The Surveillance State
By: Duke Kell
The Surveillance State, By Duke Kell
Copyright © 2016 by Two Ton Productions.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Freedom Files
Dax’s studio apartment, 2091
I put down the book The Weed War and began thinking about what I would say to Abby about it on Saturday. The 8x10 room was large for a single man during the corporate times, but since the second revolution the badlands were opened up, and people flooded them, hoping to start farms and new lives. I couldn’t see myself leaving the city, so I stayed and a larger room became available. It’s so strange having this much space. I can’t even imagine what the people did in 2019 with their huge mansions in the place they called suburbia. The pictures are so crazy. It was if they believed they had no effect on their environment. After reading The Weed War it’s easy to see why. They were manipulated in their free society the same way we were in the corporate days. The Germans from World War II were also manipulated into a hate-driven ideology which became their downfall. The people who bankrolled the Nazis then turned their sights on the world and began the same routine. These people or groups of families were driven by fear of the Communist movement which erased the inequity of the past and stripped the wealthy of their property, possessions, and money. Fascism became their only hope; Bonito Mussolini said that ‘Fascism should rightly be called corporatism.’ I find it strange that they didn’t see it, as it was right under their nose. They even participated in it freely, giving away all that they had by voting for fear and hate.
It is astounding the positions the people would fight for even in the face of reason and absolute scientific proof, which shows us just how dangerous power can be. They justified the laws by lying or pandering to political or religious factions that they knew people would vote for. Divide and conquer that is what they did.
I took notes as I thought of the things Abby would hopefully think were witty or deep.
I woke up the next morning with my face in my notebook and my pen still in my hand. Luckily I had moved to the bed at some point, so I wasn’t stiff everywhere.
***
When Abby walked in and the light caught her silky gray hair, my breath was stolen by her beauty. As she walked straight toward me, her grace made it seem like she was floating. I leaned in and gave her a hug, trying not to get too close. My racing heart would be even more revealing than my bright red face.
“Hello, Dax,” she whispered as we embraced.
Time stood still for a brief moment.
“I’m so happy you were able to make it,” I said before waving over to her seat.
She slid into the bench seat and I followed, doing the same directly across from her. We had our pleasantries, ordered a meal, and some drinks and began our dissection of The Weed War.
I can’t remember the fine details about the conversation, because I was unusually tongue-tied and enamored with this woman, her wit, her words and her mastery of communication. When I talked, she stared deep into my eyes, hanging on my words and she never interrupted me. After every point I made she would repeat the gist of my assertions, then pause to think of her retort. At first the silence was uncomfortable, but I realized that in those pauses I could see her as she truly was, perfect. I don’t mean perfect like those people from the twenty first century and their plastic faces. No, Abby was perfect because you could see the wisdom in those lines, in that hair. Yes, she was beautiful, but hearing the depth of her mind made me long for her touch and magnified her beauty a hundred fold.
We ate and talked for hours until they kicked us out because they needed the table. I walked her to apartment complex only a few blocks away on the same level of the city. As we approached the front door to her building, my heart began to race and my mind splintered into a thousand different thoughts. Should I kiss her? Was this a real date? Should I ask for her number? Luckily, before I could make any headway on my own, she reached down and grabbed my hand, turned, pulled me in, and kissed me. I nearly fainted from the rush of blood to my head. Her lips were smooth and soft and her perfume was intoxicating.
“Thank you for the lovely date, Dax, it was just divine.” She smiled and handed me a piece of paper. “Here is my number. You can call me at any time.”
I didn’t know what to say, I felt like I was a young boy lost in a boyhood crush and when she finally kissed me, my words failed me.
“Ok.” That’s all I said.
I couldn’t believe it. She smiled like a Cheshire cat, turned around, and left me standing there.
“Ok.” I couldn’t think of anything better to say than OK. Needless to say, the maglev train ride home was one of mixed emotions, but overwhelmingly it was the positive side that won. I’m pretty sure I found myself even skipping a few times between the stop and home. Who skips? Apparent I skip when my heart has been stolen.
The Freedom Files
Class 3
University of California, Berkeley, 2191
Tuesday’s class couldn’t come soon enough. Abby and I talked on the phone a number of times, but I just didn’t want to wait to see her. I even looked up some awesome quotes to use in class so I could impress her. We arrived at the same time and found seats near the front.
The former President entered the room from the back of the stage as was her normal routine, fumbled through her things, pulled out a stack of old books, and lifted one in the air before asking, “Who can tell me what this is?”
Gasps filled the auditorium. Then a young lady in the front of the class blurted out that it was the only remaining copy of her diary, the one her brother published after her death.
“Yes.” The president smiled and closed her eyes for a second. It was clear that the book in her hand held a great deal of significance for President Verdusco, because in all my years I had never seen her show her emotions until that moment. She opened her tear filled eyes and said. “When Harley and I wrote The Weed War, we hoped for change, but we never fully grasped what our actions would bring. This diary opened our eyes and ultimately led us to all of the works that we will be reading in this class.” She set it down on the podium took a deep breath and dove in. “So you read the weed war and I’m sure you did your homework on its importance to the revolution and the second constitution. That being said, what amendments were added, using this book as our justifications and why?”
I was called on first, and an upwelling of pride flushed through me before I began. “The first amendment added because of this book was, the money out of politics amendment or Amendment 29, which calls for general funds to be distributed equally between candidates and prohibits politicians from accepting money from anyone as it is a form of bribery. Thomas Jefferson wrote about it in the early stages of the union. ‘Vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and moneyed in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.’ Unfortunately they were unable to stop this aristocracy in the 1700’s, and in 1994 the storied twentieth century philosopher Norm Chomsky wrote of Jefferson’s assertion, ‘The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government f
alls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.’ We had to add the amendment, because the money took away the power of the vote and allowed for manipulation of the system. If we were to live up to Lincoln’s words ‘Government of the people by the people and for the people.’ we needed to even the playing field.
“Wow, someone did their homework,” Abby whispered when I finished.
“Excellent, Dax,” President Verdusco said. “Does anyone else care to expand? Maybe something from Adam Smith.”
A guy behind me said, “Adam Smith dismissed corporations as a leftover remnant of the Middle Ages and the dismal failure of the feudal period.”
The president smiled. She knew someone would take her bait and like a skilled angler, she slowly reeled us in. “The American system of economics was slowly whittled away by those moneyed corporations Jefferson so eloquently spoke of. It was replaced with Objectivism, Fascism and a laissez faire economic approach that relied heavily on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Sadly, with the climate of manipulation, the people failed to check their sources. Instead, they relied on the media and their elected officials to give them the truth. It’s comical that corporate politicians could quote from Adam Smith in one hand and kowtow to their corporate masters in the other and convincingly tie the two together. Joseph Gobells said. ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.’ So what was this lie and how did it affect our decisions in the second continental congress?”
Hands flew up, but she didn’t call anyone. Instead, she pressed a button on the podium and a hologram of words appeared above her. She pointed to the first set of words with a laser pointer. “Invisible Hand,” she read slowly, “is the first part of the lie and tied to Adam Smith. The architects of this lie were smart, using fear of Communism and anything tied to it as the boogey man. They chose only portions of Adam Smith’s economic theory and failed to heed his warnings about the concentration of wealth and externalization of production costs. These men of industry and financial wizards alike ignored Mr. Smith’s positions on trade, on corporations, on power, and on class. They tied the invisible hand to God, implying that governments were interfering with the divine plan and used politicians and the media to spread their lie.
Then she pointed to free market. “This could be said for free trade as well. Adam Smith wrote his book to reflect the governments of his time, mainly dictatorships and monarchies. Those forms of government were highly centralized and corrupted by an aristocracy that made all of the decisions. Smith favored a protectionist approach that by giving the people a free market would insure national prosperity even if that wasn’t the business owner’s intent. Adam Smith insisted that business owners who were moral would invest his money domestically because it was the right thing to do. His vision of the free market had nothing to do with the laissez-faire movement of Milton Friedman's and his assertion that ‘underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.’ It should be noted that Mr. Friedman was the economic advisor for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
By the time the 1980’s hit, the majority of the country had heard politicians from both sides of the political divide claim their allegiance for free market capitalism, under the assumption that to do otherwise would be to disavow freedom itself. Politicians reinforced this part of the lie by dismantling every protection the people had against what would come to be known as crony capitalism. If all of these so-called experts would have noticed the key word ‘domestic’ in the only paragraph Adam Smith wrote about the Invisible Hand, they would have seen the error in their judgment.”
She pushed a button, a quote flashed up, and she read it. “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security, and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”
She stopped and paused, then said, “The word ‘domestic’ is the key here, and we found the same preference when we examined, Alexander Hamilton’s The American System.”
She pointed up at the last two bullet points floating in the air. “Laissez Faire and Objectivism became the financial industry’s objective, and they obtained it by telling the people that anything less was tyranny. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this happened over night. The parties involved began this mantra at the inception of the country. Over a two hundred year period they told the lie in every possible way until the majority of the county believed it. In late 2007, the stock market crashed and the country bailed out the banks instead of the people. People began to wake up and take notice. Why would our government do such a thing? By the time the weed war was in full swing, it was evident, that our politicians had been sold to the highest bidders. This is why as Dax said we passed the money out of Politics amendment. Then we also passed another amendment from this book. Can you tell me what it is?”
Someone on the far side of the room was called on.
“The prohibition on prohibition,” the student responded.
She said, "I’ve heard it referred to as that, but it is really called the individual liberty amendment.” Amendment 30 prohibits any laws that infringe upon an individual’s right to decide what they do with their freedom, including privacy, what they ingest, or inhale, or how they conduct their life as long as it doesn’t infringe on another person’s same right. The third article of this amendment also prohibits business from prying into a person’s personal life, including data mining of students’ schooling, health records, past convictions, and drug tests. The fourth article excludes corporations, religions, and co-ops as they are not people and are not afforded the same rights.”
She looked at her watch and said, “I’ve got a couple of minutes to pull all this together. Mr. Borinski’s classroom which I had the privilege to attend, afforded me the opportunity to see outside my own personal perspective and challenged the very foundations of my world. Every day that I am fortunate enough to be alive in this new frontier, I thank the Creator for leading me into knowledge and reason. Our country and the world owe a great deal of appreciation for the man who sacrificed himself so that we may be free. The two amendments we discussed are really only the tip of the iceberg when we look back at the importance Borinski had on the second revolution. We can also see with our own eyes the destruction that the big lie tying the free market and the invisible hand to objectivism and laissez faire economics had on freedom. Back room deals became the norm as the concentration of wealth created a vacuum of power and political influence. Millions of lives were ruined, and people spent years in prison to further a profit-based agenda set by private industry. Money bought the prohibition of marijuana and laid the foundation or road map for the completion of the coup that eventually gave our country to the corporations. The people didn’t see the slavery in the sweatshops, the dumps of waste, or the massive carbon imprints these corporations had, because they thought the invisible hand would take care of it. When I’m here in Apple, on campus, I often explore level one and find myself drawn to the water’s edge where you can still view the tops of the building peacking out of the water. It’s been nearly 60 years since fossil fuels became obsolete and we’re still not sure if we will be able to turn the tide on climate change. Our world bled and we were all nearly destroyed, but we are a resilient species, and with the help of technology we are helping the planet make a comeback. We must always study the past and make sure that we never allow again the
taint of greed to infect our democracy.”
She pushed a button and all her holograms disappeared. “Please read The Surveillance State and be prepared to discuss it in the next class.”
***
Abby and I sat there waiting for the auditorium to empty before we began to discuss the class and the implications of our discussion. Abby was beaming with excitement and her words danced off her lips. A few stragglers stopped and listened but never became fully engaged and I got the feeling like they were stopping more to gawk at the two oldest students they had ever seen.
In retrospect, we were something of an anomaly, leftovers from the corporate world, trying to find our place in a free society. Neither of us was ever married because our place in society wouldn’t allow for such unions. Abby was an office cleaner and I was sanitation specialist, so we were relegated to the life that came with bottom rung jobs, no education, no training, no marriage and never any personal connections. We had no Idea that the breakfast they fed us daily was fortified with birth control, appetite suppressors and hormone suppressors, We never desired interaction with others because we were so chemically altered.
Most of our counterparts and colleagues didn’t take advantage of their newly earned freedom and they stayed in the jobs that they knew. Abby and I had no desire to allow some test we took when we were twelve to dictate our future. For the others in the class the corporate world was nothing more than a scary bedtime story as most of them weren’t even born yet when the second revolution began. Still, they knew something was strange with the two of us because it was so unusual to see older people in an educational setting.
I’m not sure why the young people didn’t seem as interested in the class as we were, but it didn’t matter. We were lost in philosophy, enamored with theory and smitten with each other. After a good half an hour, a man came in with a mop and a bucket. He asked us to relocate because he would be locking up after he finished and didn’t want any footprints on his newly cleaned floor.