Privacy

The recent Wikileaks controvercy had me thinking about privacy and how it is applied to certain groups.

When the accessibility of the internet grew, several phenomena grew with it. We have the explosion of social media and the ability of simple online searches to expose a lot of your personal information to anyone with an internet connection. Law enforcement agencies started putting cameras on police cars, and sometimes drove with camera crews - like the show Cops. They put surveillance cameras more and more in public places and then started thinking about putting them on roadways as speed traps or red light enforcers. When 9/11 hit, government officials started to devise ways to improve security. Some of these ways involved not just more intrusive searches on people at airports, but the possibility that your email might be read by someone in the government. Some people see no problem with this increased scrutiny. You will often hear proponents of increased government power of surveillance of individuals saying that we live in a different world and you shouldn't expect as much individual privacy today.

If this is such a good idea for individual people, why is it not a good idea for governments or large corporations? What's fair is fair, right? After all, if you're not doing anything bad, you have nothing to hide? That's what I'm being told as a justification for losing my privacy, so shouldn't that apply to government and industry too?

We are expected to vote for people and then re-evaluate their performance during the next election and decide whether to re-elect them or not. It's like a performance review for a job. If we don't know what they are doing or how they are doing it because they get to classify their actions and hide their activities behind a veil of security, then we really can't judge the job they are doing and cannot in good conscience decide whether to vote for them or not. I'm not talking about exposing CIA operatives, and endangering secret agents. I figure that the best kept secrets like that are already better protected and will be the last secrets to be exposed anyway. The exception was the Valerie Plame affair, and that was done from the inside. What I am talking about exposing is why we go to war, what corporations are pulling government strings, and why decisions are being made. I don't need to know the name of or get a picture of a field agent doing his job, but I want to know if the government sent him out to perform assassinations or subvert governments or abduct people for interrogations.

Secrecy allows you to torture people, imprison them without cause, assassinate inconvenient rivals, start wars, and ignore festering problems. Secrecy allows you to conspire to fix prices, put unsafe products into the public's hands, continue to practice unsafe procedures in the workplace, and pollute without any control. The worst an individual could do with secrecy might be to defraud someone, injure an individual, or do drugs. The harm anyone as an individual can do is so much less than governments and corporations can do, yet why are people arguing that my secrecy must be sacrificed to protect the rest of the public and they aren't arguing that the big players that have much more impact and can do much more harm need greater protections from public scrutiny?

Some have expressed disappointment in President Obama, feeling that he has not lived up to his campaign promises (obviously, his opponents express disappointment just that he's in office). I have heard a defense of Obama that speculated that if you knew what he knows, if you saw all the inside information that he now has access to since he went into office, you'd understand why he is acting the way he is. This justification is not acceptible. If every new elected official gets to go to Washington and disappear behind a veil of secrecy and ignore what they were sent to office to do, their campaign promises mean nothing. If we can't expect anyone we elect to do the things they say they are going to do, then it doesn't do any good to vote for anyone. We as voters are responsible for our leaders actions, and how can we evaluate how they make decisions if we can't even see what they see?

There were serious misuses of privacy in the previous administration, and the hope in electing Obama was that things would roll back and revert to times when government was more accessible. Vice President Cheney in particular used to claim executive privelige in order to do his job unencumbered, unquestioned, and without interference from the public. That started with his work with energy corporations in drafting policy in his energy task force. The particulars of those meetings never did see the light of day. In the absense of hard evidence, I assume that energy corporations were given the ability to effect legislation and enforcement in ways that circumvented restrictions and benefited the bottom line of the company at the expense of the general public. The result was an unneccesary war in Iraq and $4 per gallon gasoline. The other assertion that Cheney used to make was that our security measures had prevented many terrorist attacks. When asked for specifics, he couldn't tell us about them for "security" reasons. This supposedly justified torture, detainment, rendition, and the erosion of individual privacy. If you were able to rip away this veil of secrecy and found that there were no attacks repelled and the questionable actions made no difference in our security, you would have a clear case to remove the perpetrators from office. But since they got to say what it was we got to see, it was easy for them to simply restict this information, which gave them more freedom to do whatever they wanted.

I say we should open up the files and look at the information. People in government and industry should always act in a way that they will not be ashamed of when it comes to light in the public. What they do has a broader effect and they expect no less from us.

Lame Duck Session

I was listening to an interesting exchange on the Slate Political Gabfest about the lame duck session of Congress.

Emily Bazelon explained that some people were so incensed about lame duck sessions that they were thinking of making them illegal, and at least the laws that came out of them had the feeling of something that was unconstitutional, because these people had just been voted out. She commented that this time the lame duck session might be a good thing because cooler heads could prevail and decisions could be made without regard for re-election prospects.

In repeating the other's complaints, she described the session as an undemocratic time, but I believe we are seeing a political calculation-free zone. Our elected officials are, during these interludes, able to make decisions divorced from political machinations. For a while, the motivation can be what's good for the country and not their next election. Instead of paying back their small group of core campaign contributors they can do what’s right for the majority. The irony is that more campaign promises that usually amount to nothing more than rhetoric seem to be fulfilled during the lame duck session than during the regular session. Actions that are for the greater good of the country can be openly considered in this brief period where there are no glaring klieg lights of politics that do not allow for any political cover.

This tells us that politics and the things politicians do to get re-elected are distorting the way they govern. Additionally, the political calculations did not work for the Democrats. All the issues that they would not make a stand on before the election were avoided because they felt it would make them un-electable. These were exactly the issues that their core supporters expected them to address all along. The irony is that their political second guessing and maneuvering was counterproductive. If they had worked toward some of the legislation they've been free to approach during the Lame Duck Session, I believe they would have had better chances at being re-elected. Showing some backbone and tackling issues that the right painted as completely unacceptible would have energized their base.

The independent swing voters who turned to the Democrats in hopes that they would be anti-Republicans were sorely disappointed by their behavior since the 2008 election. The gutless way that Democrats wouldn't even consider legislation and make their agenda happen during a sweeping supermajority is what hurt them and caused the enthusiam gap among those swing voters. The behavior of the Democrats during this lame duck session proves that they had the ability to get some things that needed to be done completed despite Republican blustering. If they had exhibited some courage over the last 2 years, I believe the election would not have been as successful for the Republicans.

Prior to the election, the Republicans were taking advantage of a situation where obstructionism and not cooperating meant they were not working for the good of the country, and yet this put them back in a position of power. They were rewarded for bad behavior. The lame duck lesson that should be transmitted to the regular session is to do what’s right, not what you think you should do because of election politics.

The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that is now a movie staring Viggo Mortensen. The movie came out last summer and I heard a review on the podcast Seen/Unseen Movie Reviews. The host said that he loved the book and was fearful that the movie would screw it up. There was something about his passionate description of the book that stuck in my mind, and made me decide that I had to read it. I purchased the book some time back, and I have a paperback that came out since the movie, so it has a picture of Viggo Mortensen and the actor who plays the boy, Kodi Smit-McPhee, on the cover. I used to be a read the book first purist, but I've relaxed on that account somewhat. I realized that in this case, it was too late, just seeing the movie trailers would have been enough to put Viggo Mortensen's face on the man when I read the book. I do like that pure book experience where you have these vague, fantasy-like visions of the characters in your mind. I'm always afraid that putting an actual face on the character distracts you from accepting the character as a pure person, whom you can relate to and understand their motivations and desires. When the movie arrived in the mail from NetFlix, I realized I had to get off my butt and read the book.

That was three days ago, and I finished the book last night. It's that good. You sit down and read it from front to back. In contrast, I've been plugging away at Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond for 2 years (with long gaps where I put it aside), but can never seem to read more than about 10 pages in a sitting (after which, I fall asleep).

The book reminds me of the perfect subject for a high school essay. The themes are numerous, and the old thesis style of finding the hidden meanings in the book is a perfect way to view the novel.

The style is almost more poetry than prose. It follows a simple pattern alternating stream of consciousness with simple dialog and spare descriptions.

I had no idea where it was going. There are a few things that you realize they have left out of the novel. They never say what part of the world the characters are in. I kept thinking they were in California, but it could just as easily been parts of Georgia. The point is that it's not important because the world has been so radically changed that nothing is recognizable anymore. The cause of the end of the world or the downfall of civilization is not clear, but I suspect it was meant to be nuclear war and the ensuing nuclear winter. However, why were there not more references to radiation? I suppose it could have been a comet or asteroid strike.

They never say the boy's name or the man's name, and it doesn't matter. He's "the man" and his son is "the boy".

The novel sets up a good versus evil theme. This is not some underlying message you have to guess at, the boy is often questioning the man about whether people they encounter are good people. Unfortunately, they do not encounter any good people, only victims and predators. The struggle between the boy and the man is to remain good and survive. The boy's watchfulness keeps the man from devolving into savagery and the man's example gives the boy a clear idea of good and evil.

You find yourself asking why they keep going on. You wonder what it is that they are hopeful for. Is there some unscarred territory where people are still normal and life is going on with something resembling order?

You get the sense that the desolation following the original conflagration went in stages. This is what makes the novel interesting. There are no explicit narrative explanations, just bits and pieces that you pick up along the way. You begin to understand that the survivors have swept over the landscape in waves, with each successive wave being diminished. At some point, people began to turn on each other, and when we see the boy and the man on their journey, they have reached the point where they can't trust anyone. They will either be attacked or robbed by anyone they meet, and some bands will slaughter them for food if they can.

You get the sense that the man was once a police officer or a soldier, but he was also well read and intelligent, so there's no telling what he might have been. One thing is clear, he's been very lucky. He was lucky to have survived the initial collapse, and then lucky to have been able to raise the boy, who it appears was born after the disaster. He was lucky to have had someone to be with him and help him survive, and he was lucky to always be able to find food or shelter or evade attackers when they came after him.

At one point in the book, they encounter an old man who is so defenseless and impoverished that he poses no threat. He turns out to be somewhat blind, and you wonder how in the world he survived for as long as he did. At the boy's insistence, they give him some of their food, even though they don't really have the food to spare. It is interesting how the man defers to the boy on these matters. He actually lets him make the decisions. In some ways, it seems that the man is realizing that many of the decisions they might make are random and there is no way to foresee where they will lead, so he might as well let the boy decide. In another view, you might say that he is using the boy as a moral compass. The old man asks about the boy and the man says that the boy is a god. When I read this, I thought that the man was being a smart ass, but then I thought that even if he was, it was a telling remark. What if the boy was somewhat of a god. What if the whole point was that the boy had to survive because some day he would be instrumental in rebuilding civilization? Or maybe the boy was a god in the sense that you don't question why you believe in him, you just do.

After a while, I began to realize why the book was resonating with me so much. I was identifying with the man. His way of consulting and deferring to the boy reminds me of the way I approach my son. I often let him do or try things when it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I figure he's going to learn to be an independent and thoughtful adult quicker if he is allowed to work things out himself. The man also has a curious way of trying to tell the truth and not sugar coat bleak realities, while at the same time explaining why that's not necessarily bad to face reality, it helps to deal with reality if you are fully aware of it. Yet the man wants to give a hopeful view to his son, so he is more ready to tell him when he doesn't know what the truth and reality of the situation is, but what he hopes it is. The boy responds to the honesty and openness by accepting the bad things in life, but not being absorbed by them. They say something to the effect that once you see something, you can't unsee it, you can't make it go away. Once you let it in, it stays in. And yet they come to understand that this is better than not seeing the bad things. They see to have been able to be exposed but not tainted by all the bad things they see. Perhaps this is part of their survival. By understanding what forms of evil they will be confronting, they are able to avoid them.

Despite the fact that the story had no hope, that the world was irreparably damaged and there did not seem to be anywhere to go to get away from the cruel fate that the changed world imposed on them, you found yourself having hope for the boy and the man, wishing them well and wanting them to make it to safety.

Upon further reflection of the book, I have decided that I really relate to the man because of the way he would lose sleep worrying about and protecting the boy. He would listen late at night and his own health probably suffered in order to stay vigilant and protect his son. It was interesting how the transition to a post-apocalyptic setting changes how you raise your son. While he still spent time teaching him to read (not in the time of the novel, but there were flashback references to the fact that he had been teaching him even while they struggled to survive), he had long since come to grips with the fact that he could not shelter and protect him from the realities of life. They had a saying about how once you see something, it's in your mind. They were seeing some fearsome and gruesome things, from the overall destruction of the world to the painful and cruel ways that people suffered and died. The man decided to let the boy see these things, and then talk about them and understand them for what they were. These things were horrible, but they were reality, and should be faced if a person was going to be better able to survive.

The result was that the boy was often struggling with accepting the horrible things in life, but never accepting that these things were right. He had a keen sense of right and wrong, and in his moral universe eating other people or even just hurting or taking from them to get ahead or survive was always wrong. He lit his father know this in many ways, subtle and overt. The man refers to him as a God to one old decrepit traveller that they shared food with. I think this was a telling moment in the book because the man did use the boy as a God in the sense that he was a being that the man had to live up to, he had to please the boy that he was a one of the good people, much the way religious people seek to do good to be in the favor of God and gain entry to Heaven. In the end, I think the man made it to Heaven with plenty of room to spare. His last parting gift to his son was to give them hope, "you've always been lucky - you will find some good people to be with" was his last message to the boy before he died. This depressing novel ended with a strangely bittersweet assurance that the boy would be OK when the good people found him as he stood vigil over his dead father, wondering what to do next. It was a strange emotional mixture that I have rarely seen in a writing, where the sadness of the loss of the man is tempered with the relief that the boy would be safe and would still have a chance to hopefully find something good in life. You kept wondering if there was an untouched place out there with good people in it, shelter and a lack of hunger, and you hoped they would find it. Someone has to carry on the human race.

Another less emotionally satisfying aspect of the book was the parallels this charred and wrecked world has with our relatively pristine world. I kept thinking about the way that the people that they encountered had no problem getting ahead (or staying alive) at the expense of the boy and the man. Their entire journey was one of not letting the others capture or harm them, or at least steal their meager possessions that they owed their life to. I realized that this is how nations act toward each other, this is how governments look at other nations. How do I get on top? What does that other group have that I need? This is in some ways the essence of how capitalism works. Stick it to the other guy and get ahead. This type of gain at the expense of others is shown in stark relief in the world of The Road, but really, it's present in the world around us today. Sure, we're well fed and dry and warm in the cold winter, but we still claw to the top of the pack standing on the backs of others. I've always felt that this was not right, in some way. I'm not a communist, one who thinks that all things go into a big community pot and then everyone pulls back out from it equally. I just believe that a higher form of success would be possible if we thought about ways to get ahead that pulled those around us or those we are dealing with up with us. Why can we not find mutually beneficial solutions to the problems we all face? Why must my success come at your expense? Why would I deserve to succeed if I knew it was hurting you? While The Road shows this in stark relief, I believe that in life, this is the road we are all travelling.