All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Kelly B.
Vlejos.
She writes for us at antiwar.com.
That's original.antiwar.com/Vlejos.
And of course she's contributing editor at the American conservative magazine and all kinds of great things like that.
Uh, the most recent piece is called post nine 11, all eyes on you.
And, uh, the one before that, uh, is who says Obama's bad for business.
Uh, both of these, some of the, my, well, my favorite articles of September so far.
Anyway, welcome back to the show, Kelly.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
All right.
So now, uh, tell me about, uh, all eyes on you.
Here we are, uh, 10 years later, what happened?
Well, you know, I, I got the idea for writing this piece when I was walking through the Washington Metro the other day and I realized there, there had been this huge, you know, campaign for an ad campaign for the international spy museum, which, you know, did all this sort of tongue cheek, you know, cutesy, uh, artwork and, uh, you know, suggestions that, you know, we as travelers on the Metro being constantly watched, um, by spies and, and, you know, government spooks, um, ha ha ha ha.
And it sort of dawned on me that, you know, in this post 11 of a nine 11 environment that, that, you know, the American people have sort of been lulled into this belief that we are always being watched.
And that is just the, the natural trade off for our national security and a post nine 11 world.
And that places like the international spy museum on which 90% of its board, you know, our, uh, former CIA and FBI agents, um, sort of take advantage of that and have sort of been pushing this, this sense that it's, it's okay that we've given away all of our, our civil liberties, that it's, it's perfectly normal that we, that all eyes are on us nowadays.
And so I use that as a launching point to talk about the Patriot Act and how it has developed and, and evolved and, uh, you know, sort of, you know, how it's reached in and taken away many of our civil liberties over the last 10 years.
Yeah.
Well, and it's amazing in it, how it has taken the 10 years and all the propaganda, uh, this whole time, uh, escalating every time there's a failed attack on an airline or whatever, everything gets ratcheted up one more, one more.
But I think, you know, even if on, you know, the day they passed the Patriot Act, if they had just said like, okay, from now on warrantless searches, uh, we're going to be constantly reading everyone's email.
We're going to be tapping your phone and keeping track of who all you call and who all they call.
And we're going to, uh, data mine, every database in the world about you all the time.
And we're going to, uh, you know, create all these fusion centers and start putting Homeland Security people in your local police departments and all this stuff.
People would have flipped out.
They wouldn't have been able to do this even right on the heels of 9 11.
If they had announced all this, the, all the cameras everywhere, they'd announced this revolution is happening all at once.
The people I gotta believe would have balked.
But after 10 years, it's like, yeah, it's just another TV show.
I've seen this one, you know?
Well, yeah.
And the revelations about the abuses, uh, in the name of the Patriot Act, uh, have been in sort of this drip drip fashion over the last 10 years that, that the American public is either a not paying attention when we do see an audit or a report come out about the FBI abusing it, you know, right.
To go into your, into your emails and internet or the national security, you know, agency, um, data mining, all of our phone records, you know, people hear this, um, they acknowledge it and then they move on.
Like you said, there, there, there hasn't been a sort of, um, saturation point in which people say, Hey, you know, uh, this has gone too far.
Uh, this drip drip of information.
Um, you know, I'm not saying that the American people don't bear responsibility either.
I mean, people like you and I have been reading about this and getting, you know, appropriately outraged.
Um, I think that the American people have, uh, they should take a responsibility.
And as I mentioned in the piece, I mean, there's too much, there, there are too many sheeple amongst the population here.
Meaning people go along with anything and you see that in the polls, you know, where you, where you and I would be outraged or are outraged when we hear about the TSA and the wrap ramping up these and intrusive, uh, checkpoint policies.
Uh, we look at polls the same day or the next day and American people seem all right with trading off these, these liberties, uh, for what they perceive as, as, as, as greater safety.
Um, I don't know where it ends, Scott.
I don't know if a full body cavity searches at airports will be the tipping point in which American people, a majority of them will say, Hey, this has gone too far.
I don't know.
Um, but I'm, I'm increasingly, uh, discouraged, you know, after all this time and increasingly not confident that there is going to be any curb on Patriot policies and these expanded surveillance laws anytime soon, because I think they would have happened already.
We've had several authorizations that have gone through Congress, um, without much of a hitch.
You know, we've had a new administration come in who promised Obama promised to scale back.
Patriot act did not.
Uh, so I, I'm, I'm really not confident that we're going to stand a curb anytime soon.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I like what you say about the responsibility of the American people.
Cause, uh, I don't know, I guess it's been a while, but I still remember pretty well being, you know, like a young teenager and sort of believe in that.
Like, all right.
Well, so the way it works is the adults, you know, in this so-called democratic system, we all live in and whatever, uh, everybody does their part at least a little bit to make sure on how things are going.
They don't just seed, uh, all decision-making to some far away imperial capital or something like that.
Everybody, you know, they go to the PTA meetings to make sure the schools are going okay.
And they, they care very much.
Who's going to be the new land commissioner.
Cause his position is different than the other guy and whatever.
And it's supposed to be that people care and really where it comes down to on the war while on civil liberties, of course, we're betraying, you know, all our posterity who's who are going to be saddled with this thing.
Um, but especially like on the wars, I think about, um, you know, kids who are getting out of high school, who are joining up, whose attitude is that, you know, the democratic system is making sure that I'm being used well here.
They wouldn't have me go and fight an unnecessary war.
Um, and it's not just the politicians.
It's the American people who let the politicians betray these guys.
That's why they shoot themselves in the head.
When they come home, they realize all they just did was for nothing that they weren't protecting America at all.
They were accomplishing some corrupt goal for some corrupt power that they don't have a voice in because they mistakenly assumed that the rest of us were taking care of that business and making sure they were only going to be used.
Well, you're talking about high school football players, right?
Or the ones who go and join up, they don't know.
Right, right.
It's, you know, I, I've never seen a more symbolic, you know, moment is when I went into the airport, the, uh, spring break and it was fully prepared to take on the, the, the, the pat down because I refuse to go through the full body scanner and I'm watching, you know, American after American goes through these full body machines, you know?
Um, I just looked ahead and realized if I get on the right line, I go through the regular magnetometer.
So I didn't have to make that decision.
I had, I didn't have to have that confrontation.
I looked around me, nobody else seemed concerned.
They just went in the line, like they were shuttled in like cattle and they went through the full body.
They raised their hands in a supplicant, you know, position.
Um, they had this naked image taken of them, um, or their, you know, of their children and their parents, you know, and they moved on and I realized, you know, things aren't going to change because the American people aren't outraged.
They don't see, they don't see their civil liberties being impinged upon.
Um, they do as they're told they're sheeple.
And I hate to say that, but I think without a critical mass of people saying we've had enough, you and I are just going to have this conversation until we're blue in the face.
Yeah.
Well, then again, here's the thing.
And here's my attitude about it to keep me from getting frustrated because it's been a long time and I'd be way burned out by now.
But the trick is if, uh, at least from my point of view, I don't try to really think that I could change history or anything like that.
I just want to be a place where people can come to me if they want to know what the truth is for their own life or whatever, but the course that America's on now, this massive warfare economy and imperial system that's existed since way before I was born that held my grandparents wouldn't have even known each other without it.
Right.
I mean, there's nothing I can do to turn this thing around.
I'm just calling the score for people who want an honest accounting of what the hell's really going on here.
Right.
You know, correct.
And otherwise I'd be really bummed out because things just keep getting worse.
Yeah.
And I, and I, and I, you know, as far as, as much as I make a big deal about the mainstream media falling down on the job, I have been happy at least here in Washington to hear that the so-called liberal establishment media is making some attempt to point out the increased surveillance/military state that has emerged after nine 11, you know, there is, I've heard numerous interviews.
Um, a lot of references to the Washington post, excellent theories on, you know, the, the national security, uh, state, I think it's called, um, hidden, hidden world, uh, you know, like that.
Yeah.
Top secret America.
And I, I, I, one of the best theories I've read all year, cause it's chock full of these amazing statistics about the utter explosion of defense and spy contractors in the water in the greater Washington area.
That's just going on right behind the scenes, the shadow world.
And we're talking billions and billions of our tax dollars are going into this.
And this is all a result of line 11.
And I think that the more that that's pointed out in the mainstream media, the better, because unfortunately for people like me and you, we don't have as big of a soapbox to stand on.
And so when you do hear, you know, these mainstream mavens, like Diane Rehm talking about, you know, this crazy surveillance state, unfortunately, that's when people are listening and they might think twice about those cameras that they're seeing everywhere they go.
And those loopy, you know, international spy museum campaigns that basically shove it down your throat, that you are a victim of the, you know, the off thing.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I know you got to go for another interview, so we'll leave it here.
I got John Glaser coming up next.
I'm sorry we didn't get to talk about Obama's friendship with Eric Prince and the guys in Blackwater, but maybe we can catch up on that early next week.
Sounds good.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much for your time, everybody.
That's the great Kelly B.
Vallejos.
That's original.antiwar.com/Vallejos.
You can also find her at the American conservative magazine.
We'll be right back after this kids.
