TOBY PETZOLD

I don’t know why this fucking software won’t register certain comments, but I’m not going to let that derail my little blog. So, below is one such comment that is in response to my correspondent Arkady. From the “No Standing” post of 22 August:

Arkady, this “right of privacy” you’re talking about is a willful fiction. Why should you, to whom life in America is one unending web of conspiracism, choose to resort to this belief? You are a known quantity —in a thousand different ways. The only thing keeping you from being harmed by this fact is the will of those who hold your information.

Do they have the will? Shit! They barely have the capacity.

Believing that Karl Rove wants you —you— is grandly delusional.

Here’s how it works.

The War on Terror —or whatever name you want to give this ongoing confrontation with the Mohammedan Menace— will not be won or ended tomorrow or next month or even in this decade. It is a concept with a long shelf-life and it will be revived from time to time in theater after theater for as long as our leaders believe it’s necessary. Better get used to it. Better pace yourself.

But it will not do in every instance where executive actions outrage the civil liberties theoreticians among us to say that whatever measures are being taken must be taken because we are living in a time of war. I know that. We ought not allow our leaders to resort to the argument that they are only acting on wartime contingencies when they go beyond our comfort levels in pursuing the information they need to wage war against our real enemies. That cannot be their default setting.

But, in some instances, it must do. And you know which instances those are.

I don’t know if you’d call it cognitive dissonance or what, but the American People seem to be having a surprisingly hard time accepting the reality of life in the Information Age. They seem to be struggling with the reality that we are all known to hundreds and thousands of different agencies, companies, and states —right down to the most basic and personal facts of our individual lives. We will not escape this. We will be branded with the marks of the beast.

It would be better for us all to understand now that the virtually omniscient capacity of our governments, creditors, and trading partners to know what we are leaves us equally exposed. And equally free.

That the State may pry into my life and that its agents may know me with some intent is a given. I will not escape it. But I transparently advocate whatever I wish and I will not hide it simply to avoid the consequences of my thought. Hiding and avoiding the consequences of our advocacy is what the haters on the Left do. I don’t want to be that sort of person.

I would rather stand by my own beliefs and accept the consequences.

The possibility of our civil liberties cannot be more valuable than what they are in their essence.

That is to say, I will not deny my Government its ability to investigate those who would commit murder and crimes against my society just because I would rather take offense at the possibility that my Government could investigate me. I am unimpressed by the Leftist conceit that hypothetical violations of our rights are worse than real violations.

I mean, have you been rounded up and sent to a death camp yet?

I saw something about this on Drudge earlier today. From the report at Newsmax.com:

A Florida company wants to implant its Radio Frequency Identification tags in immigrants and guest workers so they can be identified at the workplace.

Scott Silverman, chairman of the Delray Beach-based VeriChip Corporation, said in a “Fox & Friends” TV interview that its RFID implant could be used to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities on the job.

Illegal immigrants could then be readily distinguished from those who registered.

Silverman said: “We have talked to many people in Washington about using it.”

The VeriChip RFID tag is about the size of a large grain of rice and can be injected directly into the body. An antenna in the chip sends data, according to the Web site Technovelgy.com.

It’s the new cattle call, comrades. Get to lovin’ on it!

My friend Steve Soto at The Left Coaster brings us a mammoth Rolling Stone article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the theft of the 1960 2004 Election.

Turns out, there was a giant conspiracy involving Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, Diebold, and the Illuminati:

Traditionally, anyone in Ohio who reported to a polling station in their county could obtain a provisional ballot. But Blackwell decided to toss out the ballots of anyone who showed up at the wrong precinct — a move guaranteed to disenfranchise Democrats who live in urban areas crowded with multiple polling places. On October 14th, Judge [James] Carr overruled the order, but Blackwell appealed. In court, he was supported by his friend and campaign contributor Tom Noe, who joined the case as an intervenor on behalf of the secretary of state. He also enjoyed the backing of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who filed an amicus brief in support of Blackwell’s position — marking the first time in American history that the Justice Department had gone to court to block the right of voters to vote. The Sixth Circuit, stacked with four judges appointed by George W. Bush, sided with Blackwell.

Blackwell insists that his decision kept the election clean. ‘’If we had allowed this notion of ‘voters without borders’ to exist,'’ he says, ‘’it would have opened the door to massive fraud.'’ But even Republicans were shocked by the move. DeForest Soaries, the GOP chairman of the Election Assistance Commission — the federal agency set up to implement the Help America Vote Act — upbraided Blackwell, saying that the commission disagreed with his decision to deny ballots to voters who showed up at the wrong precinct. ‘’The purpose of provisional ballots is to not turn anyone away from the polls,'’ Soaries explained. ‘’We want as many votes to count as possible.'’

What Kennedy fails to mention —besides the almost stunning degree of electoral fraud that his own grandfather, father, and uncles committed in 1960— is that voting is a proactive endeavor. It is, by its very nature, an act requiring affirmative measures: you must register to vote. You must vote where you are eligible. You must be able to prove your own identity and eligibility to vote. You really ought to know what you are voting for and the reasons you might have for doing so, but that’s just me dreaming, baby. Just dreaming and thinking of the agora and the rule of the deme.

But back to business: Kennedy’s post mortem deserves to have a wide audience. That’s what Soto and other [center-Leftists] think —and so do I. Maybe for different reasons, but let us have transparency and thoughtfulness. Let us have dissent and redress.

And let’s have a debate. Is exit-polling and its clinical sibling —sampling— the same as a head count? I don’t think so. Maybe we haven’t yet acknowledged what living in the age of electronic voting asks and demands of us as knowable, trackable, and responsible individuals, but that day will come.

In the meantime, just gimme a receipt. When I take my (very) petty cash from an ATM, I get a receipt. So when I vote for the election of the President of the United States, I want a receipt for that, too. Okay?

Big Brother’s already in the house, assholes. He’s been here for years. What did you ever do about it? He —and by he, I mean the Government (local, state, and Federal), the phone company, your Internet and cable providers, and any of thousands of other online companies and regulatory bodies— has had your number forever. You don’t pay your mortgage or make a withdrawal from an ATM or call your spouse or look at porno or check out the news without some server somewhere recording that activity.

And you know what? You wouldn’t have it any other way. Because it makes life convenient, efficient, and pleasant. We are all connected that way —even the ones who have deluded themselves into thinking they aren’t.

So, if you will concede that Big Brother has been in your life and in your home for decades now, then you must ask the next question: since these various agencies and companies do possess so much information about you, why would any actual person in the employ of those agencies and companies wish to know something about you? They already have the information, but it takes an actual person to act on that information.

In the case of commercial interests in your information, the motivation to know something about you is basically just business. The phone company needs to “know” how many minutes you’ve used this month to “know” whether you should be charged more. The electric utility needs to “know” how much energy you’ve used this month to determine your charges. These companies are motivated by money. It’s worth it to them to actively use the data that you generate.

But the Government? Do you think they care that I use my cell phone to call my family or friends —most of whom live locally? I don’t care if they know. But what if I start calling numbers in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? What if people in those countries start calling me on a regular basis using disposable cell phones? The Government’s data filters might pick up on this and red flag me.

And even though I won’t know that they have flagged me, I cannot fail to consider that they might have.

But I live my life, anyway. I call and go and do pretty much as I please because I am a law-abiding American who is confident enough in the institutions of my society to not think much of whether the G is collecting a file on me. That doesn’t make me a dumbass or a fascist sympathizer or indifferent to the consequences of surveillance in all of its forms, though —it just means that I understand that the Government is comprised of actual persons. An actual person would have to choose to investigate me for whatever it is that I might be doing that would justify such interest.

And, so, in the end, one must ask himself if he believes that the Government —the one led by that Zio-Nazi stooge, Chimpy McHitlerburton— has enough manpower and competence and reason to spend even a millisecond on my sorry, upper lower-class ass and what I am doing to [subvert the dominant paradigm].

I sleep tonight.