“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

George Orwell “1984.”

Now it’s 30 years since 1984 and the latest term I’ve heard was government minders. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary defines a minder as “an official whose job is to restrain access or the free flow of information, especially with an implied threat of force.”

I have heard of that term many times as minders accompany visitors that go into the likes of North Korea and Iran along with many other nations that are controlled by dictators. Those minders control where visitors can go or not go along with the visitors’ ability to speak to people in that country. They can also control what press releases come out of their country as well, which is the reason I wrote this week’s column.

I was raised with a strong sense of national pride which was reinforced by serving in our military for 20 years during the Cold War. I have observed the miles of barbed wire and fields of land mines that once separated East and West Germany until the end of the Cold War when those two nations became one nation once again. Unlike American citizens, those behind the Iron Curtain did not have freedom of the press, which is taken for granted by Americans. At least it was for me until I recently watched the news only to find out that the Federal Communications Commission completed a study that would place minders in the offices of media outlets across our nation. These government minders would monitor activities of the news staff such as editors and reporters in not only television stations but newspapers as well.

As defined by the White House, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of the speech, the press, assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Now I wonder if that is what the present members of the White House really believe in. In one of his campaign speeches our President promised that his administration would be one of the most open ones in American history and we now know that certainly never happened. Coupled with his recent speech where he stated he didn’t need Congress in order to complete what his wants for America are, I have to wonder what’s coming down the pike.

Make no doubt about it, if it was up to me I would call for impeachment proceedings but I highly doubt that the dysfunctional Congress could accomplish anything except raising the nation’s debt limit. Oh, that’s right because they did exactly that recently. At least the U.S. Supreme Court is looking at the President’s power of executive orders to see if they are constitutional or not. What that court decides could shake the very foundations of freedom that this country was built on. What I fear the most about the government controlling our news is our ability to access information not only with the news but government information as well.

What I also find disturbing is that our government is monitoring our daily lives in a manner that most of us can’t even comprehend. With the modern electronic devices that we use on a daily basis, the government can track our phone calls, our movements on foot or with vehicles and with our credit/debit cards, even what we purchase. In this digital age, that information can be stored and accessed easily forever. Or at least until some foreign or domestic enemy hacks into our government computers and uses the information for some even more sinister reason.

If one believes it can’t get worse, just wait and see what happens when every state places a GPS device on our vehicles and we pay by the mile. When that happens, speeding tickets will be digital and unavoidable. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that would be coordinated with spy satellites.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham wonders why our military is being slashed to pre-World War II levels.