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Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?
gabec asks: "This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped--has been for years--and my phone company is A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?" The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get?
Am I just accustomed to old ways? Does the new generation, born with these restrictions, feel the weight of these bonds and recoil from my fears as paranoia? What can I, a person with no political interests--a person that would really rather think that the people in office are there because they're looking out for us, our rights, and our freedoms and not because their short-sightedness is creating a police state--do to stem the tide?"
The only time I was flagged at a "self checkout" was when I was buying bullets at Wal-Mart.
Someone came over, looked at me, muttered something about how I was obviously old enough, punched a button and let me finish.
No ID, no nothing.
Paid cash, got my change and left.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Unless you are a criminal, who cares if all these things are spying on you. You can't do anything but complain about it, so just go on and live your life and have fun. Be happy you are lucky enough to live in the USA and not Russia where you have wait in line for toilet paper, or China where you have to be rationed toilet paper, or Iran where there is no toilet paper! God Bless Toilet Pap... oh I mean, America! Oh yeah we aren't doing that anymore, Happy America Everyone!
Id for grille lighters and peaches, huh? And why didn't you just walk away loudly commenting on the store's idiotic policy?
Somebody who "just walks away" in that situation is probably trying to hide something. At the very least, he should be taken into a back room and thoroughly interrogated, Gitmo style.
Only then will we be Truly Safe.
It is important that low wage jobs exist, or it would be difficult to get that first job that lets you start climbing the ladder.
People move up the ladder by getting an education, taking a min wage job rather than going to college is a great way to get stuck at the bottom rung.
Not only that, but low minimum wages move us backward as a society, when the smart thing to do would be to build machines to do the jobs that no human wants to do. The choice of keeping a more or less permanent underclass to perform these tasks keeps us from moving forward into a time when no one will actually need to do a job they don't want to do.
It is a really primitive idea to think that it makes sense to have human beings perform mindless tasks for a wages that barely cover subsistance.
Libertarianism is the opiate of the upper classes.
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Fuck You
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
but the state obviously hasn't reached the level of control that Big Brother did in 1984.
Are you sure? Okay so TVs don't look back at you but equally they will track you when you take a train out to the country. They will know the books that you get from the library, and the most important thing they have created (which is what enabled the goverment in 1984 to do what it did). They have created a war that cannot be won with a constantly changing enemy. Its perfect, since 2001 we've had
1) Its Osama
2) Its Afghanistan
3) Its Iraq
4) Its North Korea
5) Its Iran
6) Its Syria
Somalia surely has to be pretty high on the list too right now. Its perfect. Its even BETTER than 1984 because being "asymetrical" they can introduce things that even Big Brother couldn't find an excuse for straight off, so you introduce a law aimed at making extradition of terrorists easy... then you just use it against white collar criminals. Its a brilliant plan that Orwell would have been proud of, its got lots of advantages over the remote war of 1984
1) "They are everywhere" - so you get to crack down at home
2) "They don't respect our laws or way of life" - so we have to play the game using "their" rules = torture, renditions, detention without representation or trial
3) "We have to hit them in their heartlands" - Invade other countries
4) "Its us or them" - So what if some of "their" civilians die
5) "You are either with us or against us" - Debate is not allowed
6) "You don't understand what they can do" - So we must do things you can't believe we would
7) "We have to destroy them at all costs" - More dead civilians
8) "We must support those who are with us against this menace" - India gets Nuclear help, Iran gets condemned for doing less than India.
Orwell would have looked upon the current situation and thought "damn, asymetrical war... what a brilliant plot device that would have been"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Dachannien writes:
"Let me guess: the small, poor country you were in was the United States, and the store you went to was the local Radio Shack."
Radio Shack does not require you fill out a form for anything other than a cellphone (the contract).
Radio Shack does not require you give your personal information for anything except extended warranties, returns and some subscription-based items like cellphones, satellite radio, etc.
As for warranties, your info is taken in case you lose your receipt, your warranty can still be found. Give dummy info if you want.
As for returns, same deal; give bogus data.
In either case, no ID is checked.
I have this theory that a new age of Enlightenment would blossom if people just stopped talking about subjects they don't know jack shit about in an effort to appear witty, erudite, learned, whatever.
So do me a favor. Shut the fuck up when you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Pretty please.
My
Limekiller
You are just plain not worth $5.15 much less $9. Minimum wage laws mean you will never find work.
BTW you Mr Armchair economist are an idiot. Anything and everything is at lower demand at a higher cost. Corelation is not causation. Adding a WAG as justification is plain stupid. Bet they (the states with higher minimums) created more jobs in total but fewer shit jobs (minimum wage).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'