Love, love, LOVE when people born in the mid-90’s liken modern day America to now defunct police states like East Germany. I find that the deep, personal, knowledge and insight that they bring about countries that ceased to exist years before they began to exist never fails to spark both awe and wonder.
Such was the case on NBC’s The Player Thursday night, in an episode titled “House Rules,” as Alex Kane (Philip Winchester) aka “The Player,” was tasked with rescuing this millennial whiz kid who had succeeded in hacking the NSA and thus had made himself a marked man. All was going well, for both “Player” and computer geek. Until, the geek delves into his thoughts on the Patriot Act:
Winchester: Guys like you, you never think about your actions. You just hide behind your monitors, playing games with people's lives.
Whiz Kid: Look, first of all, the virus was already there when I hacked in, okay? And second, you've got to be aware of the Orwellian nightmare this country is living in right now. Between the NSA and the Patriot Act, it's borderline East Germany.
This computer geek may have successfully hacked the NSA, but if he had ever successfully hacked Google or Encyclopedia Britannica he would feel pretty silly about saying that. The Stasi, who would have been in charge of running anything similar to the “Patriot Act” in East Germany, was essentially the East German KGB.
They were known for kidnapping and imprisoning not just capitalists and Western sympathizers but even the environmentalists, philosophers, and book and newspaper publishers that millennials today think are so cool.
That would never happen in America today. No, today, we only imprison Christian County clerks in Kentucky.
