Posted on 10/18/2016 11:06:55 AM PDT by Jyotishi
The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA's warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.
But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America's nuclear weapons.
Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn't have changed policies much even if he tried.
Though it's a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, "National Security and Double Government," he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term "double government": There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
Trump is a threat to the shadow government’s power. Thus the incessant attack on him and his supporters - both physical attacks and of course, attacks in the media.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Laws of systemantics:
#1) everything is a system
#2)everything is part of a larger more complex system
#5.1) complicated systems produce unexpected results and the total behavior of large complex systems cannot be predicted
#5.2) a large complex system produced by expanding the dimensions of a smaller system does not behave like the smaller system
#6) complex systems tend to oppose their own proper function
#8.1) people in systems do not do what they system says they are doing
#8.2) the system itself does not do what it says it is doing
#19) a system continues to do its thing regardless of need
#20) systems develop goals of their own the instant they come into being
#21) the system's status quo comes first
I confess commission of the FReeper’s Cardinal Sin; I went ahead and read the whole article before commenting. (Yes, I know, a shocker). Anyway, the author is a contributor to Salon and Christian Science Monitor. The article is an unabashed apologia for the 0bama regime. It also directs 100% of its focus on the national defense bureaucracy as though the “military industrial complex” is our only “shadow government” and that the rest of Fedzilla poses no threat to our political system.
Having said that, he does raise valid points when his analysis is applied to ALL facets of the federal bureaucracy, including and particularly applicable to the EPA, Bureau of Land Management, Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Education, just to name a few. It is this unelected and unaccountable gigantic spending machine that is governing our country, and exists only to exercise power for its own sake, and to continue in its perpetual existence. It has also been hijacked to serve the purposes of various interest groups that guide it, including foreign powers, instead of the American people.
So forgetting the focus, he’s pretty much correct in assessing the problem. As for the solution, like most leftists he draws the naive and incorrect conclusion Fedzilla as something that can be tamed by popular political participation rather than the need to eliminate it entirely.
Then maybe we will have to find ANOTHER way to “change” them....
“Shadow government”. And people made fun of Oliver Stone.
The guy’s a left-wing loon.
The reason so-called “wiretapping” and Guantanamo and drone strikes and the Patriot Act continue is because they were always important to a nation at war with savages, even if people disagree with parts of some of the particular items.
Obama was simply lying through his teeth when he said he opposed those things. He doesn’t want another 9/11 until after he leaves office.
Of course, this is the kind of shadow gubmint Ollie approves of.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.