Who are we anyway?

Spare me all the bluster, please, about the 'harvesting' of phone calls from Verizon.  Do you believe it is only Verizon? 
There is no reason to be shocked if you are someone who reads a daily newspaper and an occasional book.
Nuggets of news about US Government intrusion into our lives appear almost monthly.
Just last month, you should have read this from a former FBI agent.
In 2010, Dana Priest and William Arkin provided a comprehensive survey of the total national security complex.  The survey consisted of five daily reports in the Washington Post.
Here are some nuggets of news from that report:

"The top secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington DC, hold top secret clearances.
In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001.  Together they occupy the equivalent of almost 3 Pentagons or 92 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space."

Since early in the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has repeatedly complained about the interception of phone calls and emails by NSA and other Government agencies.

Everything required for a police state exists in these United States, is in place and ready to use.  It is a system that has been constructed over the years by both parties and by many different politicians good and bad. The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and a number of Presidential Signing Statements are the foundation for this new more dangerous America.
Unless one wants to be considered as unknowing and out-of-touch, how could any American not know or, at least, suspect that our Government was collecting our phone calls and emails?
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