Dwain Northey (Gen X)

George Orwell was 42 years off.

In 1984, Big Brother had to install cameras, monitor conversations, and build an entire government apparatus to watch everybody. We have smartphones, doorbell cameras, and license plate readers. And unlike Winston Smith, we pay for our surveillance and carry it around voluntarily.

Apparently, dystopia is easier to sell when it comes with free shipping.

Alexa, Are You Listening?

Mention something you might want to buy, and suddenly your social media feed is full of advertisements for it. A vacuum cleaner. A vacation. A new pair of shoes.

Now, your phone may not literally be listening to every conversation. Advertising algorithms can infer an astonishing amount from your searches, location, browsing habits, purchases, and the people you interact with.

Which is somehow more comforting.

Your phone may not be listening. It may simply know you well enough to predict what you are going to say before you say it.

And then sell it to you.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Ring doorbell cameras were supposed to protect our homes from porch pirates. Now, depending on the program and permissions involved, footage from privately owned cameras can become available to law enforcement.

You bought a doorbell.

You may have helped build a surveillance network.

And somewhere in the fine print, there is probably a sentence explaining that you agreed to this, provided you had the time, patience, and legal education to read it.

We have reached the point where you need to be a constitutional lawyer to install a doorbell.

Flock: Because License Plates Were Too Private

Then there are Flock cameras, automated license plate readers that capture vehicle information, including where and when a car was seen.

Useful when somebody steals your car.

Less comforting when you realize that a record of your movements can exist simply because you drove to work, the grocery store, or your mother’s house.

The camera was installed for public safety. The database can become a record of where ordinary people go.

And if that sounds like something out of 1984, congratulations. You have been paying attention.

The Box You Checked

Every app, camera, and online service comes with terms and conditions. We click “Accept” because the alternative is apparently not using the thing we just bought.

Somewhere in that legal equivalent of a hostage note, we may have agreed to data collection, retention, and sharing arrangements we never fully understood.

Then we discover what we agreed to and act surprised.

We shouldn’t have to be constitutional scholars to own a doorbell.

Safety, or Surveillance?

I am not opposed to cameras helping solve crimes. If somebody steals your car, I want the police to have useful evidence.

The question is how much surveillance we are willing to accept, who controls it, and what prevents a system designed for one purpose from becoming something else.

A camera installed to find stolen cars can become part of a system that tracks movements. A doorbell camera can become part of a system that shares footage. A smartphone can know more about you than some of your friends.

And the people controlling these systems are not necessarily the people living under them.

That is the part Orwell understood.

Big Brother Has Better Marketing

We imagine Big Brother as a government office filled with men in gray suits, reading our mail and monitoring our conversations.

The modern version is more efficient.

Big Brother might be a government agency, a technology company, a data broker, an advertising algorithm, or a neighborhood security system.

Sometimes it is all of them working together, and sometimes we have no idea who has access to what.

The technology does not have to be controlled by one person to create a surveillance state. It only has to become widespread enough that privacy is no longer the default.

And we are getting there.

In 1984, the telescreen was a symbol of oppression because it was always watching and impossible to escape.

We have something similar now, except ours comes with GPS, a microphone, a camera, and the ability to order toilet paper while sitting on the toilet.

We carry it everywhere.

We pay for it.

We tell it where we are, what we are doing, what we are buying, and occasionally what we had for breakfast.

Then we wonder why the advertisements are so damn accurate.

The difference between Orwell’s world and ours is that Big Brother no longer has to force us to participate.

We have made surveillance convenient.

We have made it profitable.

We have made it part of everyday life.

And when somebody points out that the cameras are everywhere, we call them paranoid.

George Orwell was 42 years off.

Big Brother is definitely watching.

He just has better marketing now.

And the really impressive part? We are paying for the privilege of being watched. We are installing the cameras, carrying the microphones, and clicking “Accept” on the terms and conditions.

Then we go online to complain about the government spying on us.

On the phone we bought.

Through the app we installed.

Using the Wi-Fi we pay for.

While the camera on our front porch records the delivery driver bringing us another device to make our lives more convenient.

At this point, the only thing missing from 1984 is the government sending us a monthly bill for the privilege of being surveilled.

Give it time.

I am sure somebody is working on an app for that.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Donald Trump School of Altruism

I am 100% certain that Donald Trump has no idea what altruism is. Not because the word is particularly complicated, but because it involves doing something for someone else without expecting a parade, a plaque, a television special, or your name carved into the side of the building.

And if there is one thing Donald Trump appears constitutionally incapable of doing, it is anything that doesn’t come with a complimentary ego massage.

The latest installment in the ongoing Kennedy Center trauma is that the building is supposedly going to go bankrupt and collapse into a pile of cultural rubble unless Donald Trump’s name is attached to it. Which is an interesting proposition, considering the Kennedy Center was doing just fine before the man decided that a national cultural institution needed a little more Donald in its branding.

Apparently, the building’s structural integrity is directly proportional to the number of letters in the president’s last name.

I have to admit, I would not be surprised if, somewhere in Donald’s shoebox diorama of Washington, D.C., he has already gold-plated the Lincoln Memorial and installed a tiny plaque reading:

RESTORED TO GREATNESS BY DONALD J. TRUMP.

The Washington Monument? Now the Trump Spire. The Capitol? Perhaps Trump Hall of Government, featuring a revolving door and a gift shop selling commemorative hats.

And somewhere in the corner, a miniature White House with a tiny gold toilet, because apparently we have reached the point where even the national capital needs to be decorated like a casino owned by a man who has never met a mirror he didn’t like.

The problem is that Donald seems to believe that doing something good is not enough. It has to be acknowledged. It has to be documented. It has to be branded. And preferably, it needs to be bigger and shinier than whatever the other guy did.

Imagine Donald Trump paying for dinner at a restaurant.

Not because he was hungry. Not because he wanted to spend time with friends. But because he had decided that tonight was the night he would demonstrate his generosity.

He hands over his credit card, then waits.

The maître d’ walks to the center of the dining room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention? Tonight’s dinner has been paid for by Donald J. Trump, who has generously covered the entire bill out of his own pocket.”

Applause.

Donald stands, waves to the crowd, and explains that no one has ever paid for a dinner better than he has. The maître d’ nods solemnly. The waitstaff forms a receiving line. Someone presents him with a ceremonial steak.

And if the restaurant doesn’t name the dessert after him, he leaves a one-star review.

This is the fundamental difference between altruism and Donald Trump’s version of generosity. Altruism is helping someone because they need help. Trump’s version appears to be helping someone because he needs the credit.

It’s the difference between giving someone a hand and making sure they know whose hand it was.

And let’s be honest, this isn’t merely a Donald Trump problem. We have always had wealthy people who wanted their names on buildings. Hospitals, universities, libraries, museums. Sometimes the money genuinely helps. Sometimes the name is simply the price of admission to the billionaire’s ego.

But there is something particularly absurd about a president treating a national institution as though it were a hotel bearing his name.

The Kennedy Center was established as a memorial to John F. Kennedy, a president who understood that a nation could be measured by more than its military strength, stock market, or the size of its leader’s signature. It was meant to celebrate the arts, culture, and the things that make us more than a collection of people competing for the biggest piece of pie.

Now we have a president who apparently believes the entire institution is one nameplate away from financial salvation.

Maybe the building will survive. Maybe it won’t. But if it does collapse, I suspect Donald will insist that the rubble be arranged in the shape of his initials.

Because that is the thing about altruism. It doesn’t require your name on the gift.

It doesn’t require the recipient to thank you publicly.

It doesn’t require a television crew.

And it certainly doesn’t require the gift to become a monument to the giver.

Sometimes, you just do something good because someone needs it done.

No cameras. No applause. No gold plating.

Just the quiet satisfaction of knowing you helped.

Which, I suspect, is why Donald Trump finds the concept so confusing.

He has spent his entire life trying to convince the world that everything he touches becomes more valuable because he touched it.

The idea that something could be valuable without his name attached to it must be absolutely terrifying.

After all, what if the Kennedy Center survives without Donald Trump?

What if the Lincoln Memorial remains meaningful without his signature?

What if the Washington Monument continues to stand without being renamed?

What if, for once, something in Washington, D.C., is about the country rather than the man occupying the White House?

That would be a pretty impressive demonstration of altruism.

And Donald would hate it.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There are some things in American history that you would think even Donald Trump might understand. George Washington is one of them. Not because Trump has demonstrated a particular interest in history beyond the parts that can be used to make himself look important, but because Washington’s entire legacy is built around something Trump apparently finds difficult to comprehend: the president is not a king.

Yet here we are, with Trump wanting to immortalize George Washington in a 30-foot statue in Washington, D.C. Because nothing says “I understand the founding principles of this republic” quite like turning the man who refused a crown into a 30-foot monument to presidential grandeur.

I’m sure the intention is to honor Washington. I’m sure there are people involved who genuinely believe this is a fitting tribute to the father of our country. And if you want to build a statue of George Washington, go right ahead. The man did, after all, lead the Continental Army, preside over the Constitutional Convention, and serve as the first president of the United States.

But perhaps we should pause long enough to remember what made Washington historically significant in the first place.

It wasn’t that he was the most powerful man in America. It was that he understood power was supposed to belong to the country, not to the man occupying the office.

Washington had already demonstrated that understanding before he became president. After leading the Continental Army to victory, he resigned his commission and returned to private life. There was no coronation. No declaration that the man who had won the war was now entitled to rule the nation he had helped create.

When he became president, he served two terms and then voluntarily left office. At a time when the world was full of leaders who treated power as something to be accumulated, protected, and passed down to their own families, Washington walked away.

That decision helped establish the tradition of peaceful transfers of power that became one of the defining features of American democracy.

Washington could have been a king. He had the military prestige, the public admiration, and the opportunity. Instead, he helped establish a republic in which the president was an elected servant of the people.

And now, centuries later, we have a president who seems determined to surround himself with the trappings of royalty while claiming to be honoring the very man who rejected them.

The irony is so thick you could carve it into a monument.

Trump’s fascination with grand buildings, oversized portraits, gilded interiors, and the general aesthetic of a man who believes the nation should be impressed by his personal magnificence is hardly a secret. But a 30-foot George Washington statue in the capital? That’s not just a matter of taste. It’s a question of what we choose to celebrate.

Because the message matters.

When you elevate a president into a towering figure of national reverence, you risk turning the office into a personality cult. And when the president proposing the monument has spent considerable time treating the presidency as an extension of his personal brand, perhaps the symbolism deserves a little scrutiny.

Washington’s legacy wasn’t that he was larger than the country. It was that he understood the country was larger than him.

He didn’t need to be immortalized as a king. He became immortalized by refusing to act like one.

There is a difference between honoring a founding father and building a monument that makes the president look like a ruler from some ancient empire. One celebrates the creation of a republic. The other risks celebrating the individual.

And that distinction is not merely academic.

The peaceful transfer of power Washington helped establish was tested throughout American history, including when he left office and when the nation faced later crises. The idea that a president serves a limited term and then leaves is not some quaint tradition from a simpler time. It is one of the central safeguards against authoritarianism.

The president is supposed to be temporary. The Constitution is supposed to endure.

Washington understood that. He understood that the office was bigger than the officeholder, and that the country could not depend on the personal virtue of every man who occupied the White House. The system had to be stronger than the individual.

That’s why the symbolism of a towering statue matters.

If you want to honor George Washington, perhaps the most appropriate monument would be one that reminds Americans that he could have held onto power but chose not to. That he could have been crowned but wasn’t. That he helped establish a country where the president was elected, not ordained.

Maybe a statue of Washington handing the presidency to his successor. Maybe a monument to the peaceful transfer of power. Maybe something that reminds us that the greatness of the first president was not measured in feet.

Because if we’re going to build a 30-foot statue of George Washington, let’s at least make sure we understand why we’re doing it.

Otherwise, we might as well put a crown on his head and call it a day.

And somewhere, George Washington is probably rolling over in his grave.

Not because someone wants to honor him.

Because someone still doesn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I realize that when and if, or if and when, Democrats take back the House and Senate in November, there are going to be investigations. Lots of investigations. Investigations into the current administration, the shenanigans, the questionable decisions, the things that were done in broad daylight while everyone in charge pretended not to notice.

And honestly, we have to.

If people in power broke laws, abused their authority, misused taxpayer money, or decided the Constitution was more of a suggestion than a governing document, then somebody needs to look into it. That is what oversight is for. You don’t get to burn down the house and then complain when the next owners want to know who left the matches on the kitchen counter.

But I am looking forward to the day when our elected representatives can stop spending a considerable portion of their time investigating the previous administration and actually get back to doing the job we elected them to do.

You know, passing laws.

The whole governing thing.

Making the country better for the people who live here instead of treating Congress like a never-ending episode of Law & Order: Political Dysfunction Unit.

I understand that accountability matters. It matters a lot. Especially when the people who were supposed to protect the country decided that protecting their own political interests was a higher priority. But there comes a point when the investigation stops being the work and becomes the entire workplace.

And I would really like to see us get back to a government that spends more time asking, “What can we do to improve people’s lives?” and less time asking, “What did those assholes do last time?”

We have roads that need fixing. Healthcare that needs fixing. An economy that should work for more people than the ones who already own everything. We have an environment that would appreciate a little less political neglect. We have voting rights, education, housing, and a dozen other things that could use the attention of people who were elected to address them.

Instead, we get hearings. Subpoenas. Press conferences. Another round of cable news speculation about whether someone will be held accountable this time.

And then, six months later, we’re still waiting for the legislation.

Look, I am not suggesting we ignore wrongdoing. That would be stupid. The whole point of having a government with checks and balances is that nobody gets to do whatever the hell they want just because they won an election.

But I would like to see the investigations serve a purpose beyond giving the next election cycle something to campaign about.

Find out what happened. Hold people accountable. Fix the laws and procedures that allowed it to happen. Then move the hell on.

Because the people who elected you did not do so because they wanted you to spend four years conducting an autopsy on the last administration. They elected you because they wanted a government that works.

And I know this is a radical concept in modern American politics, but maybe we could try passing legislation that makes people’s lives better.

Maybe we could investigate the previous administration while also doing the job we were elected to do. I realize that sounds like a lot to ask from a Congress that has occasionally struggled to agree on whether the sky is blue, but I remain cautiously optimistic.

I am looking forward to the day when the headlines are about laws passed instead of laws broken.

When our representatives are competing over who has the better solution instead of who has the more damning subpoena.

When the question isn’t, “What did the last administration screw up?” but, “What are we going to do about the problems facing the country right now?”

Because accountability is necessary.

But governing is the point.

And after all the years of watching Washington turn into a perpetual investigation with occasional legislation, I would really like to see us get back to the part where the people we elected actually do something for the people who elected them.

Imagine that.

A government that investigates when it needs to, passes laws when it should, and doesn’t confuse the two as if they’re interchangeable.

I know. Crazy talk.

But November is coming.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Twenty-Five Years Later, I’m Still Confused About Iraq

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, I find myself thinking about the things we were told, the things we believed, and the things that still don’t make much sense. And one of those things is how we went from being attacked by terrorists in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania to invading Iraq.

I’m still confused.

Well, I guess I’m not entirely confused. I understand what happened. I’m just still trying to understand how we got from point A to point B and why so many people accepted the explanation along the way.

September 11 was an attack on the United States by al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden. Nineteen hijackers murdered nearly 3,000 people, destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and sent a plane into a Pennsylvania field because ordinary Americans were apparently not allowed to have a normal Tuesday.

The United States responded by invading Afghanistan, where the Taliban had provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda. That war had a direct connection to the attacks. We were looking for the people responsible.

Then, somehow, the conversation shifted to Iraq.

Saddam Hussein.

Weapons of mass destruction.

Mushroom clouds.

A dictator who had nothing to do with planning the September 11 attacks suddenly became the central character in America’s response to them.

And I’m sitting here wondering, did we lose the plot somewhere between the Pentagon and Baghdad?

Because if the reason we went to war was the terrorist attack on September 11, then why was George W. Bush more focused on finding Saddam Hussein than finding Osama bin Laden?

That question has never really gone away for me.

Osama bin Laden was the man who organized the attacks. He was the one responsible for sending those planes into buildings and killing thousands of Americans. He was the person we were supposed to be hunting.

Instead, the Bush administration spent enormous political energy making the case that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States. We were told Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We were told he had connections to terrorists. We were told that invading Iraq was part of the broader war on terror.

Except the weapons weren’t there, and the supposed connection between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks wasn’t there either.

The 9/11 Commission found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime cooperated with al-Qaeda in carrying out attacks against the United States. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but being a brutal dictator isn’t the same thing as being responsible for every terrorist attack that happens to occur while you’re in power.

If it were, we’d need a much larger map.

And let’s not forget that Iraq had already been invaded by the United States in 1991. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and the international community responded. There were legitimate reasons for that war. But in 2003, we weren’t responding to a new Iraqi invasion of another country. We were making the case for a preventive war based on intelligence that turned out to be disastrously wrong.

Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden remained alive.

He was eventually killed in Pakistan in 2011, nearly a decade after September 11. By then, the United States had spent years fighting in Iraq, lost thousands of military personnel, spent enormous amounts of money, and helped create conditions that would contribute to further instability and violence across the region.

All while the man responsible for the attacks was still out there.

I understand that history is complicated. I understand that governments make decisions based on intelligence, politics, national security, and a thousand other things that ordinary people don’t get to see. I understand that hindsight is a wonderful tool because it doesn’t require us to sit in a room in 2002 trying to decide whether the information in front of us is accurate.

But some things don’t require hindsight.

You don’t need twenty-five years of historical distance to ask why the man responsible for the attack wasn’t the primary target of the war we were told was about that attack.

You don’t need a PhD in international relations to understand that Iraq and al-Qaeda were not the same thing.

And you certainly don’t need to be a military strategist to recognize that invading a country because its leader might have weapons of mass destruction is a very different argument from invading a country because its government is directly responsible for attacking you.

Those are two different wars with two different justifications.

Yet somehow, after September 11, we were expected to accept them as part of the same story.

Twenty-five years later, I still think about the people who died that day. The passengers on the planes. The people working in the towers. The firefighters, police officers, and emergency workers who ran toward the buildings while everyone else was trying to get away. The families who never got to say goodbye.

Their deaths deserved a response. Their families deserved justice. The country deserved leadership that could distinguish between the people who attacked us and the people we decided we wanted to fight.

Instead, we got a war in Iraq that was sold to the American public using the fear and anger of September 11.

And that is the part that still bothers me.

Not because Saddam Hussein was a good guy. He wasn’t. Not because Iraq was a peaceful democracy before we showed up. It wasn’t. And not because the United States had no legitimate national security concerns.

But because the reasons we were given for going to war mattered.

They mattered when we sent young men and women into combat. They mattered when families received folded flags. They mattered when we spent trillions of dollars that could have been used for almost anything else. They mattered when we asked Americans to trust their government.

And they matter now, twenty-five years later, when we look back at the decisions that followed the worst terrorist attack in American history.

The question isn’t whether Saddam Hussein was a terrible person. He was.

The question is whether he was responsible for September 11.

He wasn’t.

The question isn’t whether Iraq was a country with problems. It was.

The question is whether invading Iraq was the necessary response to the terrorist attacks.

It wasn’t.

And the question isn’t whether Osama bin Laden deserved to be brought to justice.

He did.

So when I think about September 11, I think about the people we lost, the families who still carry that loss, and the men and women who served in the wars that followed.

But I also think about the decisions made in the aftermath.

Because remembering history isn’t just about remembering what happened. It’s about remembering what we were told, what we believed, and what we should have learned.

Twenty-five years later, I still don’t understand how the country that was attacked by Osama bin Laden ended up invading Iraq.

Well, I understand the history.

I’m just still trying to understand the logic.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the most important thing we can do on this anniversary is keep asking the questions that make us uncomfortable.

Because the next time somebody tells us that a war is necessary, that the intelligence is solid, that the threat is imminent, and that we just need to trust the people in charge, maybe we should remember what happened the last time we stopped asking questions.