Conundrum

Don't you just love it when an entire nation (or at least its media and personalities) rise up as one in righteous indignation?  Damn, I sure do.  It's almost as much fun as dropping $75.00 for a bottle of Cossack's Tears, that new small-batch bourbon, distilled from grains grown only in the vacant lot behind the handball courts in Brighton Beach, with a finish of garlic and blini.    

The only thing better was, well, do you remember this:  "What's the word?  Thunderbird.  What's the price?  Thirty twice!"  Now that was a wine, especially if you were lucky enough to get a bottle of the vintage 4:15.  Nothing went better with C-rats in the field, though if you managed to bring some Spam out with you, obviously you chose Gypsy Rose instead.  But we were talking bourbon, which is a lot better than $50 for a cilantro flavored vodka, even if it is Stolen, uh Stoli.

Oh, well: we've got indignation out the wazoo these days.  First, there were all the fears of 1984, brought to the forefront by Edward Snowden, who is not high on my list of guys I'd trust, but who did point out that all our phone calls were in a data base, which anyone who has ever watched a cop show already knows: (Yo, Danno--have them dump his landline records for the last month.  OK, Steve.) 

And now we've got this less than Sterling character, That Donald (as opposed to NYC's beloved The Donald) who has had  his privacy violated with a broomstick and who has become the man we love to hate.  I'm sure he's got some feelings about the privacy issue, and they're a lot stronger than those he may have viz-a-viz the government's threat.  (On the other hand, he is a scuzzbucket slumlord, so feelings may be stretching the point as far as it will go.)

Snowden.  He likes to paint himself as a patriot, a whistleblower; he compares himself to Daniel Ellsberg, who does happen to think that Snowden's a pretty good guy.  But there are some major differences.  Ellsberg was revealing very real threats to very real lives; people were clearly going to die because of the chicanery he brought to the public eye.

Ellsberg also took his evidence, first, to members of Congress, to people (i.e. Senator Fulbright) who should have been concerned and who should have wanted to do something.  They crapped out.  So he went public.  What he didn't do is run and hide.  I'm pretty sure the Vietnamese would have loved to give him asylum.  Even Nixon's famous Plumbers weren't able to wrench his nuts. 

Most important, Daniel Ellsberg, like so many others, recognized that the point of civil disobedience was to pay the price for it.   You took a stand and it meant enough to you that you were willing to give up your liberty if that's what it took.  Even some who ran, like Daniel Berrigan, SJ, didn't run to hide behind foreign skirts; the charges against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed.

Eddie, he's a different story.  First of all, he went into his job knowing that he wanted to do what he eventually did.  Probably had his fingers crossed behind his back when he signed the various oaths and statements required to obtain a clearance.  (I signed the same oath back in '62, during those days of Thunderbird, because I was an MP assigned in a security position at a STRAC conference...but who cares about what I may have heard during those halcyon days of missile crises and walls in Berlin, and the beginnings of serious assaults against the people of Indo-China, soon to be Vietnam?)

What did he do once he got the copies he needed/wanted?  He seems to have gone to friends and some fellow workers, perhaps bosses; it seems they didn't want to have anything to do with him.  Instead of The New York Times, he went to reporters for the foreign press and to a movie maker.  And then he went to China.  And Russia.  And cried about how he wasn't safe in America because the government was going to kill him.  And that was before he could be found guilty of treason (which he did commit, regardless of the reason it was done) and hanged.  Something that has been suggested by folks on the right.  These are the same folks who want the government nose kept out of their affairs; folks who didn't know the government nose was in their affairs in the first place.  Kill the messenger, guys.

But his best move was yet to come.  It used to be called giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but Putin isn't our enemy. Only eastern Europe's.  What Snowden did was play straight man at Putin's annual  dog and pony show, the televised, national Q&A. 

"Mr. President," he asked, "does Russia spy on its people, wiretap their phones..."; you get the drift.  And the retired KGB colonel turned his doe eyes to the camera and said of course not and anyway we can't afford to do something like that, we don't have the money or the technology.

"Thank you President Putin." 

I don't care how much of a hero one sees this character as, any credibility he had is somewhat lower than squid shit and that's at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.  How much hue and cried followed that act of patriotism?  Fox News may have given it some time, but I don't pay them any more mind than I do Al Jazeera English.  And you remember, I'm sure, all the praise and backslapping that followed that stunt, everyone rushing to praise him yet again.  Neither do I.

All that spewed, it's time to turn our attention to the issue of privacy.  I've read 1984, Brave New World, The Fountainhead and as a fan of SF back in the day, a library of other dystopian literature.  I understand the threat posed by a government that knows more about what I'm doing than I do--but I don't watch a tv series called Person of Interest... The premise, in so far as I care, is that the government is watching everything and someone is out there protecting us from evil.  Or something like that.

It's not a new idea that privacy today is a farce; and it's not because of a government agency; we have, as Pogo intimated back in the dim, dark ages of black and white and landlines, met the enemy and he is us.  If I write something here, I know that it will not only last forever (man, ain't tomorrow lucky?!) but that it is not a secret.  If anyone is out there, my attitudes are right in the field of fire.  Knowing that, I'm not going to discuss things I don't want known, or at least things I don't want known outside of a small circle of intimates.  A very small circle.  More of a circlet. 

Even then, one has to keep in mind that spies, turncoats, rats and stoolpigeons have lived next door (or in the next room) since at least the time Joshua had some guys go into Jericho.  That Donald knows that now, now doesn't he?  Whoever taped the  infamous conversation didn't have permission, and didn't have permission to share it.  Something is rotten in Los Angeles... Still, That Donald spoke as if no one could hear him and/or as if no one would care--all of which is true 99.99% of the time.  Oh, but verily, that last smidge'll be the death of you.  Or your fortune.

Take a  minute and think about the things you've said on your cell while waiting for the light to change; about what you texted to that s.o.b. in class... .  A couple of months ago I was waiting for the M72 crosstown on 72nd at West End--heading off for yet another CT.  There was a young woman (maybe even a girl--would someone please advise as to when one becomes the other in terms of humans passing in the night), walking back and forth, her agitation shaking the glass of the bus shelter.  Her voice rose and rose (by any other name was louder) and then: "He told you he broke up with me because I give a lousy blowjob?" 

Everyone turned to stare; she kept pacing.  I considered going over and offering myself as a sacrificial, well as a sacrifice and to tell her that I would guide her through the process.  Sense prevailed.  But still: ten people were watching her for the next five minutes, waiting for the next revelation.  Privacy?  It's a bit of undigested mashed potato and nothing more.

No one has complained about Donald Sterling's privacy being breached by person or persons unknown.  By a person who, to this point, hasn't stepped forward and said, "I did it."  In some communities, though, that rat is probably seen as a hero, too.  Funny, isn't it, how attitudes can slither? 

Sterling, we've learned, has spent a lifetime honing his skills as a jackass.  His racist attitudes have brought about any number of lawsuits; they didn't make national front pages or cable news.  There were no threats to relieve him of the strain of having to feed, house and clothe his players (and give them cars)--which he proudly declaimed to do.  Then, privacy  breached, the calls for his blood echoed the roar surrounding Madame Defarge as her needles clicked under the guillotine.

All sorts of stupidity followed rapidly upon the noise.  Basketball is a black sport; how can he speak that way about the people who make money for him?  (And who get paid by him.)  A man with attitudes like that should not be allowed to own a sports franchise.  (How about Dairy Queen?)  Ban him.  Fine him.  Get a stake and burn him.  And hope that no one has heard any of the things you've had to say about people, places and things and that if they have, they keep it to themselves.

This isn't about defending Donald Sterling, or contrasting him with Edward Snowden.  I wouldn't want either of them as a dinner companion, and if I'm ever in the same room with one of them, I'll be certain to use Purell before I go near anyone I love--or even most people I like.  I was just thinking about how we look at things, what we'll allow and and the temperature at which blood boils..