Hey, you, get off of my cloud!
It's cool this morning, around 60° F even now, at 11:00 AM. It is still somewhat misty and overcast out the windows here, in Alameda. The sky over San Francisco was a deep purple when I was driving to work. It wasn't raining, nor will it, although a sky such as that but in Ohio would portend rain, almost as a certainty.
Some mornings, when I'm running later than usual for work, I catch one of those two-minute essays done by Tom Brokaw, who was, or is still, a talking head broadcaster for NBC news. He seems to be all over the dial here. Sometimes I catch him when I am allowing Rush Limbaugh to amuse and annoy me, and now I find that he's on the 103.7 FM station to which I often listen for music. I heard him this morning, just before I pulled onto the lot here at work. Usually, he is pontificating or rambling on some suitably neutral topic that doesn't impress me to any extent. Sometimes he actually says something intelligent. A couple of times though, he has voiced his opinion on Edward Snowden, the guy who confiscated all of those "Top Secret" documents from the National Security Agency. Well, there are a lot of people out screaming for Snowden's blood, and calling him "traitor" and of late, complaining that journalists are listening to him and interviewing him. Brokaw was defending the actions of those in the media who had spoken to him and were reporting on him, essentially saying that these people were just doing their jobs, or that which is expected of the media: learn about things and report on them.
Nevertheless, Brokaw's personal opinion of Snowden goes off the rails. He was calling on Snowden to "come home" to "face trial in a court of law." I say balderdash! "The law" is corrupt and twisted and diverges wildly from justice these days, both in its content and in its application. To the extent that the criminals infesting the U.S. Government ever gave that abstraction any legitimacy as a source of some value, they have lost it. Snowden is nothing less than a hero for revealing the criminality and unaccountability of these blackguards and the undeniably violated and void status of the so-called "Social Contract." The scurrilous behavior revealed by Snowden is patently unconstitutional, and yet nobody, not even a petty official scapegoat, has been held to account for any of this criminality, least of all Director of Intelligence James Clapper, who brazenly perjured himself to Congress, a crime that would see an ordinary peon in prison and fined for his entire material worth, - and Brokaw wants to bring Snowden to account? Sometimes I have to marvel at the magnitude of the hypocrisies some people can emit without choking on them. There would be no such thing as justice in a trial of Edward Snowden here. Brokaw is an idiot, and almost certainly a shill, in calling Snowden a coward and demanding he return to face trial.
Of course, it is a question: why does Brokaw's blather, in particular burn my shorts so badly? Does his particular baloney, gobbled up by so many credulous Americans, really matter to me that much? It's just one more sign of the times, isn't it? Why should it make me so angry? Something/someone down inside there, really reacted to his nonsense. All that stuff about Internal Family Systems that Laurel is reading, and to which she pointed me, has got me asking questions like this about what I feel, lately. I think the fact that I perceive Brokaw to by lying, about something relatively important, and to people he is ostensibly paid to inform, is part of the issue, but perhaps not the whole thing.
This line of questioning myself brings to mind a quote of which I am fond:
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
-- Thomas Pynchon
Some mornings, when I'm running later than usual for work, I catch one of those two-minute essays done by Tom Brokaw, who was, or is still, a talking head broadcaster for NBC news. He seems to be all over the dial here. Sometimes I catch him when I am allowing Rush Limbaugh to amuse and annoy me, and now I find that he's on the 103.7 FM station to which I often listen for music. I heard him this morning, just before I pulled onto the lot here at work. Usually, he is pontificating or rambling on some suitably neutral topic that doesn't impress me to any extent. Sometimes he actually says something intelligent. A couple of times though, he has voiced his opinion on Edward Snowden, the guy who confiscated all of those "Top Secret" documents from the National Security Agency. Well, there are a lot of people out screaming for Snowden's blood, and calling him "traitor" and of late, complaining that journalists are listening to him and interviewing him. Brokaw was defending the actions of those in the media who had spoken to him and were reporting on him, essentially saying that these people were just doing their jobs, or that which is expected of the media: learn about things and report on them.
Nevertheless, Brokaw's personal opinion of Snowden goes off the rails. He was calling on Snowden to "come home" to "face trial in a court of law." I say balderdash! "The law" is corrupt and twisted and diverges wildly from justice these days, both in its content and in its application. To the extent that the criminals infesting the U.S. Government ever gave that abstraction any legitimacy as a source of some value, they have lost it. Snowden is nothing less than a hero for revealing the criminality and unaccountability of these blackguards and the undeniably violated and void status of the so-called "Social Contract." The scurrilous behavior revealed by Snowden is patently unconstitutional, and yet nobody, not even a petty official scapegoat, has been held to account for any of this criminality, least of all Director of Intelligence James Clapper, who brazenly perjured himself to Congress, a crime that would see an ordinary peon in prison and fined for his entire material worth, - and Brokaw wants to bring Snowden to account? Sometimes I have to marvel at the magnitude of the hypocrisies some people can emit without choking on them. There would be no such thing as justice in a trial of Edward Snowden here. Brokaw is an idiot, and almost certainly a shill, in calling Snowden a coward and demanding he return to face trial.
Of course, it is a question: why does Brokaw's blather, in particular burn my shorts so badly? Does his particular baloney, gobbled up by so many credulous Americans, really matter to me that much? It's just one more sign of the times, isn't it? Why should it make me so angry? Something/someone down inside there, really reacted to his nonsense. All that stuff about Internal Family Systems that Laurel is reading, and to which she pointed me, has got me asking questions like this about what I feel, lately. I think the fact that I perceive Brokaw to by lying, about something relatively important, and to people he is ostensibly paid to inform, is part of the issue, but perhaps not the whole thing.
This line of questioning myself brings to mind a quote of which I am fond:
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
-- Thomas Pynchon