If you are a young person and are wondering what the life of your children and grandchildren is going to be like in the United States of America as the Global War on Terror grinds on, watch this. This is a documentary of a recent old style surveillance state.

The Stasi, the East German [GDR] secret police, lacked the sophistication of our own modern surveillance state, but it has served as a model. For instance our current Homeland Security and other domestic DOD armed forces are modeled [I believe] on the military arm of the Stasi. Any time you see a redundant domestic military force like the East German Stasi, the Soviet GRU, the Roman Praetorian Guard, or U.S. Homeland Security you have entered the post-political authoritarian twilight of a nation.

The most chilling moment of this talk, after Knabe compared Cold War East Germany to George Orwell’s 1984, was when the moderator approached and questioned him about current American efforts to know everything about everybody. Knabe stopped, and said in so many words, that the very police state he described as evil and subhuman is justifiable in some modern form, so long as its stated intention is protection against terrorist attack.

What a colossal douche bag.

In the U.S. the NaziSurveillanceArmy has an entire world to monitor, not just a small regional state, so you should have plenty of time to watch the vice close and perhaps evolve your own method for living below the political horizon. Pay particular attention to the informant policy, and the ‘bio-degradation system’ described by Knabe, which may well be the basis for the world of your grandchildren.

This is fascinating.

This is frightening.

This is the future.

The upside is systems like this don’t last, so your great, great grandchildren have a good shot at living as 22nd Century humans, unless we go to universal micro-chipping. If that happens it’s all over.

Really, science-fiction writers should not be permitted to watch this kind of thing.