An editor republishes in his current review an editorial he published in another review he was publishing on line as many as ten years ago. This piece is a reprint of an earlier version, revised, How could I resist reissuing this critique of one of America’s great agencies of control and information gleaning for the State, he said before an earlier reprint of an earlier version. This one has gone through several revisions since its inception in the other, although unnamed, review this editor was publishing on line, as I have said, as many as ten years ago.
Here is the editorial:
To spy or not to spy must be a question for some who have reason to believe that their need to find out exceeds another’s right to privacy. As voyeuristic as we have become–and the world is just a series of key holes, from one to another crouching like a humunculus with left or right eye peering . . . and thanks in part to Mr. Zuckerberg, we have other forms of voyeurism and exhibitionism. How can we not have spied or consider, seriously, spying on others, our neighbors, our family, our friends or social media friends.
Mr. Zuckerberg has considered spying on the American people; his endeavor with Facebook was hatched from a malignant egg, a contempt for people and their foibles. He has even considered spying on us for the NSA–whatever spin has spun since, let it not detract you from the facts of his spying. There are, though, too many of us who do not consider this seriously enough. We continue to use his Facebook when we have the power to crash it and crush his worth. His company takes in only about 30M a year, yet he is valued at how many billions today? The number is no longer significant because it is fantasyWhy would the People exercise their power against power? I could ask. Why would we formidably oppose his power and his monied influence in our society? We could all tomorrow close our Facebook pages to see what effect it would have, but we fear money in America the way peasants in Russia used to fear the Czar. We need to exert the weight of the People against the monied elite helping the state’s efforts at making us less free (that is, if to be free has gradations).
We cannot believe Mr. Zuckerberg is a fascist–and there are too many parallels between Mr Zuckerberg and the Industrialists and monied elites of Nazis Germany, in his and their dance with state power and its agenda against the people, and this is whether they were actual Nazis or not. There are, moreover, too many received ideas to the contrary that impede the conclusions we could draw. Fore mostly, Zuckerberg cannot be a fascist because he is a Jewish American, and everyone knows in our contemporary American received ideas, Jewish Americans cannot be fascists. Right? By turn of like reasoning, President Obama cannot be a stooge of reactionary Zionist factions among the monied and power elite in America and Israel because he’s African-American, and this relieves him of all suspicion for being a front for the monied-power elite. Because he is African American, we can delude ourselves into believing Obama has nothing in common with W. Because Zuckerberg is Jewish American, he must be of the eternal left, a righteous liberal who stands up for democracy. We cannot accept that Obama and W are flip sides of a singularly minted political coin. Policy differences often only mask the politically and ideologically paradigmatic sameness they share. We are unwilling to accept Zuckerberg has more in common with Goebbels than he does Jefferson or Madison, at least until he got caught and had to back track. But we will have to wait and see.
With the received ideas we live by that lie to us and lie in us every day, we imagine we think about politics clearly. We also imagine that by this media conditioning, we answer the questions that arise directly from the events that the media then reshape, mold, manipulate in their packaging of events. these are all threads woven in the veil of delusion we collectively wear. Psychosis can affect a nation as we have seen manifested time and again throughout the 20th century. But parroting our received ideas, themselves given false weight by one or another media, particularly social media–this is all we are able to do in response to major or minor social events, tweet, tweet, tweet like birds in our cages. Yes, this is what we do best. We, of course, continue to wonder why we are not free, why our liberties are disappearing–or do we wonder these at all?
The organs of the media that should be protecting our freedoms are the organs enlisted by the state to undermine them and the People’s right to them. Facebook is adjunct to the NSA . . . no? It is not? I watch sycophantic talking heads on TV gushing in some common cacophony over the likes of Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, the former themselves grossly overpaid . . . but then, who am I? All of this is just sour grapes, and there are no reasons to be upset, or angry, over the margins of greed that we take for granted. Of course Zuckerberg is eentitled to a worth grossly exaggerated from what his company actually brings in every year. He seems also to be entitled to being Chief spy in America, an enemy of the People. I hold that truth to be virtually self-evident. Nonetheless, I over react, right? I am paranoid, surely, no? I won’t waste time trying to prove otherwise. I have a lot more to say and will continue to say it for as long as I can–for as long as I am allowed to continue.
Facebook already has taken down my Facebook page, assumably for my attacks on power and money, Jeremiads and other diatribes, all in lamentation on the excesses of our elites. Orwell’s nightmare is now, for those who wake up–sleep walking what we do mostly. 1984 is anytime anywhere the media is controlled by a select group with a common agenda that has nothing to do with universality or freedom or democracy but simply maintaining the appearance of one or another. What was it that Sinclair Lewis said about it happening here? Yes, it can. When fascism comes to America it will come under the guise of Americanism, waving the flag, rallying everyone around the idea that we are commonly threatened and that we must give away some of our freedoms to be secure. But this will come from either the right or the left. And it will fill its ranks with those in our society that we would never suspect, at least not when aligned with the grossest of our most cherished media-received ideas. But Thomas Paine still echoes loudly enough At what price peace? The Patriot Act gives too much power to those who police us, just as too much influence is given to those who run our media, whether print, broadcast and social. Too many of us talk about the existence of contemporary power as if it were a fact of nature, a universal law of physics. This is equal to the kind of complacency that undermines all effective democracy in response to power. We need a will of the People instead of a state serving, power and money adulating Public. But then, when fascism comes to America it will be multi-racial and multi-cultural. The reason we have such poor responses to women’s rights and gay marriage and the outcropping of racism in our political geology is the fact that the Left has moved too far to the right.
A man journeying on a road sees the glowing Buddha from afar and comes to the Buddha and asks him who he is. What are you? The man wants to know. He poses one question after another to the Buddha, Are you . . .? Are you . . .? Are you a spirit? Are you a god? An angel–what? The Buddha patiently says no to each question, as many as the man has asked. The man finally in exasperation asks one last time, What are you? To this, the Buddha finally says, after an appropriate pause, Awake!
We should be so enlightened. Wake up.
The Falling Leaf Review 