The Mob I enjoy science fiction. Sure, a lot of it is polemical, or, worse, just fantasy, but some of it really has some science in it, and that can be really fun, especially going back and seeing the stuff that's already come true. Like John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider." Interestingly, this is a response to Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock." What it does with that, however, is remarkable, especially, perhaps, in retrospect. The book predicts the internet, and very well, including smartphones, to an extent. The computer viruses and so forth are believable and a good prediction of what such interconnectivity would bring. ave The society in Brunner's novel may not be quite what 1975 thought 2013 would be, but it's not all that far off, in the bigger picture, if not the particulars. But one thing has always stood out to me since I first read it. Governments rely on threat and trauma to survive. The easiest populace to rule is weak, poor, superstitious, preferable terrified of what tomorrow may bring, and constantly being reminded that the man in the street must step into the gutter when his superiors deign to pass him by. What's being described here is the resemblance of government to organized crime. Government is the mafia, more so than the mafia has been for a very long time. There are those who will say, in Australia, that's Labor, because of its union origins. False. Or false in any modern sense. The unions have been long ago relegated to irrelevance by the Liberals, who operate more in line with what we know of as the Mafia. The Liberals legitimize their . . . business, just like the Mafia families were just "olive oil importers" or whatever. We can't see the true power brokers, and that's the point. Is it any different in the US? The GOP is run by business interests. How unlike the mafia are the Koch brothers, for example, buying politicians to deny climate change and preference petrochemical businesses over its alternatives? We need to wake up to the lies. The data is at our fingertips. And the power of our votes and our dollars can have an effect. But more importantly, we must all speak out at every opportunity. Object to the lies. Tear off our own blinders and let anyone who hasn't done the same know that it only hurts for a little while, and then feels a whole lot better.