The Deep Politics of WikiLeaks

by Virgil Vaduva
The term Deep Politics was created by English Professor Peter Scott to illustrate how cultures, societies, nations and groups of people tend to collectively and involuntarily suppress facts because of the social and psychological cost of not doing so. In other words, humans collectively suppress facts which are inconvenient and difficult to face, and often do this involuntarily, almost at an unconscious level. There is no better time when Deep Politics has been readily manifested in the public lives of Americans than now, when the public has been suddenly forced to face the actions of its Government, all thanks to WikiLeaks.

During the Cold War it was very exciting as a teenager to huddle around a short-wave radio, listening in the dark every evening to The Voice of America. It was not as much the act of listening that made it exciting, although tuning in to the show was actually illegal, but what made such evenings excting for me was the fact that I knew that every evening the DJ will expose some new criminal act that the Romanian Communist State was involved in; perhaps some new assassination, coverup of murders, a new shooting on the border, and a coverup of a sex scandal by a Party official. You see, during the Cold War, revealing the criminal acts of Communist governments was viewed as a positive thing. And indeed, it was quite positive as truth eventually set millions of people free.

During his visit to China, President Obama was asked a question about the benefit of people all over the world having free access to information. His answer was that “the more freely information flows, the stronger societies are.” The so-called “leader of the free world” publicly recognizes the benefit of information flowing freely, and how knowledge of one's government leads to increased freedom for all.How is it then that the very same Government Mr. Obama serves is now attempting to shutter and stop the free flow of information? Could it be that truly terrifying secrets are the means by which oppressive Governments keep a society weak?

Read the entire article here