I had a revelation recently, and it might be relevant to those of you with the thankless task of convincing red-staters of Bush's follies. It might not be earth-shattering to you guys, but it betrays a naivety I think I shared with many willing to give Bush some benefit of the doubt.
[Update] I retract here. Thanks to the commenters (fiddling nero, wardlow, Crossing Washington, neroden) who convinced me to care about this.
I didn't care that the government could read my emails or keep track of me in all sorts of ways. Why should I? They wouldn't find anything interesting. I'm no conspiracy theorist (maybe that's naive, but I don't think so), I don't suppose that demonstrating left-wing views will result in my (hypothetical) green card application being denied, or whatever. That's why I struggled to care about the spying scandal. "Illegal, grr... First amendment, grr..." It was politically convenient and I cheered the opportunity, but I didn't see why it mattered and I can understand why red-staters might feel the same.
Then yesteday it hit me: the government is made up of government employees, and such people are incompetent and gossipy (in my experience). These people are my neighbours, my friends (ok, just one), my friends' friends. They use the same convenience store for their morning coffee as I do, and they gossip. These people, I do not want to have my personal information. To these people, it matters if I'm having relationship issues or I'm getting together with some old schoolfriends to smoke dope when I go back to Britain (still hypothetical, Mr G. Man).
Maybe this is a dumb reason to oppose an illegal spying network, or maybe this was obvious to the rest of you, I don't know. I'm young and naive (see the Roll call). Just thought I'd throw it out there.
Oh, and big up to Russ! Nice Daily Show performance.