Shame on you, naughty Mr. Assange: The US has dirty secrets, but the disheveled critic who exposed them has a dirty bathroom.

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to news article, “Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrested in London,” April 11, 2019:

"The government also imposed other restrictions, limiting his visitors and requiring him to clean his bathroom and look after his cat."

Assange's supporters should expose this tactic for what it is. Say that the emperor is naked, and they will say your clothes are dirty; criticize the powerful, and they will call you crazy.  

If someone opposes the world's most powerful government by publishing information about his doings, they will go after him in any way they can. In a totalitarian world order, psychology replaces political judgment or argument as the support of law, especially when the latter is used to secure the impunity of power. This means that even if they are not content to put him away as a crazy, portraying him as such in the media is an opportunity not to pass up. He looks disheveled and has been accused of maintaining an unclean bathroom. The character assassination commences.  

The real issue is of course whether the US government can do anything it wants, untrammeled by public knowledge or scrutiny even among its own citizens. This is not the case in a republic with some measure of democracy; it is the case in societies with authoritarian governance operating under a broad and floating state of emergency as our has since 9/11; that is, our totalitarian societies of control. Note that Trump is not the cause of this, though he is one of its names, as it would have been little different under his opponent.  

Anyone remember the idea of limited government?