“Now I wanna be your dog”

I’ve come to the conclusion that our Constitutional rights are totally negotiable at any time and may be suspended whenever it may be convenient; so here’s the beginning of what I suspect will become an ongoing list of reasons why I increasingly feel like I’m living in one of my high school political dystopian novels:

1. To travel we are subjected to invasive screenings and pat-downs–we are assumed to be criminals.  These screenings and pat-downs are not being done by evil private entities but by our government–we’re effectively paying to have ourselves violated (physically, mentally, and constitutionally).

2.  CCTV is crawling onto our streets. The justification is that it will curb crime. Once again we are assumed to be criminals, even though we’re supposedly not prisoners.  Why punish everyone for the actions of a few?

3. Censorship of the Internet.  Currently, the Internet is the largest source of information available to those of us in the Western world. We rely on it to get the news and catch up with friends, but the government filters our Internet presumably to protect the public while allowing for corporations to collect our private information to manipulate us into buying things. But hey we don’t need protection from corporations right?  While this is a relatively mild problem in the United States compared to other countries, I expect it to become a bigger problem considering the actions taken towards some Internet entities such as…

4. Wikileaks. We are guaranteed the right to free press, except for when it’s embarrassing to our government.  Sure, what Wikileaks has released is unfavorable, but we have a right to free press and whosoever may want to know what Wikileaks has released should be able to look it up

5. The PATRIOT Act.

6.  I’m all for big government. I am not for Big Brother.  I would rather our government put as much money and effort into providing essential social services to its people as it currently does to strip away their privacy and constitutional rights.

7.  Alienating a group of people because they are different; proposing that the best way to deal with them is by arresting them/doing away with them totally.

8. The fact that almost all of my news sources are privatized. I don’t even trust the news sources I like because a corporation with monetary self-interest has designed a leftist program they know I’ll enjoy instead of working to be the objective press I ought to be able to watch. Rather, I must choose which ideological flavor I want my news to come in: red or blue.

9. Corporations have personhood.
10.  Having all of this going on and yet being told I live in the free world.