Two-Thousand Eight or Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Greetings, all. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.

Today the Senate voted in favor a bill that extends for six years the broad surveillance powers that Congress approved back in August. Among these are provisions for eavesdropping on foreign-based communications (without a warrant and with no legal approval until after the fact) and legal protection for communications companies that cooperate with the NSA in allowing them to spy upon American citizens without the bother of a warrant. The bill received a lot of support on both sides, as many Democrats are afraid that opposing this agenda of spying upon American citizens would make them appear soft on terrorism. That is another topic entirely.

Allow me to pose a question. Anybody out there read 1984 in high school? Can I have a show of hands?

If you were a good boy or girl and did read George Orwell's tale of a dystopian, totalitarian state, you would, like me, have the creeping willies about how eerily similar to the book our current reality is. I'm not the first person to make this comparison, but I am surprised that more people haven't.

"Big Brother is watching you," the famous tag line from the book...except now Big Brother really is watching you, or listening to your phone calls to Uncle Mahfouz in Morocco, or compelling your credit history and library records. Why? Because Big Brother thinks you're going to harm America. He thinks that you hate America and that you want to obliterate everything that America is.

But is it not a greater harm to "America" to blithely destroy the very freedoms upon which it was founded? Pay attention, Alanis. That is what we call irony. Or, as our stunningly tyrannical Executive Branch would likely say, it is Goodthink (which is assuming that they ever read 1984...or any book at all).

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. These are the strictures of Orwell's "Party." This is the sort of Doublethink that we Americans are now being asked to believe. Perpetual war will stop terrorism. Relenting to constant surveillance will preserve our independence. Accepting blatant lies, equivocation, and propaganda as truth is the only way to preserve our society.

Big Brother loves you. So does George W. Bush.

I think I'll sip some victory gin while I wait for the Miniluv to disappear me to Room 101.

Cheers,
Lockhart