trust the NSA? (today’s NYT “NSA Leaks Make Plan For Cyberdefense Unlikely” p. A6) Again I go back to the question of how power twists and distorts reality for those who hold it; how they lose touch with reality; how power is like any other drug—you can never get enough—how whatever is done to maintain and get more is justified with religious fanaticism and any question of their authority is a threat. That’s what I see in your Friday press conference, Mr. President, the fanatic certainty and belief in your own rhetoric and that’s a very scary prospect.