Breakout Capability and the regular person

Not very organized notes/thoughts on breakout capability. An amusing metaphor comes from the game Breakout. That isn't what the 'breakout' refers to, but picture not the bricks, but the little white paddle always being in the right place to retard the little ball from going further down. As far as the little white ball is concerned, the paddle is a solid wall. There is an analogy in there. The paddle is a chilling effect which is proportional to however political a particular person wants to be. You don't have to wear that little flag on your lapel all the time, you don't have to be Cheney and get despised. Granularity in surveillance. Another image is Rover from The Prisoner. You don't see him until/unless you make your attempt. The Village can look pleasant enough. Police-state accoutrements are not necessary. Because we have invisible force-field fences. Breakout capability is facilitated by technology. So you have a typically centrist, dismissive, apolitical person. The chilling effect influences them in the sense that it is at-the-ready, it has breakout capability to squelch them if life changes or matters of conscience make activists out of them.

You don't have to be Cheney and get despised - you can be Obama. Speak softly and carry tiny camera-particles spread equidistant against a backdrop of freedom.

Of course my assertions are full of problems as well, because that's the way breakout capability is. If the state can't honestly disambiguate whether or not John Lennon is a very quiet combatant (so has to kill him to be on the safe side), John Lennon also can't honestly disambiguate whether or not that guy in the trenchcoat is tailing him. Post-paranoia, the total entropy of certainty over whether or not there is anything warranting paranoia. I think maybe Pynchon did something with the foursquare, come to think of it. And Lot 49 is always maligned at least among my friends. I think he had Oedipa thinking through the possibilities of being right or wrong in what she thought she was seeing, and really not having a goddamn clue how to disambiguate.