Former Wisconsin Governor and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson has volunteered to have a radio tracking chip the size of a pinhead implanted in his arm. It will contain all his personal information and allow him to be globally positioned round the clock. Since he's on the board of Verichip, the company that makes the device, I can only surmise that he's banking on this as a marketing strategy for a technology Homeland Security will soon roll out for us all. A nice little subcutaneous chip with satellite potential is even more efficiently panoptic than a national identity card. But it does have an awfully Orwellian edge, tinged as it is by images of parolees, the chronically ill and bionic claws. What better way to give it an aura of respectability than to implant it in a stodgy old cheesehead like Thompson? It's like those soothing canards we tell children: Pulling this tooth with this rope, those leeches and a set of tongs isn't going to hurt one bit. You won't feel a thing while we sort you by race, religion, buying habits and weakness for the demon rum. See, here's old Uncle Tommy, who's going to show you how it's done.

As billions of dollars shift from education and infrastructure toward defense in our "homeland," as security forces both here and abroad become less and less broadly educated in anything other than martial science, it is interesting to ponder what money is going where in the now-no-longer "war on terror" (the Bush Administration renamed it "a global struggle against violent extremism," in case you're behind the times). The Chinese government recently contracted with a company in Boston for a healthy shipment of bomb-detecting machines with which to protect its rail system. Like the little match girl, we might wonder if that kind of machine couldn't serve us well too.

But alas, on American trains bewildered conductors have been instructed to look for heavily dressed, shifty-eyed muggles who act "suspiciously." Citizens are encouraged to follow their gut: "If you see something, say something." And so buildings are emptied, roads blocked, subways stopped based on Roswellian sightings of Evildoers. In New York City five innocent tourists with British accents were handcuffed and Broadway cordoned off for hours because a tour bus operator had been advised that "stuffed pockets" were a sign of suicide bombers. In the subway every twelfth passenger is asked to open purse, packages and backpack. People call into radio programs demanding more racial profiling--of races "other" than themselves. New Yorkers call for profiling anyone who appears "Asian!" "Arab!" "Muslim!"--broad terms in a city where 100 percent of the population could "appear" to be one or some combination of the above.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.