I had once imagined that I had been told a joke by a former Czech dissident about the National Security Agency's surveillance program, code-named "PRISM". What he said was, "that's that thing that seems more intimidating than it looks." Perhaps someone out there had actually sent this message to me or, perhaps, I had merely imagined it in a fit of mania. Nevertheless, I have spent considerable time wondering as to what he meant.

In order to remain operative, I suspect that Samizdat had intentionally flooded the bureaucratic security apparatus of the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic with information that could be utilized in such a manner so as to reorganize it so that they would be let to continue to disseminate information. This resulted in a certain paradox, namely that the security apparatus could exploit the phenomenon of "dual consciousness" in order to convince people to be more trusting of it. Faced with such a political aporia, the Czech dissidents gave up on dismantling the security apparatus and withdrew from society.

The joke, I think, also disinters a certain social phenomenon generated in response to totalitarianism. People in the former ČSSR just wouldn't ever think about its security apparatus because they already tacitly knew that there was nothing that they could do to change it. As the security apparatus could utilize the information that Samizdat disseminated to justify its excessive suppression, Samizdat understood that they could not effectively counter the security apparatus without getting any information that they discovered out to the Western press as quickly as they possibly could.

I had once also imagined another joke about women that, despite its sexist connotations, I will share so as to glean what I generally surmise of totalitarianism. It goes like this, "A man walks into a room and sees a woman reading The New York Times. He says, "a woman reading a newspaper; that's a novel idea." On its surface, it is merely sexist commentary upon that women tend not to be interested in politics. What I also think this joke calls to light, however, is that it makes sense for women to be disinterested in politics because, as they are, to this day, completely dominated by men, there is little to nothing that most of them can do about them. As the Industrial Revolution was coming to its apex, men would often bemoan that women would do things like spend an extraordinary amount of time in the bathroom fixing their hair and were, by that account, not suited for manual labor. They would also complain that they tended to be markedly disinterested in labor organizing. The reason that women would spend so much time in the bathroom is because it was the only place on the shop floor that they could speak freely among themselves. If we are to consider the role that women have in society today, there is a certain degree of truth to the claim that the utilization of the fashion industry so as to send messages has only ever been so subversive and can even be considered to have been fairly detrimental to the cause of Feminism. The sexist notions that some men have that women are just simply vain, however, are completely mistaken. The cult pathology generated by the fashion industry exists because of many women, particularly those who are poor, just simply do not have a way to cope with that there seems to be no place for them to freely organize so as to improve their living situations.

It is through a similar form of trauma that totalitarian control is maintained. A population becomes unwittingly demoralized by the bureaucratic excess of this or that political regimen and implicitly threatened by what they can probably only imagine there is to ensure that it gets maintained. Upon uncovering information about the gulags in the former Soviet Union and its satellites, you would, then, have to produce a situation wherein said information would become widely disseminated upon the actualization of the many implicit threats that the ruling order has been making through their propaganda. As Josef Stalin became willing to deploy the excessive form of collective punishment by the systematic elimination of entire sectors of the population, he was capable of backing up what would seem to be a rather absurd claim, namely that Soviet history was going to be writ by his hand and his alone. For all that Stalin lacked as a political theorist, charming statesman, military strategist, social engineer, architect, or creative director, he was not, as some believe, an idiot. Totalitarianism is predicated upon the constant suppression of its constant revolt. An idiot could not have remained in power. What I would suggest that Stalin was was a cunning, clever, and conniving brute.

Because Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, because the "Secret Speech" was leaked to The New York Times, because there was a partial attempt on the part of Soviet apparat and its satellites to limit political repression and recover from the political legacy of Josef Stalin, and, because in the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic there came to be a movement for Socialism with a Human Face, within the apparat in the ČSSR there were people who, for whatever reasons they had to, ensured that Samizdat was let to publish while it did. There is a certain paradox to the resistance to totalitarian regimes in that the dissemination of information relies upon the political opportunism of the very security apparatus that any dissident is almost necessarily trying to destroy.

I, of course, don't live in the so-called "Eastern Europe". I will, however, say that the Central Intelligence Agency has a longstanding history of abusing the position of power that they have apparently been granted and that there being a global surveillance program which they could effectively use however it is that they see fit does leave me somewhat lacking in trust of more or less the American government as a whole. I feel like the NSA is just the sort of thing that Americans almost never think about because of that it just poses too much of a predicament for them to adequately cope with. If you know anything about Italian politics, you can discover that there are certain connections to be made between certain parties in the actual Sicilian Mafia, a number of Neo-Fascist terrorist cells, a certain Masonic lodge, a number of right-wing paramilitary organizations in Central and South America, and the Central Intelligence Agency. All of these parties operate independently of one another and it is not, as the conspiracy that I previously hatched posited, as if the CIA was just somehow orchestrating what has come to be called the Italian "deep state". To wax conspiratorial, however, our former commander in chief made a very conscious and deliberate effort to restructure the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, given that organization's history, I, personally, came not to hate, but to fear Donald Trump immensely. The legal and extra-juridical powers that the CIA can employ are quite frightening and, though they thankfully don't really seem to have done so domestically, should they go off on kind of a power trip, I don't really trust the Democratic Party led by Joe Biden to put the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, the Church Committee, to the effect of curtailing this enough to alter the steady decline in the American democracy index. Should they decide to take things too far, though I personally would prefer to drop out of politics entirely, I do kind of think that people in the United States may need to create a veritable dissident movement. The situation is clearly not as dire as the former Soviet Union under Josef Stalin or even in the former ČSSR, but, what I can foresee is an emergent form of clandestine totalitarianism that would have troubling consequences for democracy both in the United States and around the world. They have been given a device with which they given no reason for anyone to trust them with. There's a certain poverty to attempting to use the law to counter corruption on the part of the intelligence community, however, as it is often extraordinarily difficult to find any evidence or even specific parties to either use or bring to a court of law. There would also seem to need to be a broad-based nonviolent protest movement with the explicit goal of either reforming or eliminating our intelligence community. Upon considering how to get this off of the ground, as they, effectively through some form of legal positivist interpretation of what constitutes espionage, can just simply disrupt this process from the outset, I feel kind of like the Czech dissidents who just had to withdraw from society. I'd kind of just prefer to, anyways.

Addendum:

It is not that such a movement would be an act of espionage as per what espionage is. It is that it could technically be defined as such as per what the courts have proscribed proceeding from the Espionage Act of 1917. The First Amendment grants American citizens the right to the freedom of speech and assembly. Because it is paramount to American democracy, it is unlikely that they would bring such a movement to trial. What they would, however, be given is the internal legal justification for disrupting and dispersing such a movement at its outset. What I imagine, and I may have only imagined this, aside from that I may only imagine that they pay any attention to me whatsoever, that they have said of me is that I am a "cult leader no matter what". I have taken that as a backhanded insult. I suspect that they weren't making a mere dig, but, rather, an implicit threat. As I understand how they can back it up, I contend that it is politic of me to concede to it. I have no intention of leading a personal and political crusade. I also, however, fear what will happen to both the country that I live in and the rest of the world should every person like me, being all too well aware of what they either can or can not do, capitulate.

Postscript:

You may wonder as to why it is that anyone would even try to create such a movement when they could work within, primarily, the Democratic Party so as to put the Church Committee into effect. The reason that you would have to, if you don't want to wait forever, is that it would take a lot of time and effort to do so. It is also the case that, though being a member of the Democratic Party in good standing would offer you a certain immunity that someone like me would lack, doing so would be somewhat precarious. Without there being a broad-based consensus that our intelligence community needs to either be reformed or for the CIA to be shut down, meaning that all of its agents would be fired and not given other security positions, and for military intelligence to be taken over by the military and domestic intelligence to be taken over by counter-terrorism and unfortunately the FBI, which is what I think should happen, but can settle for significant reform, with which the Democratic Party can garnish votes, they just simply won't care to.

A final aside:

Unlike the former Soviet apparat, I can't quite make sense of why it is that the CIA continues as such. They've been such a geo-political bale for so long that, were they to actually promote freedom and democracy around the world and help to facilitate the development of a free press that has a fidelity to the truth, people would be so relieved that they'd be willing to let go of the past and may even come to view them favorably. Radio Free Europe has gone over extraordinarily well, to my estimation. It's never too late to change your ways or to say that you're sorry. It would take some time for them to establish trust, put trust is just the sort of thing that only can be established by that a person decides to make a show of good faith and to contribute to a better social environment for everyone. I, at least, try, y'know.