What they must think of us.

"We hope you might be interested in helping to sell this book to the attention of the American public -- and thus, perhaps, helping to halt totalitarianism."
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., plugging their new novel 1984 to J. Edgar Hoover, 1949.

We must confess that with each new disclosure of the government's attempts to gather information, we feel a certain thrill of curiosity: how much do they know about us?

Everything we do may very well be seen, and everywhere we go we are likely filmed, and everything we read or watch is probably (certainly) logged -- if that is not precisely true that it might as well be, in terms of any expectations of actual privacy we should have. It has almost become difficult to be shocked by how ready our government has been to follow Orwell -- or in fact precede him, as the FBI files make clear. (Amusingly Orwell's file includes a 1959 clip from an East German newspaper which identifies America as the target of 1984 -- and so we have two parties, standing on opposite sides of a two-faced mirror, both pointing and laughing.)

Most of us, in approaching this understanding, take dubious comfort from the fact that no matter how strange, embarrassing, questionable, or downright appalling our private behavior may be, and in fact is, there will always be somebody worse, and hence only those on the bottom rungs -- criminals -- need worry. With so many to keep under observation, we say to ourselves, that the government will only bother to pass judgment on those who truly deserve it. "He who understands all forgives all," as somebody said -- we can't remember who. And if pride tickles us (who are they to "forgive" me?) at the notion, we swallow it. Modernity is no place for self-respect.

Yet we here at DHAIP cannot feel quite bring ourselves to feel complacent. With all that information being collected, somewhere, it would take true saints not to misuse it, just a little, here and there, to find some sneaky way to alter public opinion, to quell a loudmouthed dissident, to silence a troubling rumor. And there are no saints, not in public office.

How to combat this? Short of storming the Bastille, as it were, burning files in the streets and forcibly reclaiming our private lives, all we can suggest is that everyone reading this should make a point, every so often, of behaving slightly oddly... finding something uncharacteristic, even eccentric, to do, and in public. Buy a controversial book. Watch a banned film. Loudly accuse a DMV employee of fascist sympathies. Take different trains. Make misleading statements to pollsters and television news crews. Take an unmerited sick day and use it to lurk in shady establishments. Cultivate a stutter. Repeatedly and doggedly espouse unpopular opinions. Call random strangers and speak in code. Weep in front of police officers. Giggle uncontrollably during performances of the National Anthem. Make special trips to stare fixedly at public buildings. In short: give them a headache. And you'd better start now; recall for a moment the hysteria that gripped this country following 9/11, the hysteria that was ready and lurking and waiting to leap out and will again, no doubt, you can clearly see that soon enough headaches will be illegal. For the moment, nonsense constitutes our closest acquaintance with freedom.


"One night, I was, as usual, observing the sky with my telescope. I noticed that a sign was hanging on a galaxy one hundred million light years away. On it was written: I SAW YOU. I made a quick calculation: the galaxy's light had taken one hundred million years to reach me, and since they saw up there what was taking place here a hundred million years later, the moment when they had seen me must date back two hundred million years.

"Even before I checked my diary to see what I had been doing that day, I was seized by a ghastly presentiment...."

--Italo Calvino, "The Light-Years"