Big Brother has been listening to us for quite some time. Our phones are listening. Our televisions are listening. Our houses are listening. They even have names like Alexa, Cortana, Bixby, Siri, and, of course, “Hey! Google!”
How creepy is it to have a conversation about wanting to buy a widget and, without doing any online searching for widgets, suddenly, widget ads start appearing in your Facebook feed?!
Big Brother has been listening to us for quite some time, but has not always been content to just listen. In the last decade, maybe longer, Big Brother has been working to modify our behavior because, clearly, we just aren’t compliant enough.
During the Obama administration, the Washington Times reported that the White House was pushing for a team of experts to “nudge” or sway American behavior. This was just one of several federal projects aimed at influencing how Americans react to certain policy reforms, going so far as to solicit behavior experts to join a “Behavioral Insights Team” to help nudge voters into accepting key political programs. This is just one step away from outright brain washing!
A document on the government program, obtained by Fox News, stated, “Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals.” Would those be our goals or the government’s goals?
The document, also called for applicants to join the federal government’s behavior modification team. This we found particularly disturbing. At what point will we be required to modify our behavior and will that involve shock therapy?!
According to Fox News, the main thrust of the White House-backed group was to “experiment” with ways to control, sway and tweak Americans’ behaviors so they do everything from saving more money for retirement to curbing energy uses and trimming energy costs. So, it’s not enough that our government thinks we’re idiots who are too stupid to know what’s best for us and our families, but they think we’re nothing but guinea pigs to be experimented on!
The new program had already been used in conjunction with Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture policies, Fox News said. And it hailed from ideas discussed years ago, most notably on the heels of publication of a 2008 book written by President Obama’s former regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, who referred to such government actions as “nudges.”
Advocates say nudging helps move the political process along, absent regulation. But detractors say nudging relies on inaccurate data to drive Americans into compliance.
“I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” said Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University. “Ultimately, nudging assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”
But hasn’t our government been telling us that for years? “They” (aka Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Bloomberg, Cuomo, Shumer, Shiff, and others) know what’s best for us right down to how many ounces of soda pop we should drink? After all, we didn’t need to know what all was in Obamacare, we were told just to pass it. Many of them have openly stated that we the people can’t be trusted to make “right” decisions so they must take our decision-making power away from us.
As my granny would say, they’ve all gotten way too big for their britches. She’d also say they’ve gotten way too uppity and full of themselves.
We need to reboot our government back to a smaller, simpler, less invasive and intrusive government. A government that doesn’t watch us, doesn’t listen to us, and…doesn’t nudge us.
We need to reboot back to 1776.