hi doma,
i'm headed down a different road to you. i see sovereigns as the main actors in this drama. but there's plenty of continuity across administrations. and so we tend to evolve rather paradigm shift.
i suspect obama was intimidated by military, cia and spy agencies into continuing with the bush surveillance infrastructure. and the bush infrastructure was a compounding of the clinton one.
obama's contribution seems to have been to try to construct a legal rationale. essentially to save face in case the dark secret of universal surveillance ever emerged. this is sorta falling apart.
so the idea that a change of administration implies a new start just isn't the way it works. new presidents can only bend the curve over time.
but the role of the press (via disclosure) and the courts (via the application of different layers of rules) is to provide checks and balances. and this is what is occurring.
i see continuities in history. but not some overarching temporal power which has continuously maintained control of the agenda for thousands of years.
eg when mahomet announced his visions, i suspect that he did not foresee the formation of an islamic crescent. and i don't see that the military success of the early caliphs had anything to do with a grand plan drawn up by the pope. at that time, the pope was pretty much bishop of rome.
chance (or if we are talking evolution, contingency) is the main actor in history.
it's that things are outside of control that is the key output of my own study of history. we just pretend we can ride this bronco.
meanwhile, we try stuff to organise ourselves. and much of the time, we do it badly. the key is to build things flexibly so that we can change as the world does.
the read of the nsa's alexander that information is susceptible to the uses he suggests is nonsensical. the way people communicate osmoses to avoid capture.
funny that the great alexander was a believer in the principle of homonoia. which is to say, he sought to rise above the notion of sovereignty in favour of the ideal of the brotherhood of mankind.
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