@hg47's Blog: The Tweet & The TakeAway - Posts Tagged "literature"

The NSA starred this tweet, so the safest thing for you to do is stop reading now and avoid any interaction with these 134 characters.

I used to think that it was "fair game" for me to write about ANYTHING. I used to be a Total Free Speech Nut-Job. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm starting to appreciate the other side; that The State (and, yes, The United States Of America) may have good reasons for restricting the free flow of information and shutting up disruptive people.

There are things I am afraid to Google. For example, I don't "get" how fertilizer can be used as an explosive. I'm curious. I would sort of like to know. But I don't dare start searching. I imagine the FBI would drag me out of bed to question me, and that I'd get put on a NO FLY list, and "Worse." Sometimes I feel like a Muslim who doesn't dare to explore his own religion (no, not because of "bombs" but because most of the Muslims in Islamic Hell are there for political reasons, for doubting Islam or their Prophet or questioning religious leaders.)

Does the NSA have a dangerous and illegal power to track my every movement by cell phone and monitor my thoughts by data mining? Or is the NSA keeping me safe by watching me and listening to me and inferring my every whim?

Edward Snowden. It's not clear to me whether Snowden is a Good Guy or a Bad Guy. But my brother Greg, who works for the IRS, comes down firmly on BAD GUY. Similarly, Wikileaks: I get the POV that spilling secret information may tend to keep the people in power honest. "Shouldn't the average citizens know what is really going on?" But I also get the POV that the State has serious secrets which it needs to protect for the stability of the State.

In 1994 a Tom Clancy novel was published about a commercial airliner crashing into the United States Capitol Building during session, which killed most of the Senators and Congresspeople. A strong argument can be made that Flight 93 was sent to hit the U.S. Capitol Building and that the whole 9-11 thing was inspired by Clancy's novel.

It will surprise me if any of my own novels will ever be accused of similar damage (unless women in the future actually do eliminate the male sex, or the military weaponizes my "teleportation-suppository").

WiReD magazine had an article a few years ago detailing exactly how a dozen committed terrorists willing to die could render Manhattan uninhabitable for 50 years. (I am probably slightly misremembering the numbers.) This article is no longer online.

So, yes, censorship has its place, even in the West.

@hg47