Lyle's Blog

Years ago I pulled a month of guard duty in the Army. Being a good guard is hard work, at least for me. No it’s not physical work; it’s mental. Staying alert was difficult. Staring out into oblivion is boring. These days I’m watching current events; guarding your future is anything but boring. Life is changing at a continually more rapid pace and all that was stable or predictable is not. Good is being called evil and vice-versa. That which was common sense is deemed prejudiced. So I’m watching. It’s as though we find ourselves in the “Twilight Zone”, an alien to the circumstance we thought we knew so well. Everything is known; what we assumed was private is not. Cyberspace holds our thoughts in a cloud. Do we even know what personal information the internet is spreading globally about us. We search for things on the web and we find an ad for that thing we looked for two days ago. There is a war going on and the spoils are the information each one of us hold dear. “They” know who we are, where we are, our likes, dislikes, our politics, our dreams; in short everything. With the advent of a one-payer healthcare system we will be held accountable for all our thoughts and habits. The system will dictate we further conform or lose the “privilege” of coverage. Like Winston in 1984 we will comply completely with the state’s dictates; and those that don’t will be re-educated and when graduated, find the cold comfort of a bullet in the brain. My watching continues.