XKCD: surveillance comic

I thought that this political comic was a very accurate, and funny, reflection of what American society has become since 9/11. This comic is trying to argue you into thinking of government surveillance as a joke. The writers of this XKCD comic are attempting to get you to agree with their position that secret organizations, which should be surveying only those who pose a threat to society, are surveying anyone and everyone, which has turned surveillance into a joke. This comic clearly is extremely political. The attempt is to make you think back to the PATRIOT Act that was passed through Congress just a few months after 9/11. The point of the act was to allow more surveillance in an effort to increase the security of the country. The fear that was created by 9/11 and our governments failure to use/comprehend the information that they collected through the little surveillance that they had caused a majority of Americans to give up some of their freedoms in order to be protected. The government used their political power and access to the media to convince American's that losing some of their privacy in order to ensure their safety was not only the best option, but also the only way to adapt to the new reality that had been thrust upon us. They used the idea of social construction to make the little privacy that Americans have now a necessary reality to keep the safety that Americans thought was a reality before 9/11. This comic’s use of a person just sitting in a chair reading a book argues that they are just a normal person like you and me; no one that should be being surveyed. The leaned back position of the person that is supposed to be doing the surveillance and the knocked over stool is meant to portray the over excited nature of the government in their effort to take every threat seriously. This comic combines both objects (the chair, the book, the stool, the computer, etc.) and subjects (the surveyed and the surveyor) to argue you into a position against government surveillance because of its audacity in constructing a new reality of less privacy and its ridiculously ineffective nature, which are both coming to light as the fear from 9/11 subsides.