Move over, George Orwell, the surveillance state is here

By Patrice Lewis

There’s a scene in the sci-fi spoof movie “Galaxy Quest” in which actors on a distant planet are spying on cute alien creatures that resemble children. The cynical character Guy – who is the ultimate pessimist – says, “Sure, they’re cute now. But in a second they’re gonna get mean. And they’re gonna get ugly somehow. Then there’s gonna be a million more of them.” The other actors look at him like he’s crazy, but sure enough the cute aliens suddenly get mean, ugly and numerous. As the actors flee from the pursuing creatures, Guy gasps, “I’m so sick of being right!”

That’s me. Sick of being right.

You see, a few weeks ago I wrote a quasi-humorous column suggesting that China’s social credit system was being informally implemented right here in the USA courtesy of such fair and balanced organizations as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.

“Think about it,” I wrote at the time. “The U.S. is in the grip of a progressive mobocracy trying to standardize everyone’s thoughts and actions. Leftists insist you support their side or they will find some way to hurt you – economically, politically, socially, educationally, or in your career.

“Little by little, incrementally, the progressive dominance of politics, schools and the media means conservative thought is being suppressed (at best) or punished (at worst). Don’t believe me? Just consider the number of people afraid to admit their support for Trump lest they have their grades penalized or their job jeopardized or their car keyed. If you’re caught wearing a MAGA hat in public, you’re practically taking your life in your hands.

“Conservatives are heckled in the streets, harassed in restaurants, and have their homes or businesses sabotaged. In school, children are bullied or expelled for expressing Christian opinions or objecting to ‘transgender’ athletes dominating girls’ sports.

“In an unregulated (and some might argue, unhinged) invasion into our privacy, the Google/Facebook/YouTube/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple cabal is listening and tracking everything: what we say, what we research, where we travel, what routes we take, what we buy, and everything else about us. China does the same thing.”

OK, that’s what I wrote (among much else) at the beginning of June. It was supposed to be something of a joke, for Pete’s sake. I had no idea additional evidence would crop up as fast as it did. I’m so sick of being right.

Within days of that column, I started collecting headlines that this kind of dystopian scheme is being implemented right here in America, culminating with screaming headlines on Drudge a few days ago about China’s social credit system coming to Silicon Valley. Consider these stories:

I could go on and on, but you get the point. And I haven’t even touched such issues as YouTube censoring videos by Dennis Prager and Steven Crowder. You’ve seen the media and leftist activists go after Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and of course WND.

The scary thing about America’s credit scoring system is that it’s outside government control. Don’t misunderstand: I don’t like government control, but at least in theory we have constitutional protections (notably the First and Second Amendments). In the eyes of a constitutional republic, a liberal and a conservative are given exactly the same treatment.

But social scores offered by left-leaning corporate tyrants means everyone and anyone they don’t like are scored low, and the sky’s the limit. If you fall outside the narrow judgmental tyrannical expectations of the Google/Facebook/YouTube/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple cabal, you’re toast.

As a Fast Company article explained: “If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.”

In China, surveillance allows the authorities to rank individuals by degree of “trustworthiness,” and to send anyone it deems unreliable to reeducation camps. When will this happen in America? You can dismiss this as just conspiracy-theory nonsense if you like, but darn it, those conspiracy theories have a nasty habit of coming true.

“Surveillance is … dangerous in formal democracies,” observes Pierre Lemieux. “One reason is that yesterday’s extreme cases often become today’s standard practice. … Until about 2010 … the FBI had more DNA records than the Chinese government (which started later in the competition), although the collection is proceeding so fast in China that America doesn’t ‘win’ the race anymore; per capita, the two countries are now about equal.”

The problem with a surveillance state, Lemieux argues, “is not so much what it knows as what it can do with what it knows. The Surveillance State is dangerous not so much because it violates some standard of privacy, but because surveillance fuels control.”

Move over, George Orwell. There’s a new game in town.

Patrice Lewis

Patrice Lewis is a WND editor and weekly columnist, and the author of "The Simplicity Primer: 365 Ideas for Making Life more Livable." Visit her blog at www.rural-revolution.com. Read more of Patrice Lewis's articles here.


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