Delightfully Chinese

The first step of Recovery is admitting you have a problem.

But you have to admit it AS a problem… when do we as a country decide it IS a problem?

“Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.””- McClatchy Washington Bureau

The Full article is here.

But what strikes me from this article is the push to create greater penalties for those who fail to report certain behaviors exhibited by their government co-workers.  Behavior monitoring is not the job of your typical Government Bureaucrat… but it will be now.

So why is that a problem?

It has long been the practice of Communist Countries, like China, to employ watchers who watch the watchers… spy on spy so to speak.  It is needed there because Socialist forms of Government are built, and sustained, on the theory that oppression is needed and force is required.  It is not designed to be an environment where the individual feels secure, so that Ultimate Minority of the Individual must always be watched…  and the watcher must be watched, etc. etc.  Oppression is the only thing Communists do well.  And consistently.

It has also been the perceived practice of the United States that we do not need to do this because the benefits of being Free were self-evident and our security didn’t require multilayered paranoia built into the system.  This approach has been extremely successful for us by any measure.  At least in the sense of maintaining Individual Liberty.

All I can say is this must have recently changed.

“That is why the awareness effort of the program is to teach people not only what types of activity to report, but how to report it and why it is so important to report it.”- McClatchy Washington Bureau

The next step is political officers in your unit and block and precinct captains in your neighborhood.  Just so you know who to go to if you become “confused” about what you can do without “asking”.

Is this what we want?  Well… you’re getting it.

Could the real problem be more obvious?

“The U.S. government is one of the world’s largest employers, overseeing an ever-expanding ocean of information.” – McClatchy Washington Bureau