George Orwell’s classic,1984, is fashionable yet again. According to Amazon.Com, the 64-year-old novel has seen a 24-hour sales increase of 3,300%, an astounding number by any measure.
The following passage may ring a bell:
“Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.”
Even John Barron has written on the staggering similarities between the dystopian future portrayed in 1984 and present-day America. And though John continues to receive an almost daily dose of ridicule from some of the more liberal commenters, constitutional abuses are becoming very hard to ignore. Reporters being targeted for printing unfavorable news, conservative groups harassed by the IRS, election fraud, and NSA wiretapping are only a few examples.
Some of this constitutional molestation goes back to the Bush Administration and the Patriot Act of 2001, but freedom-loving Americans are obliged to admit that the Obama Administration has taken things to an unprecedented level.
Will it end? Will it get worse? And why are Americans so stupid? Why do we allow this to happen?
Sifting Reality 
I think what it boils down to is we as Americans don’t want to believe our government is becoming something to fear. As much as we all grumble of an overreaching government, we really want to think its just us complaining about nothing.
The things we are seeing are right out of a movie, right out of a suspense novel. The government getting phone records, accessing emails, accessing internet searches and histories is very troubling. We think to ourselves, if it’s all true, then I’m one of those tinfoil builderberg conspiracy theorists. I get it, I hate conspiracy theories because they are usually so far out of reality that it’s laughable that anyone would believe them to be true.
This is different, this administration has made the conspiracy a reality and we are doing our best to avoid it. What’s worse is it’s not even a theory, it’s out there, it’s being reported even by the left. We’re in trouble.
We have a saying that translated into English is “Raise crows and they’ll peck your eyes out”.
If you create spy agencies and make laws to bypass constitutional rights you are prone to get affected.
We are spied from everywhere.
Several years ago, I bought a printer with scanner. I wanted to test the scanner and I had a 20€ bill at hand so I used it. Then I tried to open the image with Adobe Photoshop CS and, to my surprise, there was a warning message telling the program couldn’t be used to edit and then it closed. I didn’t have an internet connection at the time, maybe it was lucky.
Isu
I think youre right. Americans have allowed its government to get too large and it has too much authority over our lives. Once you grant the government some power, they never give it back and they always have an excuse as to why it needs to be more.
Your scanner probably just had a program in it that allowed it to detect currency to prevent counterfeiting.
Isu, John is right, there’s an algorithm built into Photoshop that prevents that. It didn’t connect to some external server via some covert way to check whether or not it’s a bill, it’s all automated within the software. For more info on the algorithm, read about the “EURion constellation” on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation. Coming from a computer science background, it’s actually quite fascinating.
I have to admit I was one of those who bought it, for less than $1 on the Kindle, it’s something that’s been on my “to read” list for a little while and this prompted me to buy it.
I just read 1984 and Animal Farm for the first time a couple months ago. Animal Farm was cool and 1984 actually invoked emotion in me. I wasnt expecting that.
John, I’ve finished 1984 (much faster than anticipated; I’m not a fast reader and did it over 2 days.) There could certainly have been many endings to it and I can understand the way you felt after reading it. It probably isn’t an ending that most modern readers would anticipate (thanks to Hollywood) if they had no knowledge of the book before reading.