Stop Spying on Me, You Creeps
Barack Obama’s outsourcing of the surveillance state
A new model for managing the mental activities of the public
Putting a rationalist gloss on progressive fantasies of control advances the technocratic will-to-power
The supreme irony of technocratic politics is that it requires a charismatic figurehead to reach its full potential. Daniel Bell picked up on this in his study of post-industrial society when he remarked that “no matter how technical social processes may be, the crucial turning points in a society occur in a political form.” A culture of deference to machines does not eliminate human control over politics. Instead, it concentrates power in the hands of ever fewer people, pushing politics back toward an obscure kind of absolutism. “It is not the technocrat who ultimately holds power,” Bell concluded, “but the politician.” Barack Obama was that politician. Yet Obama appeared pragmatic to a fault, almost Spock-like in his unflappable rationality. The furthest thing from a leader interested in overhauling the basic conventions of America’s constitutional democracy. Perhaps that explains why many Americans persisted in viewing him as a moderate even as he oversaw the most radical …
