Over the last six years, I’ve heard many well-intentioned but otherwise pathetic Americans defending the government’s right to withhold public information.
Withholding public information…from the public. A government of the people is hiding from…the people. It belongs to us. It comes from us. It’s ours.
But no, no, the government says, you can’t be trusted with your own information. Let us hold it for you because you don’t know how to handle your own information properly.
Mind you, this isn’t sensitive info about tactical movements, transnational ops, or confidential staff meetings. I mean public info like, “What the hell are you doing with my tax money.”
“What the hell are you doing to my son or daughter.”
“Where the hell have you been keeping my husband for the last five years.”
“Why the hell are you tapping my phone line.”
“Where the f*** is my lawyer.”
Little things like that.
All this has come up for me for two reasons. When I hear or read otherwise sensible people defend the government’s failures or even the government’s “right” to hide them from us, it takes a long time for me to let it go.  So I’ve been running on a slow burn for a few weeks now after a particular instance. And this piece here at Steven Aftergood’s Secrecy News got me thinking about it further:
Origins of “The Right to Know”
It’s short. It’s simple. Even pro-Bush people can understand it.
Also make note of Carol Monical’s posting in the comments section: “To me it is inherent in a representative democratic system that a person has the right to know what the government is doing. Otherwise, how can one make any decision, particularly intelligent decisions, about for whom to vote.”
Oh dear. Does that mean we’re supposed to know what we’re voting for? Or what the government is doing?
Maybe it’s arrogant to ask where the hell does the Vice-President, perhaps the most powerful person in my employment — in other words, the f***er works for ME — get off hiding from me for 18 hours just because he didn’t want me to know that he’d accidentally shot someone. It wasn’t arrogant six or seven years ago to make detailed public inquiries about a President’s family jewels in open court. I think that kind of trumps embarrassment by bird shot, so I’m entitled to know.
Yes, I’m still angry. It’s created a burn mark under my chest that only disappointment and betrayal can inspire. We should all be friends, but we’re not. We shouldn’t be at each other’s throats, but we are. The powerful, the connected, and the glib pierce our eardrums and inject hate speech, rotten logic, and outright lies directly into our brains. And we don’t even have the decency as a nation to question anything we’re told. Anything at all.
We should be informed. And thinking. And awake. But we’re not. There is blood on the hands of the mighty. But it’s okay. And yet in the hearts of every man, woman, and children in the United States for whom honor, integrity, and conscience aren’t a matter of convenience, it will never truly be.
And now we have a government whose primary goals are to enrich the enrich, to protect the powerful from the powerless, to suppress knowledge, to oppress anyone who thinks or loves differently than them.
And those of you out there responsible — the perpetrators, the apologists, the fearmongers, and the spineless who lick up their bile — you have a right to know how much I hate you. The least you could do was apologize.
One day, I’ll forgive. But I’ll never forget. And neither should you.
Stupidity is a greater crime than dissent. And we’re all paying for it.
I mean, not that I’m bitter….