Armed men, they say, are citizens, and unarmed men are subjects. The fever dream goes something like a Federal Government run amok, and a motley, merry band of misfits takes to the hills with rifles.
They see themselves in Catalonia, perhaps, with Hemingway and Orwell, when good defeated evil for a while, or arm-in-arm with Camus as they burned the swastikas from France like as many warts from an old and gnarled foot.
Or there they see themselves, the Patriots, defending our homeland against enemies foreign and domestic, in the Colorado hills with the Eckert boys, and Danny, Daryl, Aardvark, and oh wait shoot actually that’s the plot from Red Dawn. I get so confused sometimes.
In any conversation about gun policy, 2nd Amendment activists will be quick to remind you that the Bill of Rights is not about hunting. That rifles are not just to put meat in the freezer, and that an AR-15 is simply a modern musket. That a “gun behind every blade of grass” is the reason Japan never invaded in the second world war, and, more importantly, that an armed and organized electorate is the final failsafe against an autocratic regime. That the Bill of Rights is about individual freedom, sure, but is a pillar of our functioning democracy. That it’s not only a right to own a gun, but a responsibility.
To be fair, they’re not exactly wrong. The Bill of Rights was conceived in a time when the wounds of tyranny were raw and soothed by armed and skilled militias. And they are right that Bill of Rights is every bit as relevant now as it was in the 18th century, but defending the United States from tyranny today has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment, and everything to do with the 4th.
Because ultimately armed insurrection in the modern age has been tried and tried again. At Ruby Ridge and Waco, TX we have seen in no uncertain terms both the asymmetry between our armed forces and even the most equipped militia, and the government’s willingness to use that force.
And this is, of course, to say nothing of the drone strikes and attack helicopters in any cartoon dictator’s arsenal – just ask the children of Yemen. The thought of an honest guerrilla war, with civilian firearms, against the might of the US military is laughable. To suggest otherwise is fantasy, to provision is a hobby.
I do not mean to say that the threat of tyranny is not real, only that fighting tyrants in the thickets of New Hampshire is at once foolish and quaint. I mean that bullets are for proxy wars; a modern autocracy is won with thought.
Large scale data breaches have become commonplace in the last decade. The companies we trust, or are indifferent enough not to distrust, have made a habit out of carelessness. Equifax compromised the birth dates and Social Security numbers of 143 million people, after collecting and storing that information without consent. EBay lost control of personal information and passwords to of 145 million customers in 2014. And in late-2017 Yahoo, one of the largest tech companies on earth, conceded finally that yes, all three billion of its customers’ accounts had been accessed by “state sponsored actors.”
It has become clear in recent years that data and information collected under the premise of confidentiality is anything but. Even the largest, most well-funded companies have proven that they are incapable of managing these databases, and that most our personal information is probably being bought and sold on clandestine marketplaces right now, as you read.
This is a bummer, sure, but also not necessarily the end of the world. The nice thing is that you’re not alone! Billions of people have had their information stolen, and there’s a degree of safety in anonymity. Take the time to have strong, unique passwords on your accounts, sign up for two-stage authentication when possible, and keep an eye on credit and accounts. Sure, it’s not convenient, but that’s what will set you apart. Because the economics of convenience are much more dangerous than Russian hackers or Cuban paratroopers.
Far more troubling than the information we give away to the false promise of security is the information we give away with ambiguous assumptions of privacy. Recent revelations about the use of Facebook information by the data company Cambridge Analytica represent a threat to democracy that cannot be fought with rifles.
Consider that information was collected on millions of users in the shadows of legitimacy, and under the auspices of data research. The firm leveraged Facebook’s entire business model, one designed to sell advertising, to construct psychological profiles of voters and influence their behavior. It did so in dissonance with Facebook’s privacy policy but without, apparently, breaking the law. This is happening against the backdrop, and to the benefit, of an administration that is actively attacking the nature of truth.
MKUltra and Manchurian Candidates are the stuff of conspiracy theories and ghost stories, but government mind control is very real. It comes when the stalwarts of propaganda are refined and amplified by big data, and presents the realest threat to democracy we face today.
As the information analytics crisis unfolds in the west, we need only look east to see how it unfolds. Since 2007 China’s Social Credit System has scored its citizens on trustworthiness, collecting credit and banking information and analyzing it against petty crimes like jaywalking. This year those scores are used to bar bad actors from booking flights and rewarding model citizens with gym memberships and medical care.
China has transcended the simple data-driven propaganda that the US is currently coping with, and created a candid system of social engineering. The greatest threat to our modern republic is not that the state will disarm its citizens, it is that it will not have to – the information coup is bloodless.
Rifles will not protect us, of course. But if we’re not careful our disregard for privacy and our eagerness for validation can do far more damage with the intangible Armalite design than a firearm ever could.
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