Hi, Julian. Just wanted to write to tell you're my new hero. I figure you're likely to get jailed soon, or shot dead, or otherwise neutered, a martyr to the age you've so impacted, but that hardly matters; the revolution you set out to create, you have succeeded in creating. And I am so incredibly grateful to you for that, and at least marginally more hopeful for the future...
crossposted at popletters.
Why so passionate? I read a DKos diary today that talks about how the four largest U.S. investment banks -- Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup -- have amassed something like $3.7 trillion dollars in cash reserves.
Think about that. $3.7 trillion. In cash. Sitting there doing nothing. While tens of millions of Americans live in poverty. Live without jobs. Because the economy isn't creating them.
$3.7 trillion.
In the era of Citizens United, of course, that $3.7 trillion pretty much guarantees that we aren't going to see legislation out of this Congress and (lord knows) this president that would hurt the large corporations that currently run our country, nor are we likely to see a many successful candidates who attempt to buck that cash flood. And once you have that kind of power, and the power to ensure that pretty much everything that comes out of the government will favor you even more -- another massive tax cut for rich people in the midst of a horrific debt crisis, anyone? -- it's hard to imagine what could happen that would turn the tide and reverse this process by which the gilded class are currently stealing this nation's wealth and health and future.
Until WikiLeaks.
Leave aside questions of ethics, of the very real damage that these kinds of leaks can cause (and I'll acknowledge that those questions are real, and must be addressed), let's talk only about the message that you, Julian, have sent to the world: that the vast monolith can be breached. That the plutocratic U.S. government/corporate nexus doesn't necessarily have a monopoly on the media, on all forms of propaganda. That the desire so many of us feel to hear a genuine alternative voice can actually be fulfilled. That change -- real change -- might actually be possible.
That we, the people, might actually have an avenue for fighting back.
So, however this story winds up being told, and however it ends: thank you, Julian. Thank you for your skill and your courage and above all your vision, and may that vision grow ever greater and ever more realized. Let the secrets flow. Let the ruling class's patina of inevitability and infallability and unstoppability be irrevocably tarnished. Let their invincibility wither and die.
They'll kill you, of course, or find some other less attention-getting way of neutering you. Denial of service attacks, pressuring private companies and foreign governments to stop supporting your domain. No matter. Others will step up to run WikiLeaks. Still others will step up even more by building new sites to mimic and support WikiLeaks. No army on earth can stop this process now. The toothpaste cannot be returned to the tube. And eventually, everyone in the world will know that the world's most powerful nations and companies can be vulnerable to revelation, can have their darkest secrets dragged into the disinfecting sunlight.
So thank you for that, Julian and everyone at WikiLeaks.
And who's next? Bank of America? Pretty please?