NEWS: NDAA And Occupy Congress: What If You Now Live In A Dictatorship, And No One Told You?

CULTURE: NDAA And Occupy Congress: What If You Now Live In A Dictatorship, And No One Told You?

By David Seaman

Judge Napolitano on FOX Business Network has a great on-air rhetorical device, "What if?"

I'm going to blatantly steal -- er, borrow -- that device for this column because it does a brilliant job of covering one's ass completely, while still pointing out obvious truths. Here goes, take a deep breath.

WHAT IF your government has lost all legitimacy to lead?

WHAT IF the media, once the American people's last safeguard against corruption, is now corruption personified?

WHAT IF there was a protest of thousands of people converging on Capitol Hill tonight, January 17th, 2012, and the corporate broadcast media barely even mentioned it as of 1:12pm Eastern, save for a below-the-fold hat tip on msnbc.com?

WHAT IF there is a quiet battle brewing right now between dying TV broadcasting dinosaurs, and vibrant Internet companies like Google, Facebook, and Reddit?

WHAT IF that battle finally becomes public knowledge tomorrow morning, when the homepage of Google.com will display a message blasting the SOPA/PIPA Internet censorship legislation that Congress seems absolutely hell-bent on passing in one way or another, regardless of how many phone calls they receive from outraged constituents.

WHAT IF there was a separate battle, waged online and via telephone by tens of thousands of Americans...a battle we've already lost?

WHAT IF that battle was a desperate cry against the NDAA's indefinite detention provisions, which President Obama quietly signed into law on New Year's Eve, while the rest of us were drunk and distracted?

WHAT IF, as a result, your own government -- according to some of the planet's foremost legal minds -- now has the very real ability to detain you without trial, access to an attorney, and without bringing formal charges against you.

WHAT IF suspicion alone is enough.

AND WHAT IF some government insiders, such as Colin Powell's former chief of staff, have gone on record stating they believe this indefinite detention power will be used to silence political protesters, including Occupiers.

Makes today's Occupy Congress seem rather important given all of that context, no? So where's the media attention?

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Image courtesy of Dustin M. Slaughter

View #Occupy Congress live via Livestreams from citizen journalists @TimCast, @OccupyFreedomLA, @Punkboyinsf, and @OakFoSho

David Seaman is an independent journalist and has been a lively guest on CNN Headline News, FOX News, ABC News Digital, among others, and on his humble YouTube channel, DavidSeamanOnline. Some say he was recently censored by a certain large media corporation for posting a little too much truth... For more, find him on G+ and Twitter.

When is someone NOT trying to protest Congress?

And where's the media attention? Well, NPR already covered it. Frankly, it sounded pretty anemic, as rallies go. The Washington Post has already run a couple articles on it. From their coverage, it looks like less than 2,000 people showed up. Would you like to see news coverage saying "Occupy Congress was a dud"? FOX will probably run that story tomorrow.

The NDAA is bad.
SOPA is bad.
I don't need an overarching conspiracy theory that makes them part of some master plan to believe that.

Here's a live stream of Occupy Congress. I've seen birthday parties that were better attended than this rally.

And NPR reported on it again. They give the protest numbers as "more than 500".