The more I look at what’s going on in our country, especially with our corrupt, power-abuse-y government, the more it feels like we’re all living in Brazil these days. Not the country of Brazil, but the movie Brazil. Just think about it, and you’ll see how apt of a comparison it is.
In the movie Brazil, there is a constant state of terrorism: attacks happen and are planned all the time. And as a result, the government can arrest whoever they want without warrant, and hold them indefinitely, as well as torture them. Sound familiar yet? So naturally, the public is upset by these things, so they’re distracted by the lure of material goods and wealth, as well as a media blitz of superficial fixation that leads to too much plastic surgery. Am I getting it right so far?
Then there is the aspect of the movie Brazil that is the most like our current lives: the government is completely bloated and incompetent, and so people’s lives are irreparably destroyed by simple clerical errors, etc., and there’s no recourse or accountability for such “oversights”. Sounding more and more familiar, with the robo-signing foreclosures of homes not even owned by the banks that ordered the foreclosures, etc.? (Yes, that’s the banks, not the government; but it’s hard to tell the difference these days, when so much money passes between the two, and most crimes go uncharged, never mind unpunished.) And we’re also at the point where our laws and regulations are so voluminous, nobody even knows what’s going on anymore, and people can literally be breaking the law without even knowing it all the time. And now they can be detained indefinitely for such unintentional oversights. (Hey, great!)
Seriously: go back and watch that movie again: you’ll be shocked at how close we are to living in the world in that movie. We’re already 95% there: all we need is for the government to go back to using typewriters again (it would make it harder to hack into government stuff if they went back to typing everything up on paper), and to have little “ducts” installed everywhere. And I’m pretty sure they’re working on that right now. (I heard it’s part of the stimulus package!)
