If you want to know how it happens that one day they open some iron gate and stare in horror at what transpired behind its facade, I've watched this before: it gets there little by little. At first who can object to locking up blatant pedophiles? Murderous gang members, violent jailbreakers? Pet eaters! People that sneak under a fence to cut your lawn or babysit your toddler while you're at the golf club or getting those impractical nails glued on? Then later it is everything the person has ever said, or subvoiced, because who knows how acute is the hearing of these android(!) devices? Even if they're drunk, coming out of the spring-loaded waiters of the saloon, or filmed during a fucking rear-ender that made them miss the flight, or game, or date, or the argument with the spouse, the event coming up maliciously as soon as you google their name, because uniquely immigrant names have become very handy! Even if deleted, or requested to scrub for personal injury, defamation, mental agony, no matter how many pages they submit with irrelevant information, because we know well the subtext of the shades of loyalty. Chisled into virtual stone and tethered like an umbilical chord to follow them into college applications, job searches, mortgage appointments, or worse, the taking away of everything - the browser history sewn on the jacket and tagged bright white for all to see in some god foresaken land. What part of Free do you not get? As the goalpost gets moved closer and closer to the dark alley of their fear. They can always leave if they don't like it here. As if here is a permanent dot tattooed on the fabric of the land and not some abstract idea in someone's mind? Point it to the wildlife and see them shrug their shoulder in bewilderment, just like the first white picket fence appeared to the nomadic hunters, just as trees were felled for swift shores full of riches. Riches that did not used to belong to anyone, yet promised to the desperate.


jam25