Privacy

Today’s prompt: “What is public and what is private? What should be public and what should be private? What do these terms mean now?”

Wow, this prompt poses quite the conundrum. We’re approaching the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and just wound down the war in Afghanistan, both of which came hand in hand with unprecedented government encroachments into privacy via the PATRIOT Act, a Newspeak name if there ever was one. And just this week the Supreme Court legitimized a Texas law allowing citizens to report on and sue women who receive abortions and anyone who helps them, breaking with decades of precedent protecting abortion as falling under inherent rights to privacy. And that’s just a couple of turds in the fetid punchbowl that is Facebook, which encourages its users to divulge all kinds of personal information they can serve up to their advertisers, all while the platform itself undermines our democracy and spreads disinformation.

So what should be public? What should be private? I’ll tell you one thing. That snuff film that was broadcast of you should not be public. Your death deserves more privacy and dignity than that.