I should really be in bed with the lights out, asleep. Instead, I'm at my computer and pretending I have something to write about. I don't though. I will try. I believe they called it a "free write" in school. But then again, I guess everything I've ever written here has been a free write. I don't think much about anything before I go to set it down in ASCII which itself is a code made up of binary. Ones and zeros. It isn't permanent. Nothing I write here is.

I finished reading "1984" today. It is one of those books that one is supposed to read in high school. Aside from "Catcher in the Rye," I don't think I read any other standard high school books back then. Other classes read "The Great Gatsby" and the like. I can't really remember what I read. I was in accelerated English courses with teachers who liked to teach more contemporary books. That is ok, but sometimes I feel like I need to play cultural catch up. So that's what I did with "1984." First of all, I think it is a really good book. I am amazed at how often I've seen and heard references to it. People speak of things as "Orwellian." The words "doublethink" and "doublespeak" are used on a regular basis. "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." I think it is easy to dismiss the book as an extreme, worst-case scenario fantasy, but I think that is wrong. In every time people are told to subjugate themselves to a cause. Sometimes the cause may be just, but once the people give up their power the chain reaction has begun.

I don't think that our country is in mortal danger from foreign enemies, but listening to the president and the majority of congress it would be easy to believe just that. Just the other day I was reading "1984" while waiting for a bus. I read a headline in the newspaper machine that, of course, was timely; something along the lines of "Wiretapping Rules Expanded."

Expansion of wiretapping. Relaxation of rules that keep the government from listening to everything that we say on the phone. The argument that it is needed is that terrorists may be using different phones, or mobile phones. But realistically these new rules are going to be used more on domestic criminals than international terrorists. When we give up our freedoms willingly we will have no protections when we actually need them. Those who are not with us are with the terrorists. That line still rings out in my mind. Our government wants to act in secrecy all the while telling us that what they do is for us. But they won't tell us what is happening, because then the terrorists may find a weakness. Two main flaws there. 1) I don't trust other people to do what is best for me. They need to prove it to me. The government must act with transparency. 2) The idea that acting with transparency would expose weaknesses in our country is a fallacy. It is the same argument that Microsoft has used to protect its source code. If one must be so worried about transparency betraying secrets, maybe the problem is deeper.

I don't know. This is really an entry that should be more planned out. Usually I hate bumper stickers, and hate even more people who quote them. I'm going to break my own rule. It is my fucking diary, so there.

If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.

I hope the insanity is corrected because we are always, always just a few steps from 1984.