Patterns are a common tendency in American politics. A popular story breaks and several filler stories follow to feed the main breaking news story. You uncover the actual truth by following specific trails of information as the news breaks. It’s become extremely difficult to find objective reporting, so we're practically forced to consume massive amounts of information to decipher the actual truth.

Security has been the ‘go to’ issue for the week and the news cycle has a funny way of ratting itself out on controversial stories. For example, the day after the controversial Patriot Act expired, a mysterious report uncovered that Transportation Security Administration or 'TSA' airport agents fail 95% of the time on their basic airport security screening measures.

Folks, what a crazy coincidence. How stupid do they think we are? Again, let’s reflect on this week’s security themed obsession. First, on Sunday evening the controversial Patriot Act expires, then on Monday morning a report breaks stating that the unpopular TSA has a 95% airport security failure rate, followed by the new Freedom Act passing the Senate with 67 out of 100 votes on Tuesday morning and President Obama signing the bill into law later that evening after adamantly campaigning against the Patriot Act during his presidential runs in 2008 and 2012.

The Freedom Act is essentially a watered down version of the Patriot Act and still encourages a spy friendly culture. Now I understand that it’s easy to justify spying on your enemies because it’s an essential part of the art of war, but do we really need to spy on every single American citizen? As technology improves and society progresses this new bill could continue using communication technology to incriminate American citizens for petty crimes.

Memory is an underrated commodity in modern society. We consume so much information that it’s easy to miss the point and the strange commonalties of our deliberate news cycle are dismissed as white noise. In fact, 7 years ago our nation was uniformly against the Patriot Act and the national focus was on increased individual civil liberties. I remember that, do you? Have people’s opinions changed that much or do we need to wake up and pay attention? It’s no coincidence that the TSA failure story broke immediately after the expiration of the Patriot Act. A suggestion for more security is not the answer. Why? Because, those in power are afraid to lose their power and the Freedom Act is an attack against America’s founding principles. We need to hold these people accountable for what they say and the actions they take, otherwise the surveillance state will expand to bounds we can’t imagine.