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Wikileaks - Turnabout is Fair Play

OK, nobody likes having their dirty laundry made public. I understand this.  Exposing diplomatic communications is always going to cause governments to complain.  Those in power like to think that they can keep the common people from getting their noses into the club rooms where power is passed around like joints at a frat party - they want to be able to make their dirty little deals without the public being able to question their motives.  Morals and Ethics are for little people after all, and truth is for children who don’t know better, right?

With the United States government acting like Nazis towards their own people - electronic strip searches come to mind as a prime example - and lots of less powerful countries following suit, this world has become a far more hostile place for those who would speak truth to power.  I have absolutely no sympathy for any of those governments in this matter, so I am happy to see somebody hang their junk out for viewing.

The stupidest part of the various governments’ reactions is that they think that they are going to be able to put this genie back into its bottle.  That just isn’t going to happen, and I am not the only one who knows it.  “Taking out” Assange and Wikileaks is only going to make saints out of them like the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. did for them.  The “little people” are learning how to turn the surveillance society on its head and use the technology to even things out, and Wikileaks is just the beginning.  The next civil rights battle is happening right now, and it is happening worldwide, yet so few people seem to realize it, or even care.

The unfortunate reason that it has come to this is that the existing “press” - newspapers, TV news, all of it - has given up doing its job.  The classic news media has been corporate-ized and muzzled to the point of uselessness, and has lost its customer base and its credibility because of it.  In the U. S., “freedom of the press” now means freedom to join the race to the bottom - nobody at any sizable for-profit media outlet can even attempt a legitimate stab at real press integrity or real investigative journalism without their corporate bosses ending their jobs and destroying their careers.  The few legitimate news outlets left are fighting for their political lives against the corporate-run political machines that make up the governments of the “free world.”  Those in “less free” countries are faring even worse, with reporters imprisoned or dying at an atrocious rate.

If the “free” press had been doing its job and pointing out the expansion of corporate power as it happened, or kept the spotlight on the various actors on the government stage while they used their political careers to gain ever greater riches at the expense of their constituents, we wouldn’t need this sneaky approach to exposing reality.  Instead we have had the fox guarding the henhouse and the chickens are now missing - the corporate media has driven out legitimate newsgathering, and we are left with spying on our own governments to try and find out why our lives are so miserable - and getting worse.  Tom DeLay is an exception that proves the rule - he was  so stupid and greedy that he got caught, but I am curious what he did to whom in order to get hung out to dry.

I have to admit that I enjoy watching the powerful squirm when they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and the irony of watching the most powerful get a dose of their own is particularly rich.  I am enjoying this whole Wikileaks thing no end, but it is a bittersweet enjoyment.

Sometimes you have to be satisfied with the little bit of “good” left in a bad situation.