On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 8:44 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Marv: " most people would counter that pervasive state surveillance IS
> about their safety, about reducing the possibility of a terrorist attack by
> "any means necessary".
> " it's mainly the political and corporate elites who are most concerned
> about snooping."
>
> [WS:] You observation is right on the target. The great majority of
> Americans have about the same probability of being harmed by government
> intelligence gathering as being killed by a terrorist - that is, close to
> nil. However, perceptions of terrorist attacks suffer from the
> availability heuristic bias - they are vivid and colorful and thus
> perceives as more likely than they really are. Therefore it is only
> natural that most people fear terrorism more than government snooping, and
> embrace the former as necessary to deflect the latter.
>
> It also shows how much liberal and leftist intellectuals are out of touch
> with the "common folk." I suspect that their outcry about government
> snooping is akin to the Arab masses being incensed by caricatures of the
> Prophet in some obscure Western newspaper that prior to the incident they
> did not even know they existed. It is all about blasphemy , desecration of
> the sacred. For the Arab masses the scared is their religion and is
> prophets, for liberal and left win intellectuals the sacred is the
> information and the means of its dissemination (especially the internet).
>
> A materialistic explanation of this reaction is based on class interests
> of intellectuals. Information production and dissemination defines
> intellectuals as a class - so anything that looks like an attack on
> information is synonymous with a class war on intellectuals. Hence their
> knee-jerk reactions to freedom of speech. It is pretty much similar to
> capitalist attitude toward property rights - they are sacred and anything
> that even remotely appears to be undermining them is tantamount with a
> class war.
>
> It is also interesting to note that working class activists don't think
> much about spying on them, they take it for granted (cf. Bill's comments)
> - it is only intellectuals who make big brouhaha about it.
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
>
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."