Thought Police Don't Knock
Free Verse (#free) 30 July 2016by John Anderson © 2016 See Collection => Email comments and feedback to John
Every sound uttered is overheard
Every movement scrutinized on CCTV
Every key-press on Internet recorded and stored.
The Thought Police do not knock,
do not need your permission to snoop.
Live the guarded, constrained life,
knowing you are being watched.
Leave no trail, wipe your footprints,
clear your web browsing data,
de-friend Facebook, sanitise who you meet out with.
Careful he might hear you, see you,
tap your thoughts, any time, any where, for any good reason.
Don't think outside of the box; you'll be dumped in a cell.
Don't bend the rules; they will snap-back and bite you.
Don't try to be different; you'll stand-out in the bunch.
Huddle in the crowd of sameness.
The auto-correct process will ensure all basic rules are met and kept.
We cannot allow any innovation, now can we?
Thought Police need to watch on to keep freedom alive,
keep you safe by putting bounds on freedom.
But, the good guys' freedom is chained up
because the bad guys erred, and need to be stopped.
It all done for your own good.
Guilty until proven innocent now the rule.
Gumption's assumption - you're tarred bad or could be bad.
So you've got to be so careful,
Don't wait for the knock.
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Background: Inspired by this extract from the novel Nineteen Eight-Four by George Orwell, June 8, 1949
"How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork....they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard,....every movement scrutinized."
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