I actually believed Obama when he spoke about ending the NSA's mass surveillance on the American people. He taught constitutional law. He knew exactly how wrong it was. I suspect that once he got into office he was either strong armed into changing his tune (and into ultimately giving the NSA more spying powers on the public) or he was shown enough secret evidence that it scared him into thinking it was necessary to violate the freedom of all Americans in order to keep us safe from terrorists. I'm not sure which scenario should worry me more, but at this point I don't think anyone in government has the ability to really stop the NSA.
The sayings about power corrupting date back to time immemorial. It's easy to say something is wrong (or right) when you are in no position to meaningfully impact, or be impacted, by what you're speaking of. It's another altogether different thing when you are in a situation to define the limits of your own powers, or that which even might affect you.
This, in many ways, is what made the Founding Fathers so unique. They were in a position to grant themselves effectively any and all powers they might ever desire. Yet instead, they sacrificed all of that in pursuit of a more free and just society, in many cases to their own detriment. In modern times I do not think there's any real comparable examples. Instead it's just endless power accumulation, tempered only by the oft liminal protest of the citizenry.
> In modern times I do not think there's any real comparable examples
There are real comparable examples, from South America and Africa, and America herself. You won't hear about them much, partly because they break important narratives and partly because often the US went to extraordinary lengths to smear, coup and/or murder those people.
> I actually believed Obama when he spoke about ending the NSA's mass surveillance on the American people. He taught constitutional law. He knew exactly how wrong it was. I suspect that once he got into office he was either strong armed into changing his tune (and into ultimately giving the NSA more spying powers on the public) or he was shown enough secret evidence that it scared him into thinking it was necessary to violate the freedom of all Americans in order to keep us safe from terrorists.
Man... When a bombastic politician promises something but doesn't deliver, the common response is "Oh, well, of course he just made an empty promise. What can you expect?". When a more genial politician that affects a more-typical reserved public face promises something but doesn't deliver, they get the benefit of the doubt. "Surely that wasn't an empty promise just to get more power! Surely something happened that convinced them against their better judgement not to do it.".
Respectfully, these are a class of people who have no problems saying trivially-verifiable lies to the public at large (as time has proven that there are no lasting consequences for lying to the public), and little problem with lying to members of Congress or even the courts (again, because here "lately" there are no real consequences for the act).
Don't believe what they say, believe what they do... because you're not privy to the conversations that they have that actually matter, so you have no idea what they actually intend.
