Obama was also a shameless mass surveillance-er. He grew the NSA/CIA snooping like crazy because he was uncomfortable with the very public wars Bush was running. So he (and many others who still have positive images or direct power in the US) massively expanded the scale of the intelligence community and significantly moved it to secret courts.

Of course it all started with the Patriot Act. But even looking at who keeps voting for that and keeping it alive and you can't just blame Bush either.

It's like there's no options for Americans politically which doesn't involve massive "black budgets" and secret courts doing who knows what. It's bipartisan and even plenty of the worst Iraq war supporters all have had career revivals in recent years because the media + social media decided that only one thing was bad, the current president. All bad deeds in the past were forgotten for the old set.

Endless "Secret Wars" seem terribly undemocratic and dangerous to me - for the obvious complete lack of public courts, true due process, or war crimes laws that normally are adhered to.

And I also see no proper reckoning in the relevant future either as long as these same "good guys" are back in power.

So I guess we're stuck with it.