A day in the life of the average American, circa 2008:

He wakes up to the sound of the radio playing an advertisement extolling the virtues of Microsoft’s latest operating system (now the only one available). He showers, then eats a breakfast of genetically engineered eggs and bacon. On the news, President John Ashcroft, after leading the nation in prayer, announces that the war on terrorism is going well.

This satisfies our listener, who is too absorbed in the Gap commercial that follows to realize that he doesn’t even know where this “war” is being fought.

After the grueling two-hour commute in his new Lexus SUV, he arrives at the office building in which he crunches numbers for a large multinational conglomerate. Walking in to the building, he sighs as he resigns himself to the requisite retina scan and strip search, remembering that this is necessary to stop the terrorists.

He sits down to work, pouring over his company’s most recent profit earnings statment. He doesn’t know that most of his company’s employees live in the Third World and are paid less than $1 an hour. He doesn’t know that his company regularly gives large under-the-table donations to the president and half his cabinet; he doesn’t know that branches of one of his company’s subsidiaries have bankrupted small businesses in countless cities and small towns all over America.

His day at work finished, he heads home, stopping at Wal-Mart on the way to pick up some more artificial food. Once home he sits down at the television with his family, and instead of talking about their respective days, they simply stare, captivated by the commercials telling them to buy.

Most of this is already happening; the rest isn’t too far off.

Of course this doesn’t look like Orwell or Huxley predicted; that would be way too obvious. No, no, the beauty of this oppression is its subtlety it will come on so gradually and quietly that most people will never notice their souls being sucked out.