Do we seek to make the future or break the future?

Ye old scribe votes for the former.

Let’s do it. Together.

It is our proprietary information. By dribs drabs and dollops, it is being taken from our possession and control.

If you wish to give it up, realize going in that it has a value (or it wouldn’t be so eagerly sought and hoarded) and that you — more often than not — are releasing it free and clear, along with any and all future control of the data.

What happens to our data happens to ourselves.

This shadow self doesn’t just sit there: It’s constantly touched. It’s examined and judged. When we apply for a bank loan, it’s our data that determines whether or not we get it. When we try to board an airplane, it’s our data that determines how thoroughly we get searched — or whether we get to board at all. If the government wants to investigate us, they’re more likely to go through our data than they are to search our homes; for a lot of that data, they don’t even need a warrant.

Who controls our data controls our lives.

[snip]

We need to take back our data.

Our data is a part of us. It’s intimate and personal, and we have basic rights to it. It should be protected from unwanted touch. Source

Distillation of Defense Secretary Gates’ shoulder-shrugging testimony :

Like, whaddaya expect? I’m only 6th in line to the President and head a department getting one-third of the budget. It’s not like I have any authority or anything.

Sheesh. Don’t get friction burns on the fingertips from passing those bucks at warp speed, Mr. Secretary.

… and 1 Giant Step For We The People

If ye old scribe could be granted one boon, it would be that the very first thing on the morning following inauguration day come January, the next president would append an official signature to this executive order:

All executive orders signed by President George W. Bush are herewith rescinded.

12 words. Is that too much to ask?

Is it too much to ask to reassert freedom — to stop cold the yet ongoing mauling, evisceration and outright rape of the Constitution a president swears to “preserve, protect and defend” (citation) in the inaugural oath?

UPDATE May 29, 12:25 p.m.: Rumblings of reason?

Compounding atrocity with inertia.

It is a fetid space indeed inside that nutshell, but — in a nutshell — this snippet from a Q&A piece stands as a sage summation:

Have we done something that can’t be undone in Iraq?

Iraq is already undone. Remember this: There is nothing in Iraq that constitutes a genuine threat to the United States of America. Iraq is purely a domestic war. It’s a war that’s being fought right here in America. As soon as our politicians decide there’s nothing to be gained politically from staying in Iraq, we’ll cut and run. We’ll dump Iraq like we dumped Vietnam.

Haven’t we reached that point? Or gotten close?

No. There are still too many politicians in D.C. who’ve invested too much political capital into Iraq. The American people have to get completely fed up with the war, and we’re not there yet. The majority of Americans are frustrated and don’t like the war but it’s a superficial frustration. Right now, we have these misleading statistics. People don’t realize that April was the bloodiest month in Iraq in the last seven months. The surge is over. It’s lost. It’s gone. Every benchmark of success the surge was based on has collapsed. Source

A 21^st century law of diminishing returns: The more mass media outlets we have, the less the masses appear to know.

Yes, yes yes. More than ever this election year, it is vital to think beyond just the next tomorrow and to recognize and choose which blueprint for the future will be validated.

Commonwealth or peonage? Equality or elitism? Law or fiat? Progression or regression? Mine, mine, mine or ours?

Bolstering or jettisoning the currently somnolent self-correcting mechanisms of the American system?

Democracy or corporatocracy?

Yes, the choice come November is that stark. And that perilous.