perfect safety

Nice things from Glenn Greenwald today.

But nobody thinks we're "perfectly safe." Nothing in life is "perfectly safe." Perfect safety is an illusion, something that is wasteful to pursue, and when pursued to the exclusion of all else, creates a tragically worthless, paralyzed way of life. On a political level, pursuit of "perfect safety" as the paramount goal is precisely what produces tyranny, since one will be motivated by that value system to vest as much power as possible in the government, without limits, in exchange for the promise of maximum protection.

The perfect safety of a culture wrapped up in its own self-righteousness is what prevents such a culture from breathing and learning. I can not imagine returning to the land of a thousand cop shows on TV, a land that is over-run with serial killers and poisoned everything. This is the same land that artists are sure is the height of western culture, the pinnacle of all civilizations, beseiged by brown-skins. I ask more that artists glimpse a little beyond the blare of TV screens and Chelsea complicity.

"Art" with that capital A remains part of the world of perfect safety. Impenetrable, it is an artifact of a falsified history.