06 February 2013

Distrust in institutions

In The Map Of Droneworld, Charles P. Pierce at Esquire describes how horrifyingly corrosive of democracy the use of drones by the US has been.

Along the way, he makes this cutting observation.

It is now beyond cliche to observe that government secrecy “breeds distrust” in our institutions. What is never mentioned is that, if you breed enough distrust in the institutions — or, more to the point, if the activities of the institutions breed distrust in themselves — the trust people once placed in them has to go somewhere. And, generally, it goes into dreams and schemes and circus clowns that the people dream up themselves.
....
Government secrecy and deception blurs the line between genuine fears over the decline of civil liberties, and the wild-assed fantasies of the black-helicopter crowd. If you want to see the true destructive power of Droneworld in this country, look deeply into the Id of the democratic political imagination. There are angry, feral creatures in there, stalking the ruins, howling for blood.

Bingo. And even scarier than the drones themselves, which is plenty scary.

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