We should not have been surprised last week when we learned that the NSA is working in connection with several large communications companies to monitor all our calls and amass a huge database. This data collection has been going on not just since the 9-11 attacks but, in fact, began as soon as it was clear that George W. Bush would become president in December 2000. The corporados couldn’t wait even until Bill Clinton was out of office.

This development is simply another piece of the fascist puzzle. One of the most important elements of fascism is the melding of big business and government into a seamless whole where one cannot separate the interests of business from those of government. I can’t prove it, but my instincts tell me that the NSA database has very little to do with terrorism and a great deal to do with Orwellian Big-Brother-like control and consumerism. (I have to stifle an ironic laugh when I see the simian-featured George W. Bush in the role of the ubiquitous and black-mustachioed Big Brother, who in Orwell’s classic 1984 is masculine, indomitable, and nothing like our accident-prone chief exec, who faints while eating pretzels. Reality is stranger than fiction.)

Just as Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root—among many others—have greatly benefited from the 9-11 attacks, so apparently have AT&T, Sprint, and Ma Bell along with her several corpulent and nosey children. Under the cover of the “War on Terror” and “protecting our freedom” (pardon another ironic chuckle), the communications giants can now gather all sorts of data on us and share it with the government. The Communications Giants—just for fun I’m going to start calling them CommGis, sort of like Limbaugh’s ChiComms (Communist Chinese)—have been, by the way, legally collecting data on all us little chillens just about forever; but now thanks to Osama (if indeed it was Osama—but that’s another essay) they can share their data with the government and presumably the government, though perhaps not legally (but since when has mere legality stopped GW?), can share data with them, quid pro quo.

Just think of the mutual benefits to Big Brother Big Business (BBBB) and government, which have now amalgamated themselves into the new GovCorp, aka Bush World. The corporados now have access to all our government records. With the aid of massive super computers they can precisely refine just exactly how they will market to us all their myriad needless modern conveniences, gismos, and gewgaws to keep us all mind-fuckingly happy as little clams in our warm and cozy sand. No telling, in another few years (if indeed—perish the thought—they are not doing it already), they will be able to utilize the very same super computers—housed no doubt in the NSA or perhaps some newer and even larger Ministry of Truth—to send subliminal messages to us via television. From the NSA—or whatever larger mega-spy-shop it morphs into—BBBB will have access to all our email and have recordings of all our phone calls and will have all manner of cross-referencing software with which to slice and dice our data and be able to tell us all what we are going to think and feel way long before we ever begin to think or feel it.

And the benefits to the governmental side of this huge lumpy two-headed giant putatively run by the simian homunculus GWB? Need we wonder any longer how the mysterious amorphous “They” managed to steal the elections of 2000 and 2004? Just now “They” are dreaming up methodologies whereby “They” can program Bush’s Brain Karl Rove into the humongous mega-super computer so that it will be able to run itself and tell its homunculus GW—or some reasonable future facsimile—just where to stumble and run around like a pseudo-plebian cow pokey jackanapes, spewing nonsense about Social Security reform and look oh so endearing to all the equally verbally-challenged sots who worship him as next best thing to JC and sliced bread and mindlessly vote for him.

I mean, after all, Karl’s going to be indicted soon, if he isn’t already, and they must rescue his brain from his doughy corpus before the latter is slammed in the hoosegow. This computer will—if it is not already doing so—feed them just the sort of pabulum they need to keep their puny brains feeling just so, so happy-happy while they whistle while they work and buy and spend-spend-spend and consume and keep everything running all peachy-keen in BBBB World. I see it in my mind’s eye—oh what permutations of reality TV “They” might conjure up from whatever hell such evil smoky Beelzebubs are evoked. Oh what fabulous porn sites they will facture. “They” will find a way to feed us each exactly what we want—special super-software to create images of our perfect sex partners—perfect perky breasts, white straight, sparkly, gleaming smiley teeth, and just the right nose, and designer eyes just to one’s liking—exotic or not, just as one desires—specifically designed for each of us and continually evolving and morphing with our particular priapic proclivities. And for the ladies! Oh just let me show you what we’ve got for the ladies! And for the GLBT crowd . . . such pulchritudinous pleasures! And straight folks need never find out . . . well, unless of course one decides to start demonstrating or some rude thing like that in support of gay marriage. Then it would all, oh so unfortunately, come out. Heavens! With such a potent thing they might even bend my mind to their will. They will have the power to create a super-duper propaganda that will make Joseph Paul Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl burn with envy even in the particularly hot part of hell in which they are roasting.

Oh, I am getting mixed up here—can’t tell the government from the corporate. But isn’t that the point? The beetle-browed bureaucrats—all looking suspiciously like the neotenic General Mike Hayden—will learn just how to push our buttons. They will bullshit us through our Macs, PCs, and TVs. And each will get his favorite flavor of bullshit. Just the way you like it. They will have us vote just as “They” want and make us believe it’s just how we want. We will feel free but not be free. That is how “They” will protect democracy. After all, does it really matter? What’s the difference? If we feel free aren’t we “really” free? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make any sound? Ah, yes, this is the acme of the fascist vision—one big happy family!—one big orgasmic Nuremburg Rally of flag-waving, Bible-thumping, and pseudo-humping. Old Glory in one hand and a Bible in the other and plenty of great porno too, and no one needs to know about it except the NSA and the Ministry of Truth.

Ah yes, it is just one big new remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The pod people—or is it the I-pod people—are here, wearing stars and stripes with real democracy—I mean REAL DEMOCRACY. All us little chillens will be happy. All you gotta do is submit. Just let it happen. You can’t defeat them. Don’t worry, be happy. Your precious little ego doesn’t matter anyway. In the grand scheme of things, your ego is not important. Dissolve into the fascist mass. Lose the “Me” in the “We.” All will be happy—eternal mental-masturbatory bliss—heaven on earth. This is the final solution, the ultimate realization of Leo Strauss’s wet dream. Heck, we lowly little people will be happier than the Oligarchs who will have to keep thinking of fresh ways to lie to us. They might be tempted to joins us plebs. But then who would run the compu-kaleidoscope? Just let it happen. Submit.