Most People Comfortable with Social Messaging “Take Downs”
Everyone knows that we have to give up some of our freedoms to live in a collectivist world with all of the entitlements that produce our comfortable lifestyles. We like a McDonaldized society where things are cheap and predictable.
Who cares about fancy freedoms that don’t apply to the average middle-class or upscale Joe anyway? Most freedoms are for intellectuals and political types, aren’t they? People go out to eat after work, then settle in for an evening of television entertainment, then sports and movies on weekends.
Normal, God-fearing middle-class people in 1930s Europe and the Soviet Union saw their materialistic lives supplanted by socialist leaders whose dark side wasn’t apparent at first. The Gestapo and, later, the East German Stazi were perceived simply as ways of preserving the social order or promoting political unity.
The Big Brother take down state is being policed not overtly by big government, but by social media informants in the larger populace. Social messaging and news media networks just happen to be our entertainments of choice. Anything can be taken out of context and be saved by eavesdropping cell phones, then disseminated virally and selectively. Big government can remain invisibly in the background, though benevolently in charge.
The good news is that most people have nothing to worry about–unless you have power or money that someone else wants or that is perceived as a real threat to the political status quo. Freedom means existing outside the power equation. Data collection won’t be called in for most people. But a comment attached to a recent Washington Post article by Jason Reid about the latest Sterling take down shows how everyone is at risk in our network-controlled world, unfortunately already in place:
American Society can thank the Internet as well as the new technological devices such as cell phones, electronic apps, laptop computers, YouTube, FACEBOOK, MySpace, TWITTER & other computer-related devices that can be made into tools of the American Surveillance State. In fact, WE as a society have not reached the bottom where EVERYONE in American Society are now SPYING on one another. NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden is CORRECT when HE said that America has now become a STASI STATE in reference to the feared East German Intelligence Service. In reality, America is more SCARY than East Germany in 2014. In other words, don’t say ANYTHING negative about somebody or your WORDS or ACTIONS can be posted on the internet!!! This is why the NBA is so scared because of the skeletons in the closet!!!
