I’m referring here to the unnamed person who, in secret, was ordered to justify spying on all Americans. Imagine that job! I’ve shoveled shit. I’ve dug ditches. I’ve worked in brutal cold, blistering heat, dangerous environments, long hours, and I’ve even had to fly to Newark… but no job has ever asked me to shave off a piece of my soul and burn it on my bosses desk.
A jewel of a post.
ReplyDeleteThanks
You are assuming such a person would have a soul.
ReplyDeleteBram beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and quote but it presumes the memo's author isn't just as much an amoral monster as the lot it attempts to justify.
A lawyer can always justify what ever someone who is paying them wants.
ReplyDeleteA governmental bureaucrat can always justify managing up to their bosses wishes.
Combine the two and you have someone who would do just about anything to just about anyone and be pleased with themselves.
Gerry
To get to the office where a job like that would come across your desk would, I believe, require the surgical removal of the soul, most of the spine, and a very large portion of the brain (dedicated to common sense and morality). So shaving a sliver off and lighting it would do no more damage than to scorch the marshmallow that is toasted on the flames.
ReplyDeleteBureaucrats designed and implemented the Shoah and the Gulag. Compared to that, what's spying on every single person in the world?
ReplyDeleteKishnevi
"... no job has ever asked me to shave off a piece of my soul and burn it on my bosses desk."
ReplyDeleteAll this means is that he's never worked for the government. My first job (which thankfully did not last long) was for a defense contractor. Toward the end of said job, the whole group to which I belonged was in the position of having to not do the job we were being paid to do, because the project was crashing and burning and our bosses up the ladder were desperate to avoid making their government employer look bad. For someone just out of college, eager to start off his career on the right foot by doing the best job he possibly could, that was ... brutal.
No one high in government service has a soul left. Those who don't start out soulless lose their souls over time, as they encounter the foulness that is the dark side of humankind and the deeper foulness that is government bureaucracy.
Oh, come on, it's easy.
ReplyDelete"Because I said so."
Now claim the white paper is classified due to national security, and you're done.
Do I think this is a good article? It depends on what my definition of "is" is:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/1998/09/bill_clinton_and_the_meaning_of_is.html
That type of extraordinary reality bending skill gets you elected and re-elected, to our misfortune.
Years ago, my cousin visited my Irish immigrant grandmother to tell her that she had just graduated from law school and passed her Bar Exam. My grandmother responded, "So you're a lawyer now?" My cousin did not realize until later that my grandmother had intentionally delivered a devastating pun that impugned my cousin's integrity, as what my grandmother said in her Irish brogue was indistinguishable from "So you're a liar now?"
I'm sure a large percentage of the rationalization is along the lines of "If I didn't do it, someone else would. And I love my pension and travel benefits, and etc..."
ReplyDeleteRepeat that a few times and you don't even have to say it anymore. Assuming you aren't a true believer in the first place.
Easy.
ReplyDeleteAssure them that - as to some extent really was the case - that all that's being collected is call metadata and that it will only be used with appropriate permission to find specific links to actual terrorism. (That might not be true, but you don't tell them that, of course.)
That's something someone in the intelligence world might sign off on with a clear enough conscience, as the Only Way Around an opposition pattern of using disposable prepaid phones, for instance.
The important thing about imagining "the other side", be it Americans we disagree with, or Foreigners Trying To Kill Us, is that we shouldn't cast their thought process in "hostile" terms like that - not if we want any hope of understanding it, which is especially important on the domestic side, where we want to either prevent it (in this case) or have a hope of communicating and maybe converting ideological opponents.
IF we start with "they obviously just framed it as spying on everyone because they love spying so much and are soulless", we throw away any chance of understanding what actually goes on, and thus any chance of altering it effectively.
(Same problem with "you righties are all Fascists!", "you lefties are all Communists!", "you libertarians just wanna live in Somalia and eat babies!" ... sells great to the base, useless for conversion or comprehension.
The Other is far less Other than we think.)
Sigivald,
ReplyDelete"IF we start with "they obviously just framed it as spying on everyone because they love spying so much and are soulless", we throw away any chance of understanding what actually goes on, and thus any chance of altering it effectively."
That's a frequent theme here at VFTP, but I couldn't pass up the "Newark" and "shaved soul flambe" because awesome.
Eric Holder was that person for both Ruby Ridge and Waco justification memos. Just sayin'...
ReplyDeleteSigivald makes the best case for how such a thing could be performed by Americans.
ReplyDeleteWoodman's scenario is eerily close to the saying in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago (that was certainly easier to spell than Solzhenitsyn), "you today, me tomorrow."
There are exceptions to the 'soulless government drone', but they are rare as hen's teeth.
ReplyDeleteDad retired not too long ago from the IRS (he was glad to get out when he did, too, considering the Obamacare train coming down the rails). I've often sarcastically pointed out that I wouldn't distrust the government so much if the people in it had his sense of integrity (which, to his credit, he has a great deal of).
I think it bothers him a great deal that 'public service' is primarily inhabited by people unqualified to run the fryer at McDonald's.
I must gently point out to Sigivald that the best evidence that this truly costs a bit of the soul is that so many of us who used to work there are simply appalled. I've been gone quite a long time - since the mid-1990s - but this is nothing short of degenerate.
ReplyDeleteAnd I've spoken to two others who used to work there who feel the same. The metaphor of shaving a part of the soul off and burning it on your boss' desk as an offering to the Goddess of Security is quite apt.
RA:the surgical removal of the soul, most of the spine, and a very large portion of the brain
ReplyDeleteAnd that folks is how you create a libtard.
"Bureaucrats designed and implemented the Shoah and the Gulag. Compared to that, what's spying on every single person in the world?"
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty tough comparison to make, computerized spy programs to pograms and genocide?
A store local to me just put up "No Firearms" signage. Just like slavery, that is.
/sarcasm
It's amazing how much can be rationalized with the simple phrase, "it's a paycheck." And that goes for ANY job, not just .govs. I'm sure those NSA pukes even consider themselves patriots.
ReplyDeletejf
Gerry said:
ReplyDelete"A lawyer can always justify what ever someone who is paying them wants.
A governmental bureaucrat can always justify managing up to their bosses wishes.
Combine the two and you have someone who would do just about anything to just about anyone and be pleased with themselves."
Not that much different from your average garden-variety prostitute, except for the prostitute the being pleased with yourself part is optional.
Yeah, I spent 21 years serving the government, but I never dealt with either lawyers or bureaucrats.
Ah, but the main difference between a lawyer and a prostitute is that the latter will generally not f**k you after you're dead.
ReplyDeleteI knew I was skating on thin ice posting anything other than "hanging is too good for 'em" so I'm relieved that the line about the soul hit the target. Whew! BTW thanks for the link!
ReplyDeleteA.C.