Illumini

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

After the first terror attacks of 2001, the country had begun to change.  A massive expanding universe of clandestine government agencies was born and with it, a shadow government began to take shape, hidden from public view.

This is when it all started to change, as Nick remembered it, with that first collective panic.   Immediately following the attacks, within just days, Congress committed $40 billion to fortify our domestic defenses, creating twenty-four new government agencies in the process to fight a global war on terror.  The very next year, it allocated an additional $37 billion, creating thirty-seven more new agencies and programs for tracking weapons of mass destruction, collecting threat tips, and coordinating the new focus on counterterrorism.  By the end of the decade, Nick realized we had spent almost half a trillion dollars, creating a vast domestic intelligence apparatus.

All this was just the beginning.  In the years that followed, in response to the increasing number of disruptive incidents that threatened the security of the country, including bombings, biological and radiological attacks, and the resultant mass demonstrations‚ fear gripped us.  A mass hysteria took over, that fed off itself, fueled by the media.  Nick’s suspicions were constantly fed a twisted diet of imagery and videos depicting an erratic people with aberrant beliefs, so strange and different from ourselves.

Nick understood it was this fear that ultimately took over, squeezed us all so tightly it destroyed that historically optimistic view of our society.  The traditional belief that things were always getting better, that democracy could always improve our lives, receded in the face of these attacks.  Replaced by fatalism and a strange anxiety that slowly ate away at him, until ultimately, what he feared the most, became his reality.

Our government was changing.  It all happened so slowly and gradually that he never really noticed.  An incomprehensible sum of money, created a strange brew of secretive military and intelligence agencies that Nick realized we were never intended to see, or even understand, all working on domestic counterterrorism.  Once created, these agencies, like all government programs, exhibited an unrestrained power to grow, multiplying almost uncontrollably, getting so big and powerful they were difficult to comprehend, let alone control.  Secretive in nature and hidden from view, their unwieldy tentacles had reached out into his private life, and turned it upside down.  Nourished by the rampant corruption and self-interest of politicians, corporations, and powerfully influential public policy organizations, there was no sign of it ever going away.

Gradually, as the years passed, Nick could no longer recall the reason for the existence of these agencies and programs, the desperate logic for why they were all so necessary in the first place.  With each new incident, each new fear, it continued to expand.  As new threats emerged there were more secret agencies, more secret programs, more secret surveillance, more secret decision making, more watch lists, and more databases.  This deliberate obscurity became the norm for our government, which had become so secretive, that he hardly even knew they were watching.

Neither Nick nor Kate complained at the time, after all who wants to be killed in a terror attack.  We all demanded action when faced with the unknown, when confronted by that irrational fear of sudden death.  Congress passed many laws to deal with the threat, long before Nick and Kate were even born, that allowed these agencies to operate outside the constraints of the constitution.  The Patriot Act had provided new tools with which to collect intelligence.  The Domestic Security Enhancement Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and numerous other laws gradually expanded governmental power over the years.  However, Nick clearly remembered the Liberty Act, which quickly followed the second wave of attacks that completely shredded our Bill of Rights.

Nick recognized that this chilling grab of authority across all of government was stunning in its brazen sweep.  As the fear overwhelmed them, in a collective panic, both he and Kate had initially welcomed these protections.  They eagerly exchanged a little freedom for security, privacy for protection, accepted an opaque government, a bureaucratic one-way mirror that only reflected their fear.  At his darkest moment, he accepted the presence; the entangling electronic veil laid softly over our society, watching everything, everyone.  In the end, the fear was the lasting legacy.  The right to live in privacy, free from government intrusion, to dissent and express your beliefs openly, without surveillance, was what the terror ultimately destroyed.