Lately I've been reading a lot of doom and gloom and even fear and loathing from folks who generally speak in measured terms. Folks like the entire cadre of the New York Times group of columnists (everyone from William Safire and David Brooks to Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman) have decried the increasingly obvious attempt by the Prez to control information at all costs. A lot of people, including me, see the attempts at this sort of information control as anti-democratic and downright dangerous.

But we ought to remember: You can control some of the information all the time, and you can control all of the information some of the time, but you can't control all the information all the time.

The last presidents who tried--in a time of manufactured war, no less--Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, failed utterly. No matter how many plumbers they hired, they couldn't stop the leaks. And back then there were three national news networks and a handful of newspapers and other news organizations that covered Washington. Nowadays there are scads of cable networks, even more newspapers with a "man" in Washington and, of course, the Internet.

Wait a minute, I hear you say. A thousand newspapers have closed since the early 1970s. How can there be more papers with people in D.C.? In part, this is due to programs like one at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where students are sent to Washington and serve as capitol reporters for smaller newspapers at a discount price. Yes, they're just pups, but they're kinda rabid pups. They have the energy and desire to uncover stories no one would touch. Remember, it was a Northwestern project that ultimately overturned nearly half the death sentences in Illinois. Lest you think I'm biased toward Evanston, let me remind you that I hold a journalism degree from Missouri--Northwestern's arch-enemy in the J-skool wars. I wish I could be bragging on MU folks, but I'll save those stories for a more relevant topic.

As for the Internet, some would call it just a rumor mill. Sure it is. And how do you think political reporters find stories? In the olden days, it might have been a confidence passed at a coctail party. Today, the tips often come from the untrammeled electronic marketplace of ideas. And, despite the occasional efforts of Prez's past and present (including the PATRIOT Act), the government has an awfully tough time snooping on the citizenry.

Look at it this way: Even after the awesome spam filter installed by my ISP, I get some 50+ e-mails a day. Most people I know sort through 20 or more. Even the biggest supercomputers can't crunch enough numbers to reliably predict the weather. You think they can parse everyone's e-mail? Even if they could, do you think there are enough analysts out there to manually parse through all the "questionable" ones? Not a chance. There's too much traffic to control. And in general, the Prez seems to see the Internet as a "free market." Indeed, his pals in Congress just passed a law that keeps states from imposing taxes on Internet connections. Methinks the Internet is safe. Which means that, ultimately, the republic will be safe.

Someone called the final days of the Soviet Union "death by fax." Radio B92 in Belgrade was one of the most important rallying points for the anti-Milosevic crowds. One of the reasons there is a viable reform movement in Iran is the proliferation of satellite dishes and Internet connections. Yes, even supposedly anti-American stations like Al Jazeera provide much the information necessary to fight the theocracy, and there's very little the mullahs can do about it. There's too much technology to control. As soon as a government figures out how to clamp down on one form of communication, people figure out another way to keep in touch.

Think about it. You're reading this column either on a web site or in an e-mail message. You can respond by e-mail, telephone or, that quaintest of terms, snail mail. If you happened to be in the area, you could stop by my house and have a beer. Do you really think that a government, even one with the technological prowess of the United States, could shut down all modes of communication among all people? And do you think that if the government even started to seriously clamp down, the people would stand for it?

I know, a large number of ABC stations refused to show Saving Private Ryan on Veterans Day because they feared FCC retribution. They showed Hoosiers instead. If you ask me, the first 24 minutes of Ryan aside, Hoosiers is the less cloying and more "American" movie of the two--which is saying a lot, since I'm one of those folks who freely uses "hoosier" as an epithet. But instances like the Ryan replacement are just little protests put up by big business. See, corporations will fight for their own free speech, and that will help everyone.

Yes, media consolidation isn't necessarily good. We need as many voices as possible. But the funny thing is, those voices are there with or without big business. I own some 7,000 CDs, and maybe a couple hundred have even one song that has been played on a commercial radio station. I get more and more in the mail every month. People like to see the 90s as the era of the 'zine, but what are today's blogs if not an undated and better-distributed version of the 'zine?

To more properly restate Lincoln's aphorism, you can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Or, as the late, famed philoscatist G.G. Allin supposedly once said as an explanation of his stage antics, "Shit runs downhill, and everyone has to eat it every once in a while." Actually, I think that quote was made up, as Allin wasn't the most articulate guy around--even when he wasn't doing speedballs. What he might have said was "Shit. Everwhar. Gotta eat, know?" I'd buy that quote. But whatever. The point stands.

If we keep up the pressure, a hog-lagoon the size of the Potomac basin won't be big enough to contain all the shit spewed by the Prez. At some point, he's going to have to soil some White House silver and start chowing down.

Jon Worley never saw a G.G. Allin show, and he's kinda bummed out about that.