Welcome to Orwell's Century

By: Charles Sullivan

Just when you thought that things couldn't get any worse, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act this week. Once again, a brazenly cruel hoax has been perpetrated upon the American people, by the run amok, unelected Bush regime. Coincidentally, the passage of this sinister legislation constitutes the actual incarnation of George Orwell's nightmarish world portrayed in his classic novel 1984.

We shouldn't be too surprised at this revolting development, however. When corporations pervade and influence every aspect of our lives - including the subversion of democracy to corporate rule - it follows that corporations would finally orchestrate the government's every move. That day has arrived. Welcome to Orwell's century.

As a result of the Pentagon's newly created Total Information Awareness program, an immense database for spying on and tracking the daily activities of every American's every move; our civil liberties have been subverted. Henceforth, nothing any of us says or does will be private. The Corporate States of America will know everything we do. Big brother is watching; and he is taking notes.

The Total Information Awareness program will be administered by none other than John Poindexter, Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor during the Iran Contra scandal. Poindexter, it should be remembered, was convicted of five felonies - convictions later overturned when Congress granted him immunity from prosecution. Poindexter is just one of many criminals who have found a comfortable home in the Bush administration's House of Lords.

As a result of this new legislation, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights might as well be shredded and used for toilet paper. We have no rights; we have no privacy; we have no civil liberties. We have no recourse to the courts for redress. From this moment forth, our lives will be lived in total transparency. But that is not the case for the Corporate States of America's board of directors.

The Corporate States of America - formerly known as the United States of America - is now permitted to operate in virtual secrecy, without citizen oversight or participation. Until recently, citizens could force the disclosure of government documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Under the provisions of the Homeland Security Act, FOIA requests are now greatly restricted, and may be denied for any reason. What we have now is a corporate oligarchy that answers to no one. This is a government that forbids citizen participation; a government that refuses to disclose its actions to the people. From now on America will operate with the secrecy of a corporate board room. This is the kind of America we have allowed to happen.

The board of directors of the Corporate States of America operates in a shroud of secrecy like the multi-national corporation it has become. Even worse, the Corporate States of America regards itself as all powerful - omnipresent - it is not only above the law; it is the law. Its sole purpose is to maximize its own power and to increase its wealth at minimal expense to itself. Like Microsoft, its goal is market saturation; global domination. God help anyone who gets in its way.

How did we allow these events to transpire? How did we allow voracious corporations to take the very things we reputedly hold most dear from us? It happened because too many of us weren't paying attention. We were silent in the face of injustice. We refused to believe that our government was capable of such sedition. We turned our backs on truth, and hid our heads in the sands of self-deception and indifference. We didn't want to appear to be unpatriotic. We feared the ridicule of those in power. We chose not to participate in government at a time when we could participate; we left that to rich white men who subsequently shaped it in their own audacious image. We forfeited our say in government by capitulating to extremists such as George Bush and Carl Rove. We believed the lies told to us by the corporate media. We never asked questions. We did what we were told. Now, and for generations to come, we will reap the fruit of our labors. And the world will be forced to feed upon the poisoned fruit.

It is sad to contemplate how many good men and women died to protect our civil liberties from foreign powers. It is even sadder to think that so few of us lifted a finger to make their sacrifice meaningful. We sat by and let the corporate dictators destroy the Constitution; we allowed them to render the Bill of Rights moot. We allow them to get away with murder. We permit them to commit global genocide because we can't be bothered enough to get involved. We were too busy consuming goods, holding down multiple jobs, raising children, eating fast food, watching television, trying to get out of debt; and playing at Disney World.

No longer is America the land of the free. We are a nation that cowers in fear and hides from truth. We don't want to know what is happening, much less understand why it happens. We are a nation of slaves in service to the corporate state - the great god of capitalism. We are the living dead; the unburied dead, bereft of will; unwilling to sacrifice any material comfort for what we claim to believe in. Shame! Shame! Shame!

Thank goodness this is still the land of the brave. Thank goodness for America's dissenters; her conscientious minority who refuse to be silent in the face of evil. This is all that redeems our collective soul and makes America worth residing in; this is all that gives us hope for a future worth living and fighting for.

Unless the people of this once great nation awaken and follow the lead of her courageous dissidents, we can anticipate a future that is unimaginably bleak. Through our continued silence in the face of evil, we will participate in perpetual war against the world, and her people. We will survive in utter ignorance of what power is and does. We will sentence other people, both at home and in far away places, to lives of incomprehensible misery and squalor. Is this what we want? Is this the brave new world we imagined in our youth?