HOPEY-CHANGEY: NSA revelations remind me of Cold War Romania. “I grew up in Communist Romania when all Romanians assumed they were watched and listened to by their government. The feeling we had was that the government was something that had great power over us, but over which we had almost no power or control; something that we just had to live with, or under—like the weather.”

Our ruling class would like for us to feel that way, too.