"People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

What was begun with the Patriot Act has continued and escalated disturbingly. We are the frogs in gradually boiling water, and we have been played. The middle east was a manufactured excuse. Whether 9/11 was allowed to happen or if it was a genuine attack is irrelevant. If it hadn't happened the powers that be would have found another excuse.

In the wake of the ending of the cold war, the ruling classes were terrified of what the people might do without an ominous foreign threat hanging over their heads daily. A decade of peace, prosperity and liberty was as long as they were willing to wait. The taste of power given to them by accident during the cold war, once awoken, has been unstoppable ever since.

The question for those with the greatest power in this world is not "What should we do?" but "What can we do?". They are as children with toys, and they have developed the most advanced toys the world has ever seen. Can we be surprised that they cannot resist the temptation to use them?

The world has thought ever since its invention that nuclear weapons are the greatest, most terrifying threat that could ever be. The father of the bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, found the only words appropriate upon witnessing the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, from the Bhagavad Gita.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

At that time it was unthinkable for there to be a power greater than that of the bomb. In its advent we were granted the power to destroy entire planets. What power could be greater? What power more fearsome?

And fear is precisely what it birthed. The atmosphere of perpetual doom in the days of the cold war was palpable, such that governments had to falsely normalize it, consoling us that we could manage this terrible, terrible threat, even issuing bomb drills like fire drills, as if a "duck and cover" order could protect anyone from a nuclear blast.

The historically unmatched immensity of the nuclear threat created an unparalleled chance to perpetuate fear, and by way of fear, control. In dropping the atomic bombs upon Japan, President Truman, by no intention of his own, perfectly destroyed the legacy of his predecessor, who so memorably charged the American public with a duty to ever fight against their baser impulse toward fear.

For the greatest, most terrifying threat to the human race is not the nuclear bomb, but as Roosevelt so eloquently described, fear itself. It was the unpredicted immensity of fear that the bomb created that granted the ruling powers unprecedented power over the people. But that threat was real and therefore truly terrifying, to even those empowered, so it was a poor weapon to be used against the people.

Only today do we know the worst threat humanity has ever faced. It is not the bomb. It is control. The largest threats have been marginalized, for they must be, since they threaten everyone equally. Instead we prop up false threats, threats that are a kind of Goldilocks "just right". Not too fearsome as to upset the ruling class. Not too miniscule as to seem irrelevant.

The empowered have their toys. They have the resources, they have done the research. Now they exercise their control over us with a surgical precision. Overt oppression is a clumsy weapon. Why take control when you can trick people into giving it to you willingly?

The Roman emperors had a phrase. Panem et circenses. Bread and circuses. So long as the masses have bread and entertainment, you will never have revolution. Under the Soviets, ordinary Russians experienced shortages of everyday necessities regularly. Food would become scarce, or too expensive. But regardless, one thing was always affordable. Vodka.

Whatever their bread, whatever their circuses, it remains the same. We the people will be given whatever we need be given to remain placated. We have our iPhones, our laptops, unlimited access to entertainment of every kind. So we will be good children. We will behave. We will sit in our rooms and not bother Daddy and Mommy with the big decisions they have to make. Why would we? They obviously take such very good care of us.

Power

Power is comforting. Those with food don't have to worry about eating. Those with homes don't have to worry about sleeping. Those with wealth don't have to worry about poverty.

But to have power is not to be without worry. For those without it have their own comforts. Those without food don't have to worry about it being stolen. Those without homes don't have to worry about break-ins. And those without wealth don't have to worry about keeping it.

Herein lies the principal difference between the worries of the empowered and the worries of the disenfranchised: the haves fear loss, while the have-nots fear death.

To have power is to live perpetually in fear of powerlessness. This drives the empowered to ever seek the means to further consolidate their possessions, to drive them into a safer and safer state. This is accomplished in a variety of ways.

If you have a throne, you build a castle. Once the castle is built, you dig a moat. Once the moat is built you install cannons. And on, with larger walls, bigger moats, and more fearsome cannons. But these are all the methods of callous brutish lords, and we have come far today from feudalism. Cleverer lords know that if you weaken your enemies, your defenses will never be tested.

So you send ships loaded with plague rats to your enemy's capital. You rally your forces to destroy your enemy from within, and with such subterfuge that by the time your enemy thinks to suspect you are responsible, he has already been defeated. You teach them that hard work earns its just rewards. You elevate the empowered as heroes to the peasants, that they may worship rather than despise them. You make them human, relatable. You tell the peasants, this too may be you one day. The only thing between you and success is yourself. Work hard, and you will be rewarded.

And the mice in the maze scurry excitedly about the maze in hopes for cheese. Except the maze goes nowhere. It has already all been taken and hoarded away in a secret room where the master rat lords over them all. If only he hadn't been such a very, very clever rat. The mice might have raged out at him. They might have taken a look at the maze walls and thought about chewing through.

They might have noticed the enterprising effort of an inspired young mouse and thought, I shall lend a hand to this certainly worthwhile effort. I too will eat away at these walls. They may be thick but my teeth are sharp and only grow sharper as I chew at my bonds. That fat ugly evil master rat may be big and mean but he is small when measured against the force of me and my brethren. And soon, soon, he will wonder how he ever thought he could keep so much to himself, and leave so little for the rest of us.

If only. But the mice cannot see, for the mice cannot think. The empowered have so well developed their means and methods that we are far sunk into their trap and without the will to escape. Many of us have developed Stockholm syndrome, convincing ourselves that we are better off in a cage, that we would not know what to do with ourselves were we to be freed.

Domesticated, we were born into captivity and have never learned to defend ourselves against the wild. Trained, we love only our trainer and trust all too surely in the intent of his methods. Even when the evidence alarmingly indicates the clear truth, that the methods of the empowered serve only themselves, and our training too, has served only to better them. But no matter. We have our chew toys and the affectionate guiding hand of the leading party's ideology to console our battered spirits. What more could we wish for? What more could we want?