[mherdeg]

This seems like a good place to leave a quick plug for the recent computer game "Papers, Please", which perfectly simulates the experience of being a clerk inspecting prospective entrants at the border of a dystopian republic and approving/denying visas.

As the game progressed I found myself "just following orders", even as they got increasingly creepy, and now I think I have a much better understanding of what life is like for these people. There are rules, and you follow them because your job is to carry out the rules. You may occasionally think hard about whether what you're doing is wrong, but you don't stop doing it because you've got a family to feed.

Spooky stuff. I felt like I had a much better understanding, after 30 minutes in the game, of what border agents are actually doing when I give them my passport.

[Amadou]

You might find the essay, 'The Checkpoint' interesting (and thoroughly bleak). It is by an Israel Defense Force conscriptee who started working those internal checkpoints between israel proper and the occupied territories.

It is an account of how an even more extreme situation is utterly soul-destroying for the people working those jobs, no matter how good their initial intentions are.

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/oded_naaman_israeli_defen...

[anonymousDan]

Wow, that was a powerful read.