My theory is that this expensive and gargantuan surveillance state "has something" on nearly all decision makers. And when someone doesn't act in exactly the way this fell entity prefers, then the long-catalogued dirt is trundled out and the impending bad behavior corrected; thus Justic Roberts famous rulings (gay marriage & Obamacare), as just one tiny example. And that we are, by effect, a secretly occupied country, with what we SEE as the American political process a TOTAL MIRAGE.
Exactly. This is the only rational explanation I have ever come up with that would explain the behavior of politicians. The founding fathers never envisioned the gargantuan surveillance state, nor PC tyranny!
It just doesn't make sense that they'd blow mountains and mountains of cash on all this fancy SigInt gear --a monumental sunk cost-- but then NOT use it very much. Basically SkyNet is in the HERE AND NOW.
When Ike left office in 1961 apparently things were already such that it would fill a Prez with dread:
Isn't it reasonable that a HALF CENTURY later the problem would have grown a tad bit..?
We're there.