This really needs to be said. Over the past 15 years or so overall social control has tightened dramatically and become even more brazen. We’re constantly being monitored, being compelled into licensing agreements that require us to sign our rights away; what were previously considered benignly eccentric behaviors now summon the police as a matter of course; online hate mobs ruin the lives of people who express themselves in ways they don’t like; businesses treat their employees like ungrateful children who are “lucky to even have a job;” our political discourse is dominated by loud, angry people who care more about demeaning you than solving their own problems, not to mention politicians who now display open contempt for their constituents.
And the worst part is that this is simply accepted and understood. Of course you don’t argue with flight attendants no matter how unreasonable they’re being because of course they’re going to involve the police, and of course the police are going to treat you like a terrorist because that’s how things work now.
I suspect that this going to become my standard old man rant as younger people grow up having never experienced anything different, and it doesn’t seem that any political or cultural movement is poised to make the statement: “Stop shoving me around.”
