What Obama saying he’s “really good at killing people” and the NSA’s smiley face have in common

Should we give ordinary humans superpowers?

The characterization of our political officials as an evil, power-hungry cabal sitting at a roundtable, emitting echoes of maniacal laughter, has been an allegory in American politics for as long as there’s been satirical cartoonists and paranoid conspiracy theorists.

But in our increasingly hyper-transparent 21st century biome, the seemingly schizophrenic conjecture of my childhood has turned into something too real.

Among the recent revelations: the U.S. government really does surveil its citizens’ communications and activities on Internet. A largely subservient corporate media pumps out the state’s doublespeak, no questions asked, while hundreds of innocent civilians, thousands of miles away, are slaughtered every year with the simple click of a remote control.

As if validation that these sinister government activities were taking place wasn't enough, the last seven days have brought us a couple of indications that the very human actors behind these atrocities actually get off on their own perversity.

On Oct. 30, the Washington Post published an NSA slide detailing how a project known as MUSCULAR taps into Google and Yahoo’s fiber-optic links where the prying hands of the rogue agency retrieve vast quantities of information on American citizens and foreigners as well.

It’s the way in which the NSA performed these misdeeds that adds insult to injury, however. See, there was a smiley face on the slide touting its abilities to secretly scoop up data on millions of unsuspecting users.

Slate’s Will Oremus sums it up:

The smiley face might seem like a harmless quirk, but it’s more than that. It’s an indication that the NSA’s agents did not regret having to break into major American corporations’ systems and steal their data. They relished it.

That wasn’t the only spine-tingling revelation the American public would learn this past week.

On Nov. 1, reviewing Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s new book, Peter Hamby (again in the Post) recalls a passage about Barack Obama. The president, pontificating over drone attacks, issues a humble brag pointing out how he’s “really good at killing people.”

This all runs in the aftermath of multiple reports that the U.S. has greatly low-balled the number of civilian casualties from its drone war, along with the murder of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

While we hope the quote caught our commander-in-chief in a moment of profound weakness and idiocy, do we Americans not have lapses in judgment where we say (or tweet) stupid things?

The difference is that most of us don’t have enablers like drones and supercomputers.

Without the incredibly potent technology at his fingertips, the President may still be a liar, but his hands are blood-free. And some semblance of privacy rights, no less dignity, might still exist at the NSA.

Our political officials, regardless of affiliation, are only human. And as technology grants us with greater powers, our brief history with abuse has taught us an incredibly important lesson while some damage is still reversible.

Maybe superhuman powers don’t belong in human hands.