"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.