Thomas Secrest
07 Jan 2014
Prague, CZ
Recently I have heard several, what I think are generally reliable, journalists say that they have read reports (studies) that show that the more extreme you are in a particular position, for instance being anti-gay, the more likely the person is to be actually gay. I offer the following link, although, I haven't independently confirmed the information.
An overly extreme position on a subject and the associated implications regarding sincerity is not uncommon. Almost everyone has come across the saying I used to open this essay. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." We can thank Shakespeare and his moderately successful Hamlet for the quote. The quote is now interpreted to mean that people who protest something too loudly or too blindly or too irrationally are likely to be insincere and their motives should be suspect, at best.
In elementary school, the eloquent quote was reduced to the somewhat more crude, but equally accurate "he who smelt it, dealt it."
In this particular case Peter King has been one of the main, if not the main puppet for the NSA. His complete and utter acceptance of everything they do leaves me feeling that there is more to his warm and fuzzy relationship with the NSA than meets the eye. King's most recent love-in with the NSA can be seen here if you're interested. If you would like to view some rather pointed comments made by others I might suggest the piece by The Young Turks and Secular Talk.
Please allow me to digress briefly before making my main point. Much, if not most, of what Peter King says about the activities of the NSA are lies or his comments reveal that Peter King is a terribly undereducated person. Many years ago there was a computer term called a "relational database." The term simply means that you can collect different sets of data in different databases and then merge them to form a more complete database. King is fond of saying that the NSA collects only phone numbers, call targets and call durations; which would constitute one data base. Telephone service providers have a database of phone numbers matched with names and in many cases, billing address and credit card numbers. With a couple of keystrokes, the NSA can merge these 2 databases to create a database that now contains names, phone numbers, call durations, call targets, credit card information and address. Snowden as released documents that show that the NSA has access to service provider databases and as had access for many years, which means these databases were merged long ago and continue to be updated. So every time King persists in his story, he is either lying or stupid or, and I think this is most likely, BOTH!
A member of congress recently asked the NSA if it spied on members of congress. The NSA wrote a response that basically said YES. What does this mean exactly? Here is a short list of things that the NSA might know about each and every congressperson and senator, I'm sure you can think of many more.
- alcohol use
- sexual orientation
- bribes taken
- bribes offered
- use of prostitutes
- use of racial or ethic slurs
- contacts with known criminals or members of organized crime
- extramarital associations
- access to pornographic web sites
- sexual perversions
- details of campaign financing
Now that we know, in great detail, all the abuses of the NSA, I must ask the simple question: "Why do we have people like Peter King and Dianne Feinstein supporting the NSA so adamantly and so completely and so enthusiastically, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?"
The same questions can also be asked of many media pundits and commentators.
The lady doth indeed protest too much, methinks. Which leads me to wonder why people like King and Feinstein are so completely and unabashedly willing to say black-is-white, up-is-down and in-is-out when it comes to supporting the NSA?
In my opinion, the answer is straight forward and clear. The NSA knows things about them that would end their careers and they are willing to say and do anything the NSA asks, which includes looking straight into the camera and telling anyone who will listen, the exact opposite of the truth.
