Of course, the real name is “Enemy of the State.” It was made over twenty years ago, before 9-11, before the Patriot Act, and before Google, Amazon, Facebook, and the others came to own so much of our lives. Such as: If you rent the movie from Disney today to watch via Comcast, the language in it has been changed to protect the feeble-minded. It’s still English. And the new definition of feeble minded is anybody who has an independent thought. But we’ll get to that later.
For many Americans, “Enemy of the State” must have been the first notion of the erosion of Fourth Amendment rights we have all experienced to a frightening degree since Y2K. The movie graphically portrays the then-new, incredible power of cameras, microphones, and computers to track our movements, monitor our communications, and shape our lives. Once the 9-11 attacks got everyone into a fright about terrorism, it was relatively easy for the government to pass the Patriot Act making invasion of privacy legal. The brilliant TV series “24” laid out the advantages of the surveillance state in great and dramatic detail re the war on terror. But heeding the cautionary tale of “Enemy of the State” would have served us better.
The CCP is way ahead in the race for surveillance state singularity. Throughout much of China, the social scoring system is fully in place, fed mainly via each citizen’s required smart phone. Thus they can control all political, artistic, and economic thought of their citizens and punish those who don’t toe the party line. Now, in celebration of Trump’s downfall, Twitter and the like are suppressing free speech and ratting out the uncooperative. Big Tech is goose stepping right along with the CCP.
If you rent “Enemy of the State” today from Disney, when Will Smith actually says “nigger” you will instead hear him say “eggplant.” You’ve got to give whoever came up with “eggplant” points for whimsy. But in this construct, “eggplant’ can be substituted for any concept uncomfortable to the Party, not just the easily-offended or feeble-minded. You could just as easily substitute “eggplant” for “conservative,” “stop the steal,” “Trump voter,” and say, the “Bill of Rights.” By the same token, “no evidence” can be expanded to mean “no evidence a judge in this world is brave enough to bring into court,” or “no evidence anyone on the left wants to see.” Or you can just say “eggplant.”
The takeaway is that we are indeed living 1984 when words don’t mean anything a la Newspeak. Big Brother is watching you. Go against the party line and you will be punished. If you don’t like it, tough eggplant.
For a two-page PDF statement of where Way Out Charlotte Pike is coming from, please CLICK HERE.
