Big Brother's Children Hit Puberty.
A child born in 1984 is 16 in the year 2000. He's driving. She's smoking and trying beer. He's part-way through high school. She's experimenting with drugs and sex. They're watching everything around them, and they're hardly being watched at all. They sell their bodies and fire guns to demand our attention, and some realize that they never needed it in the first place anyway, and do as they please behind closed doors, and upon the open streets. Does Emmanuel Goldstein sees these children downing e at raves and dancing their little asses off with their Technicolor hair and skin of a thousand different races? Is he as thrilled as I am? I don't doubt that he is.
We were not swallowed by a million different cultures which would water us down and dilute our minds into old dishwater. We instead swallowed up all the different cultures, and grew a bit stronger, and hopefully wiser, with every mouthful. We came. We saw. We made a whole new world, with something new to us every time we walk out of the house or turn on the TV.
Ours is not a police state. The police are still there, but we've put our cameras over their shoulders and into their cars, and they broadcast across cable television into our homes. It's news and entertainment, and its all for us. You realized what that means? It means that we're the ones who are watching the watchmen. And we're doing it from the comfort of our own homes. The public has taken the place of the secret police, though we're not being all that secret about it. We let them know that we've got at least one eye on them at all times, and though its a technology that is yet in its infancy, over time it might be our best tool for being sure that we, the people, the public, end up being the ones in control of the country and the streets. We become the eyes and the mind, watching over "the long arm of the law".
That's kind of literal too, so long as we're watching everything they're doing, the police cab be just an extension of ourselves. We can guide the law, and we can keep our own tabs on them. Maybe we are a police state, it's just that we're the police now. All seeing, and if we choose, all knowing.
Things aren't quite as gray as may have been expected, either. Our city streets are not some dull dismal place, as may have been expected. The children took them in force, and they brought their finger-paints with them. We are watched, everywhere we go, and with everything we do. But we are also the watchers. There's a power in that.
Not as much liberty ale for the children of 1984. And shit, why would there be? Why drink something harsh and bitter that tears at your throat and does nothing but make you a bit more numb to the coldness of the world? Instead, these children are downing pills like Alice trying to survive down the rabbit hole, growing smaller and taller, and always faster and faster. What does a drug like ecstasy say about these kids? That they would even give their drug such a name? In the late 60's, it was "Acid", a word that implies burning, tearing down. Now one of the most popular drugs of choice is named after a feeling of heightened euphoria. You think there's no power in names? Think again.
These children? They are not afraid. Corporations and governments grow tall like trees; sometimes they grow strong, sometimes they crack and fall under their own weight. These children scurry around them and through them like electric neon-shaded flying squirrels. Big Business moves through the water like sharks, hungry and unable to survive without forward motion. The children born of 1984 move like giant schools of miniscule fish, darting around the teeth of monsters like pure quicksilver and with no fear for the old, ugly creatures. They can live within the belly of the beast without fear.
They are the spawn of the system, and that's allowed them to understand it better then any of us. We raised them within a motor-home, teaching and instructing them, thinking that someday they'd take over the controls from us when we got to old to drive anymore. Instead, all those years on the road taught them to build their own tires and gears, taught them to adapt them naturally like an ever-evolving bacteria or virus. For whatever the sickness, they shall adapt the cure. They are, culturally speaking, a penicillin smart-bomb.
I heard it stated once that the number one killer of young, male African-Americans, was young, male African-Americans. The children of 1984 are playing that game too. It seem though, that nobody is as willing to take as large a chunk out of their numbers as they themselves are. In the past, we had some wars that could do a nice job of thinning the numbers of youth's heard, but we've left a lot of that shit behind us now. So when it gets a bit over-grown, the plant now grooms itself, cuts off the parts that it doesn't need. It's a bit gruesome to watch, especially when you get it on the 6 o'cock news, crying mothers and all, but it is effective. Can't argue with that.
And through it all, through everything we, and they, can throw at them, they'll survive. It's what they do best. They're like the roaches that'll cheerfully live through an atomic bomb before breakfast. They whisper secrets in their unknown tongues that we wouldn't understand even if we were allowed to know. Human bodies, reptile eyes, and brains that spew circuit boards twisted into Zen metaphors. Lazy little punks with irritating music who spend too much time fucking and playing video games. A child born in 1984 doesn't give a fuck about what you think.