ΩNow that everybody's getting up to speed on the surveillance thing, we can talk about it without getting bogged down in the prologue, the what, or the why.
We're approaching a moment that will probably go completely unrecorded, unremarked on, when the critical mass of the on-camera and aware tips toward the acceptance of the mediated life.
The concerted effort put into ennabling and encouraging that acceptance by the powers behind the screen, who/whatever they are, with show after show of people getting used to the idea, then begging for a chance to be on; on camera 24/7, on dates, with roommates, in funniest home reality moments, knowing you're on camera from the moment you pull into the supermarket parking lot; all of it, handheld streetlight-mounted built-in or satellite, a burst of divine recognition, only that isn't God's eye up there.
The Broadcast Tower of Babel.
Condominiums and restaraunts and every kind of entertainment imaginable by people like you, all available in the six-sided fish tank of total artifice.
Politicians live there already, anybody with paid security over $500.00 a month lives there already. You wake up to that knowing in the back of your mind the record of your waking up is there, like an echo, someone may be, could be, and depending on your importance, is, watching you scratch your ass and yawn and head for the toilet.
These guys have had to accept the presence in their daily lives of a potential, or actual, someone, passively auditing their every move. The potential for complete control of the human environment that gives is the ultimate National Socialist wet dream. And it's real now. We're doing it. Or having it done to us.
Too many of us still think 'the government' is behind the technology, receiving the images, tracking the plates. Like Ashcroft is anything more than a barking carnie at the entrance to some hastily erected canvas and cheap poster paint. The natural response is to see something mighty, because it's so damned big, and has so much power over our lives and deaths.
But it's more like a bunch of auto-run software, written and deployed by asocial failures, the flagged results getting processed by self-selecting representatives of the commonest denominator. The FBI thinking of themselves as representative defenders of 'normal' people.
But nobody told them that that perfect mid-graph position was moving, was falling, was on its way down. Today's normal is the whining pussy of 10,000 years ago.
There was a little burst of radical optimism back in the 70's at the prospect of the people taking the means of imaging to their own purpose, repurposing the jackbooted lens, but I don't see it yet. The files are there I'm sure, at least some of them. But the total volume dilutes the impact of the specific. I remember the same smugness coming through the walls from way back, back when ashtrays were on each desk of every public official and it was big news that Negroes were buying brand-new station wagons and moving into brand-new suburban homes, or trying to.
The authority-worship and passive surrender to unseen guidance that is a base requirement of too much Christian fellowship has played a huge part in the set-up of this mirror world. This paradise without euphoria, heaven without salvation, without angels and the dear departed, without golden streets and mansions, the heaven of the all-seeing God, the heaven of complete worship and fear, but no eternal bliss, no love, just secure protection and vengeful omnipotence. You just know the young men have evolved an attitude for it, grim stoic acceptance, active participation with the looked-for release of the good boy, that ten day run outside the sweep, the balance being the freed-up strength as the cameras and more importantly the second and third tier auditors clean up the human trash. Just the way it has to be, for now. Trembling with anticipated reward. But the machine's not all that different from the guillotine in that respect, now that it's on it may just keep on running.
Up ahead I see the faces of the subservient glancing back over their domesticated shoulders with accusation and sorrow as they walk the ramp. Because what? Nobody saved them? I don't know. It creeps me out in a pretty large measure though.
The difference between those who are comfortable with voluntary slavery and those who are vitally dependent on it blurs and disappears. Adolescent snickers as people no one wants for sex or labor vanish from the gene pool.
Some of those Wal-Mart shoppers have to be in there, can survive no other way, others still choose it. The ones who never go in are like beatniks, like Rosicrucians, interesting freaks with no real short-term influence.
Long-term we'll have to see.
Something much bigger than politics runs our lives now. Politics is only the interface.
Karma-wise it feels like the peanut gallery in a game show, or like the children of people who got turned down for a spot in the Oprah Winfrey audience. Something a little wrong in the way you dressed or acted, your values and desires are base and small, but now you run the world.

Happy New Year, little men and women behind the camera and the microphone.
May this be the year your treachery gets its due.