U.S. Surveillance and Government Control Are Right Out of Orwell's Prophetic 1984

by Jack Bragen

If you are a fish, the thing you never see is water. Those who live in an all-controlling society may not see the many forms of surveillance and social control in our society. The following are some, not all, of the ways our society resembles that of George Orwell's prophetic portrait of a totalitarian society in his novel, 1984.

1. Control of the mass media
The mass media is controlled to exclude all viewpoints except "Liberal" and "Conservative." In American society, either you are Liberal, or you are Conservative. It seems extremely limited that all people should fall into one of those two groups. If you are a member of the Liberal group, you ascribe to a certain set of beliefs, values and ways of doing things. If you are Conservative, the same thing can be said, only with a different set of beliefs that cause you to oppose the liberals.

The fact that we automatically think in terms of people being liberal or conservative indicates that we have already been programmed to think in this limited way. What if you are "Purple-itive" and you believe in a set of values that don't agree with the Liberal or Conservative groups?

Secondly, the news media excludes huge amounts of facts from us that it feels we don't need to know. If we want the facts of a situation, we basically need to go there in person. This is not practical for most of us. We don't have access to these facts. Some of these facts transpire in other parts of the world; others are across town. If the reportage doesn't fit in with what we are supposed to hear about, we never hear it. "What you don't know can hurt you."

2. Control of transportation
Our automobiles are designed deliberately to keep us coming back to the gas station. Cars could be marketed that ran on something other than gasoline. Most cars only go a few hundred miles between fuel fill-ups. The fact that all fuels other than gasoline are excluded is an Orwellian fact, not a fact of the state of technology. The fact of cars requiring gasoline that you must get through oil imports is a way to keep you coming back. If the price goes higher, you have to pay it; you have no choice.

If your car ran on alcohol, you could have a distillation machine in your backyard and make your own fuel. George Bush would not allow this. Cars can be made to run on alcohol. You will probably never see an alcohol-powered car on the road.

Any mode of transportation other than automobiles requires some form of ID, clearance, and search. There will be a record of all your movements around the country or around the world. You can never travel without your travel being documented, and subject to approval.

3. Control of money
All income is subject to reporting. Monetary transactions have become a highly complex and strange system that you have to work within to appreciate the meaning. The science of accounting is gobbledygook that everyone agrees to adhere to, and therefore it works for some people. It has no connection to physical reality. But all financial transactions are monitored and the information can be shared between banks, credit card companies and government agencies.

4. Control of our bodies via the medical establishment
Doctors have too many legal liberties of what they can do to us against our will. They also are able to fool us into going through surgeries or procedures that might worsen our condition or kill us. If they make our health worse, and we then require more follow-up care, then they make that much more money on us. The basic premise of many doctors is wrong: that we need to mess with the human body because it's not okay the way it is.

Governmental control through the health care system can take place when we are trying to get our expensive treatment paid for, or when we are trying to get our expensive prescriptions filled, or when we are trying to collect disability benefits. Also, the health care system is inseparably intertwined with the legal and criminal justice systems.

Bad medical practitioners can directly create suffering. I was present when an intravenous tube was put incorrectly into a relative's arm; the person was screaming in pain for 45 minutes with this wrongly placed tube and was ignored. On the face of it, this might not appear Orwellian, but at the time, it was very much so. You often do not have a say in what happens to your body, due to how the medical establishment is set up to control you.

5. Everyone is ID'd and tracked
Unless you are an illegal immigrant, the government knows exactly where you are and where you have been. The places where it is required to show identification are numerous. You have numbers associated with you. Soon, you could have a microchip implanted or be required to carry a National ID card. There is a record of most of the things you have spent money upon. If you have used cash, your picture has been taken at the ATM.

6. You are often monitored on surveillance cameras
The most insidious aspect of our controlled society is that we do not feel as if we are living in an Orwellian society. We have grown accustomed to this much control, supervision, restraint and punishment. We think it is okay and it is normal for things to be this way. This is a sign of us being brainwashed more than we think.

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Employers' Greed and Unsafe Conditions in the Workplace

by Jack Bragen

I have had a chronic problem keeping jobs, and since 1981, I have held only about a dozen of them for longer than six months. It is not hard for me to blame or trash myself about it, or to resent the employers of the jobs that didn't go well. This overview of hazardous job conditions I've experienced is in the spirit of giving a share of the blame to uncaring corporations, and taking a portion of it off myself.

Many people probably become homeless because an injury at work makes them unable to continue employment. Others cannot tolerate borderline oppressive conditions that exist in the workplace, or further, cannot merge with the "invisible people" -- those who avoid making waves or standing out.

I briefly held a temporary position of fire restoration which followed courthouses being burned down in Concord. The position involved removal of soot from paper files of criminal cases. During the orientation, sheets were passed around for all of us to sign. It was a waiver of liability linked to declining protective gear to prevent inhaling the soot. We were told that we could sign or wear a mask. I didn't sign. Everyone else did. I ended up being the only worker out of hundreds who wore a mask.

A small piece of paper on this mask stated that this mask didn't provide adequate protection. It was a ninety-cent paper mask. As I worked, somebody "important" saw me with the mask on and said to another person, "Find out who this guy is." Substantially later, the files I had cleaned started coming back to me;they were rejected as supposedly not clean enough. I began making these files cleaner and cleaner to try to stem the rejects -- to no avail. Everything came back, no matter how thoroughly and how painstakingly I processed it.

Conclusion: If you want this job, kiss your lungs goodbye, and you can't sue them because you signed the waiver. Adequate protection costs too much money. Money is God.

I briefly held a position as a worker at a car wash in Lafayette. The car wash had a steep downhill slope that the cars encountered as they exited the mechanical wash conveyor. The workers were expected to wipe down the windows on these cars, then get in the car, start the engine, and get the car to stop, park the car, and do the next car -- all this in a space of a few minutes.

There was an emergency stop button to stop the conveyor. I was in a position of getting behind at some point, and attempting to stop the conveyor. The stop button was not clearly marked versus the start button. The red piece of plastic was missing from the stop button so that both the stop and start buttons were black plastic.

A car ended up rolling down this steep slope and slamming into a parked vehicle. Thank God that this rolling car did not go into the busy street, which it easily could have if the other car hadn't been parked there. Doubly thank God that no person stood in the path of this vehicle, as they would have been crushed between two cars.

Furthermore, the disposition of the people who worked at this car wash was nasty and abusive. Lesson: A ten cent piece of plastic is too hard to get to save a life. And we gotta keep the cars rollin' fast so we can make our money.

I had another job doing construction clean-up. While I was moving some heavy pieces of furniture, my entire leg fell into a post hole that wasn't marked. Fortunately, I wasn't injured. At this same job, in ninety degree weather, water wasn't available, and I was not permitted to go get water. I walked off and got my water.

I worked for a photocopier servicing company. Chemicals to clean the innards of the copiers were improperly stored and improperly used. I saw a person blow his nose, and the piece of Kleenex was black from toner he had inhaled. I resigned due to the hostile work environment. Yet my revenge was that I contacted CAL-OSHA, and this agency shut down this company.

My point is this: The evil that exists in greed is where a person or group of people want money and power, and tolerate or relish the harm of other people while they are getting it. Money isn't evil, and neither is the wanting of money. The difference is that the good people are interested in simply working to get the money, and the bad are interested in hurting others to get the money.

Maybe my point is so glaringly obvious that I needn't say it. But anyway, I'm venting. And my message is: Don't blame yourself if you don't fit into the work world. It could actually be a virtue.

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