The world had a pretty good week. Romney reclaimed his mantle as Republican party frontrunner which means we probably won’t have to endure Rick Santorum’s War with Every Muslim in the World (or War on Homosexuality). Despite all of Iran’s boasting, it’s still very unlikely they’ll be a nuclear-capable country anytime soon. And, best of all, North Korea announced that they’re giving up their nuclear program in a last ditch attempt to keep the lights on. [If they give up their nuclear program, they’ll receive aid from the United States. If they completely overhaul their weapons systems, the rest of the world will start trading with them again.] So, a great time for the United States to think about scaling back military gadgets and re-investing in the homeland right?
Wrong!!!! How dare you think such a thing communist! For this week, the United States government’s only big announcements were: 1. That they had developed a new high speed rail gun for the United States Navy to punch giant holes in ships. Despite the fact that our Navy is the biggest in the world, the second biggest Navy is our own Air Force (here’s hoping they never fight each other), and the next five biggest countries combined don’t touch either one of them. And 2. That the surveillance drones proven so effective in tracking terrorists in Pakistan are making their way stateside in a couple years.
To me, the first bullet point about the rail gun is just further proof that the United States is completely in an arms race with itself, and doesn’t seem to care that no other country in the world is even interested in doing large scale Naval battle with us (our last couple wars have been with landlocked, desert countries). We seem oblivious to the fact that the best way a country like China could beat us right now, isn’t to go to war, but simply to call in our national debt; economic warfare is the battleground of this century, and we need to reinvest in our homeland instead of dicking around like teenage boys playing with bottle rockets. More money for public schools may not be as sexy as blowing shit up, but it’s more necessary.
But the really troubling news is that now surveillance drones used to hunt wanted international terrorists are seemingly “necessary” for police to track a local goon who robbed the 7/11. The biggest argument for bringing the drones stateside is that local police need them, but could you imagine your local police—-fucking Barney Fyffe’s trapping speeders or shooting the occasional gang bangers—-with this piece of technology? Is everyone completely clueless to the Orwellian nightmare this country is becoming?
I want to be adamant and say there is no reason the United States needs these domestic surveillance drones. None. Nada. Zip. No reason whatsoever for local police or even the FBI to have this type of technology. The argument that this “will help catch criminals” is being used for an awful lot these days, and I’m tired of it.
The only way this tech could help law enforcement catch someone committing a crime is if it was watching everyone, everywhere, all the time and a crime happened to be caught by it, which is a nightmare. It’s like saying “Hey, why not stick an anal probe up everyone’s ass so we can catch who’s got diarrhea?” Cops need to catch criminals the old fashioned way: police work, instead of filming everyone 24/7 so they can just roll back the tape like glorified IT guys to catch a bank robber. Plus, violent crime is way down, so what’s this really used for?
This will be used to violate people’s Civil Rights and privacy, period, no questions about it. Which begs the question “With all of this tech coming stateside and paranoia about enemies that don’t really exist, is our own country who we should really be afraid of?” I don’t know the answer, and I hate to sound like one of those one-issue Ron Paul nuts that’s terrified of their own government, but I have to admit that those people are looking a little less crazy every day.
People should have been worried once homeland security had the right to evade our privacy. It’s too late to complain now.
BIG BROTHER is real.