{"id":49190,"date":"2019-10-27T18:22:33","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T23:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49190"},"modified":"2019-10-27T18:22:34","modified_gmt":"2019-10-27T23:22:34","slug":"49190","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49190","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Edward Snowden and Turnkey&nbsp;Tyranny<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/10\/snowden.jpg?w=863\" alt=\"snowden\" class=\"wp-image-15168\"\/><figcaption>Edward Snowden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Edward Snowden&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=efs3QRr8LWw\">recently talked<\/a>&nbsp;to Joe Rogan for nearly three hours.&nbsp; Snowden has a book out (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden\/dp\/1250237238\">Permanent Record<\/a>\u201c) about his life and his decision to become a whistleblower who exposed lies and crimes by the U.S. national security state.&nbsp; As I watched Snowden\u2019s interview, I jotted down notes and thoughts I had.&nbsp; (The interview itself has more than seven million views on YouTube and rising, which is great to see.)&nbsp; The term in my title, \u201cturnkey tyranny,\u201d is taken from the interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My intent here is not to summarize Snowden\u2019s entire interview.&nbsp; I want to focus on some points he made that I found especially revealing, pertinent, and insightful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without further ado, here are 12 points I took from this interview:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1.&nbsp; People who reach the highest levels of government do so by being risk-averse.&nbsp; Their goal is never to screw-up in a major way.&nbsp; This mentality breeds cautiousness, mediocrity, and buck-passing.&nbsp; (I saw the same in my 20 years in the U.S. military.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2.&nbsp; The American people are no longer partners of government.&nbsp; We are subjects.&nbsp; Our rights are routinely violated even as we become accustomed (or largely oblivious) to a form of turnkey tyranny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3.\u00a0 Intelligence agencies in the U.S. used 9\/11 to enlarge their power.\u00a0 They argued that 9\/11 happened because there were \u201ctoo many restrictions\u201d on them.\u00a0 This led to the PATRIOT Act and unconstitutional global mass surveillance, disguised as the price of being kept \u201csafe\u201d from terrorism.\u00a0 Simultaneously, America\u2019s 17 intelligence agencies wanted most of all not to be blamed for 9\/11.\u00a0 They wanted to ensure the buck stopped nowhere.\u00a0 This was a goal they achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edward Snowden and Turnkey&nbsp;Tyranny Edward Snowden&nbsp;recently talked&nbsp;to Joe Rogan for nearly three hours.&nbsp; Snowden has a book out (\u201cPermanent Record\u201c) about his life and his decision to become a whistleblower who exposed lies and crimes by the U.S. national security state.&nbsp; As I watched Snowden\u2019s interview, I jotted down notes and thoughts I had.&nbsp; (The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27442,249,27443,27444,27441],"class_list":["post-49190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-bracing-views","tag-edward-snowden","tag-josh-rogan","tag-turnkey-tyranny","tag-w-j-astore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49191,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49190\/revisions\/49191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}