This short story Harrison Bergeron is a satire of the USA today. The USA is implementing laws like affirmative action, which they are hoping to erase racism, and essentially, make everyone equal. This is the same for women's rights groups, gay rights groups and all other group that are looking for complete equality. Eventually, the "land of the free" will turn into a Stalin-like communist state, where people are killed for stating their opinions, the government openly impedes the smarter people, and people can be taken from their homes and jailed, for the sole reason that they could be stronger, bigger and better than other people in society. This could all be work in the name of equality. Undoubtedly the most repressive of these laws, is that the government tries to make people thoughtless. The government today shoots people who do not obey the law; we actually give police the right to do this. Limits are put on artists, and the lines between freedom of speech and "slurs" are sometimes blurred. Today the United States government does take people from their homes, if they even suspect you of being a terrorist. However, despite all this, they do not, and cannot make a person thoughtless, or control his thoughts, and that is why this is the most oppressive law in the story. No matter what a person goes through physically, his mind is always his own personal place, somewhere that no one else can come and interfere. However in Harrison Bergeron, people who are smarter than others have an earpiece, and at a specific interval an overbearing sound comes through this, which rattles the person's brain, and temporarily brainwashes him, making him forget what he was just thinking. Many times in the story, George Harrison is on the verge of having an independent, and possibly slightly rebellious thought, and his brain is rattled with a loud piercing sound. This specifically happens after he sees Diana Moon Glampers kill his son, and he begins to think of helping him, but he is rattled before he can get any further than this.
