Do you remember the Age of Camelot?  

It was somewhere in the nineteen sixties and extended into the early seventies.  It was marked by a belief that we can, with will and a willingness to work together, solve the world's problems and make it a better place for all life.  Americans believed life could be better for people besides Americans, and creatures besides humans.

Then John F Kennedy was assassinated.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Robert Kennedy.  

Vietnam flamed on and cold war tensions escalated.  The Domino Effect was embraced, that America and its allies had to match the evil Soviet empire and their allies move for move.  The Soviets embraced the same policy against the evil imperialist empires.  

Nixon returned and became President.  Then the events and fallout known as Watergate, that first Mother of All Gates, occurred....

Watergate put an end to the Age of Camelot.  The new Age of Suspect emerged.  

Everyone and their intentions were vetted and re-vetted. Yet all the vetting and re-vetting, with cries of who did what when and when did people know what was going on, caused greater confluences of distrust.  This is the Information Age but we're saddled with attempting to understand what information to believe as the Information Age becomes the Obfuscation Age.

Fitting right in with the Age of Suspect, our President, that great liberal, Barack Obama, uses drones to kill Americans, without trial.  Drones are the new heavy lifters in the war against terror, and terror is gaining a broader definition.  Police departments and universities across the nation are requesting permissions to procure and fly drones.  They're telling us that they're doing it to keep us safer, using the same NRA logic that says the answer to increasing murder by guns is to buy more guns and arm more people.   

The Age of Suspect is an Orwellian wet dream.  Dropping in on your emails in the name of your freedom and rights is already considered okay.  Monsanto, in keeping with the spirit of the age, doesn't want anyone to know anything about their perfectly safe and healthy seeds and crops.  Neither do the companies who put fracking fluids into the ground with their proclamations to trust them, it's perfectly safe because nothing has ever been proven, in their quest to deliver 'energy independence', oh, and make more money, while they're at it, although many will try to reassure you, it's not about the money, it's about the freedom to make money.  

At the top of the Age of Suspect pyramid is black money, secret contributions and money movements to influence elections and information.  Usually contributed by corporations or the world's wealthiest, they know that in the Age of Suspect, money is more highly valued than freedom, because with money, information can be changed.  People can be bribed and coerced into abandoning their principles to save their loved ones, or even their country, or their rights and freedoms.  They pound us with warnings about threats to our security, freedoms and independence, and then they bury the truth behind their reasoning with myths and lies, and feed our fears.  Glaciers may be melting and the water levels may be rising but it will all be all right if we don't teach our children critical thinking, keep our taxes low, and outlaw the words 'sea level rise'.

Because that's how it works, in the Age of Suspect.