One of the most egregious examples of the belief in fascism which is now part of the standard operating procedures of the faking USA and which is accepted as reasonable by the vast majority of voters (based on their repeated support for the Democrats and Republican purveyors of fascist controls) is the continuation of unwarranted spying on innocent people under the blatant fascism of what is called section 702 of title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – which was passed in 2008 and has since then been reauthorized in 2012 and temporarily extended in 2017. This legislation has been used by the NSA to collect information about anyone and everyone without real oversight by the courts under the pretense that “foreign” threats require the abandoning of supposed constitutional protections. In essence, this law has determined that all people, both inside and outside of the faking USA, are undeserving foreigners.
As the congress tries to grapple with various schemes in order to reauthorized, possibly expand, or make permanent the violations (of the assumed civil liberties which the congress boasts about as being what makes their fakery SO exceptional) before their self-appointed deadline this spring, there are now small rumblings and speculations beginning to bubble up from the noxious gases which are underlying their exceptional swamp on the Potomac. The most common rumbling is of sounds which imply that the continuation of this law is unconstitutional and this sound is bubbling up from both the Democrat’s and the Republican’s outer edges.
There is another sound which is clearly coming from those who prefer to believe the delusion that the Republicans must be primarily blamed for whatever lousy version of this corruption they are going to force upon the poor Democrats. These voices seem to want us to swallow their partisan delusions and to ignore the history of how this abomination has been made possible through the participation of both corporate owned parties.
Here is a brief history with some especially pertinent, prominent facts.
FISA was passed into law in 1978 to protect people from unconstitutional spying by the intelligence community. After September 11, 2001, there was a resurgence of illegal spying – with the cooperation of telecommunication corporations – which had been deliberately ignored for months until it became hard to ignore. In 2008, it became imperative for the congress to find a way to take these illegal corporate acts and to make them legal under the dubious designation of corporate immunity and the over-reach of the intelligence community both being necessary for “security.” FISA was then and continues to be gutted.
The votes to gut FISA in 2008 were bipartisan.
In the house of representatives, the vote in support of gutting FISA was 293 in favor and 129 against. Of the votes in favor, 105 were Democrats.
In the senate, the vote was 69 in favor of violating the constitution and 28 opposed. 21 Democrats supported violating your rights. This vote was made even more important because it was one of the most blatant early examples of how truly lacking in integrity were/are Barack Obama and his supporters. Obama had promised that he would filibuster any such corruption and then he voted in favor of it. Meanwhile, many of his supporters stated that they were appalled by his action, but that his corruption was not going to get in the way of their support for his “promising” future.
After the obstructing Obama was elected and the Democrats had control of both houses during his first term, the Democrats in the senate, led by Harry Reid, made sure that no legislation of any significance could pass in the senate without the approval of the minority Republicans. The Democrats insisted that any simple majority of votes would not be able to pass laws and there had to be enough support to over-ride a filibuster. The most salient aspect of this scheme was that the Democrats allowed legislation which had a majority of votes to be called failures and this simultaneously allowed votes of less than 50% to control the outcome.
By 2012, Obama and the duplicitous Democrats needed to help make sure that the previously illegal corruption they had helped protect and support in 2008 would be reauthorized.
Section 702 was continued by a vote of 301 to 118 in the house. 74 of the then 185 Democrats voting on the legislation were in favor.
In the Senate, the continuation of the corruption was passed by a vote of 73 to 23. Of the votes in favor, 30 were Democrats.
In the fall of 2017, the Congress and Obama made sure that the corruption could continue into 2018 on a temporary extension. There is little reason to doubt that this was done in order to try to salvage the phony notion that the Democrats are the hapless victims of Republican obnoxiousness.
Here are some telling facts from recent times.
In 2008, 105 of 233 Democrats who voted in the house helped gut FISA protections. That is about 45% of the voting house Democrats openly colluding with Republicans.
In the Senate of 2008, 21 democrats joined with the Republicans to gut FISA safeguards.
In 2012, 74 of 111 House Democrats who voted supported continuing the corruption. That is about 40% of the democrat votes for collusion in the House.
In the Senate of 2012, 30 Democrat senators supported more corruption.
In 2008, the Democrats composed 53% (233 of 435) of the House.
In 2012, the Democrats composed 42% (185 of 435) of the House.
That is a reduction of about 21% in democrat numbers in the House from 2008 to 2012.
The key facts here is that even though their numbers were reduced by about 21% in 2012, their supporting votes for this fascist behavior in the house were only reduced by 5% of the overall democrat vote and, in the 2012 senate, the democrat support went up from 21 in 2008 to 30 votes in favor.
These numbers show an increase in the proportions of Democrat legislators who are aligned with their Republican colleagues in the continuation of fascist techniques. I suppose this could be called the Obama effect, but that would be misleading because Obama is only another typical example of the faking and misleading techniques used by Democrats as they seek to enable the Republican’s shared agenda of imperial corporate domination.
Out of all of this deviousness, I am confident that the democrats will use their current pretense as the hapless lesser evils to oppose the lousy corruption of the Republicans and the smarmy vanity of Trump with a renewed vigor and with (or is it because of) the almost guaranteed inability to make any positive difference. I have little doubt the Democrats will see a resurgence in numbers after the election of 2018 and I have NO doubt that they will posture and wring their bloody hands as they continue to enable similar awful predatory corruption in league with their Republican allies.
