My cousin has sent me and email asking for my learned opinion on a few topics and I don’t know how to answer her without making it look like I’m calling her moonbat insane.
She asks
Is the world becoming more like “Brave New World”?
Is there an Alaskan Gulag for American citizens?
Does the government want to implant microchips into people to track them?
She acknowledges that these questions skirt the edge of Crazy Conspiracy Theory ™, and figures she should check with me.
I guess I’m the most educated person she knows, which frightens me.
I’ve never read Brave New World, and the Alaskan Gulag one is new to me. I could talk to her about the incarceration of Japanese-descent Americans during WWII, but that probably wouldn’t help. I don’t even know where to start with someone who thinks the government would be organized enough to get microchips into everyone without consent.
What’s the best tactic to take here? She’s not stupid, but she is ignorant and I don’t want to hurt her feelings or overwhelm her with background info. At the same time, there is so much basic information that she is clearly lacking.
Is the world becoming more like “Brave New World”?
Only in the sense that our ability to conceive out of the womb has taken some strides towards the technology in the book, but we haven’t created an artificial womb yet. Other than that, our society is quite different as we still prize relationships and individuality.
Is there an Alaskan Gulag for American citizens?
If there were, we’d heard about human rights violations from many sources, including people in Alaska who’d seen them, taken photos and reported to the media. In the past interment camps were hard to hide, and they’d be even more difficult to hide in this day and age with the advances in video and photo devices.
Does the government want to implant microchips into people to track them?
No. Private companies do, but so far putting chips in people is frowned upon because they’re proving to cause tumors in microchipped animals.
Thanks. elfkin, I like your points about “Brave New World” and the Alaskan Gulags.
However, I can’t stand by the last part about microchips causing tumors in animals. I’m in a field where that kind of information would be really widely announced if there was a hint of a correlation. This is the first I’ve heard of even a whiff of concern.
Digging around a bit on the alaskan gulag idea gets me sites like these, which claim that the camps currently stand empty, waiting for riots or somesuch.
So, invalidating the camps by saying that they would have been independently reported by now and brought up on human rights violations won’t work.
The Alaskan Gulag appears in the pilot episode of Sliders. Of course, the writers might secretly be giant lizard aliens disguised as FBI agents, or something.
How old is your cousin? Does she tend to buy into lots of conspiracy theory stuff already (we didn’t land on the moon, Bush personally blew up the WTC, etc)?
It’s been 40 years since I read Huxley’s Brave New World. As I vaguely remember, he wrote a world where everybody took a calming drug called Soma, reproduction and child-rearing had been taken over by the government, and non-conformists were discouraged. No, we are not close to BNW. Quite a few people are taking anti-depressants and tranquilizer drugs, but the majority of us take no prescription psychoactive drugs. I’m leaving out alcohol, because that wasn’t part of Huxley’s futureworld. Oddly enough, there’s a prescription sleeping pill called Soma®. Almost all of our reproduction and child-rearing is done in the old-fashioned way. We have plenty of non-conformists, and they go their own ways, unhindered.
There’s no Alaskan Gulag. Gulag is the word for political prisons in the former Soviet Union. Generally, the US does not throw dissidents in prison. We are free to speak openly about our disagreements with the government.
As far as I know, no governmental agency has any plans to implant microchips in people. Some local governments have a “house arrest” program for non-violent convicts to carry on a more-or-less normal life (go to work, minimal shopping, stay at home.) These are done with a locking leg cuff, not an implant.
My cousin is about 23. I haven’t had a lot of interaction with her because we’ve always lived in different states, but my impression is that she is very trusting. If someone told her convincingly that this stuff was true, she would take them at their word.
She forwards me emails from time to time about the ACLU trying to prevent soldiers from praying, or The Media ™ pushing religious shows off of tv. When I email her back explaining how unlikely those situations are, plus a link to Snopes.com, she immediately forwards my link to everyone who got the chain letter, apologizing for the misinformation.
Is the world becoming more like “Brave New World”?
Certainly. Visit nearly any college campus to see people divided into groups known by names such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon.
Is there an Alaskan Gulag for American citizens?
Absolutely, and they force them to process those who have died while in the camps into a widely distributed product known as “Cheez-Its” to further line the pockets of a world govenering cabal known as “Sunshine”.
Does the government want to implant microchips into people to track them?
Not only have they already done so, but they can also remotely tabulate your voting preferances on American Idol via these same chips. They know that you love Clay Aiken deep down inside.
