Maybe it's because I've held a Top Secret security clearance once...

[JDPriestly]

147. If this is true,

"I do think that the world's intelligence communities pretty much know what everything about everything and that the rest of us are just left in the dark,"

then we need to stop pretending we are a democracy or that our votes make any difference because they don't.

This kind of elite class in a society is incompatible with the ideals or the reality of honest, open, representative government.

Who and what is this elite class representing? No one elected it. No one knows what it does or why. In fact, if it could, it would hide its very existence. It intimidates. It makes people fear it.

It is because of that class that we are in so much trouble around the world. The mess in Iran, in Iraq, everywhere can be traced back to stupid decisions made in secret by an elite few.

That class is to America like a husband's mistress is to the innocent, unknowing wife. The mistress knows the wife exists. The wife does not know the mistress exists. And the husband is betraying the wife's trust with the mistress.

Such love affairs are commonplace.

But the fact is that when one or the other partner in a marriage has a lover, the trust that is fundamental to that relationship is placed under severe stress. Many marriages do not survive if the partner who is not a part to the affair finds out.

It takes a lot of work, a lot of honesty and sincerity and openness between husband and wife to reconstruct and rebuild a marriage after such a betrayal assuming that the basic understanding between husband and wife prior to the mistress was that both partners would be honest with each other -- the most common case.

Our government betrays all of us who are not part of the elite when it creates an elite that can make basic decisions about the nation's future and the nation's relationships with other nations behind the backs of the rest of the citizens without ever telling the majority of the population the details about what the elite is really doing. That Congress is advised of the basic framework of the matter simply makes members of Congress accomplices in keeping Americans ignorant and docile while the elite works its mischief.

And, of course, those who make up the elite are first, probably chosen because they feel they are better than everyone else and deserve to be part of the elite and also because they feel separate from others, that is, do not have enough empathy or feeling of solidarity with others to have difficulty keeping secrets that will obviously have repercussions on the lives of others. They, I assume, comfort themselves with the thought that the others not in the elite need their help and would be lost without them.

Then we see the syndrome that is revealing itself here -- the elite attacking anyone of their number, any member of the elite who crosses over and gives away secrets to the uninitiated.

This is the typical behavior of elites in dictatorships. It is thanks to people who are susceptible to becoming parts of such elites that dictators exist. That was true in the Third Reich. It was true in Communist countries. It is probably true in places like China and Syria, etc. now.

But America is supposed to be different. There is utterly no provision in our Constitution for forming an elite working for our government that can keep secrets from our free people.

Do we need some secrets? Yes. But they should be kept to a minimum. We have secrets gone wild. Do we need them in today's world? It is easy to think so. But then those secrets if too numerous render democracy impossible.

The more secrets we create, the more others want to know our secrets and we theirs. A vicious circle is formed. We have more secrets because others become more skilled at discovering our secrets. And others keep more secrets because we are more skilled at discovering theirs.

Secrets should be kept to a minimum.

And this elite that knows the secrets is becoming ridiculously large. The leaking may be due to the fact that the elite that knows the secrets is too numerous and too powerful.

We may be seeing so many leaks because our elite is working for private companies with private interests and profits to consider and therefore has divided and uncertain loyalties.

I have read histories of spies in WWII. It was very different. Then, most members of the secretive elite clearly worked for and was a part of the government, mostly for the military. There was a very clear sense of loyalty to a noble cause, of working for our nation and for democracy. That does not seem to be the goal in this spying program and the companies that do the spying. I might be wrong on that, but I think that if the connection between the good of the country, our nation's goals, and this program were clear to the employees doing this work, we would not be discussing this.

There is something basically unpatriotic and disloyal about the program and that is why the whistleblower came forward.