A few weeks ago I decided I needed to rectify a situation that has bugged me for years. I’ve never read George Orwell’s “1984”. You always hear the term “Orwellian” in regards to situations that pertain to the book, and while you can get the gist of it from the context in which it is cited, until you actually read the book you can’t get a full understanding of what it really means. I’m about half way through and the parallels to today’s world are staggering. The first one I noticed was the “Telescreen”, the description reads “The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously”, any sound made above the level of a whisper was picked up by the telescreen. As long as you remained in its field of vision you could be seen as well, all of this was monitored by the “Thought Police”. Hmm, sounds like a smart T.V. to me. These days, all of your “smart” electronic devices, whether they are powered on or not, listen to you, your phone, laptop, tablet, automobile, Alexa device, even your smart refrigerator, all listen to what you say. If you don’t believe me, just try it for yourself. I was looking to get a new hat the other day, and was talking to my wife about it, and then when I got onto my laptop, all of the sudden, there were ads for hats coming up. So someone is listening, the “Thought Police”? I think that most people accept as fact that agencies like the NSA listen to private citizens, and while we don’t agree with it, we also realize that there probably is nothing we can do about it. “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”, Orwell writes, yes, they are!
Next is something called “Newspeak”. “We’re getting the language into its final shape, the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else”, writes Orwell, “We’re destroying words, scores of them, hundreds every day”. “Take `good` for instance. If you have a word like good, what need is there for a word like bad? `Ungood` will do just as well”, he continues. I read an article today in regards to Biden’s budget proposal that refers to mothers as “birthing People”. You see it on the news all the time, these days you have to ask someone how they prefer to be addressed, based on how they “identify”, their “preferred pronoun”. I guess in one aspect that could be construed as a good thing, maybe we can teach kids actual grammar, maybe they might actually learn what a pronoun is in a sentance. Language is being assaulted. Words or terms that meant something yesterday, mean something totally different today. I realize that language evolves, but these days words or terms are changed for no better reason than political expediency. Take “court packing”. When Trump fulfilled his constitutional duty to replace Ginsberg on the Supreme Court he was accused of “packing the court” with conservative justices. Historically the term was meant to describe what FDR wanted to do during the Great Depression to get his New Deal legislation approved. He wanted to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court so that he would have a majority of like minded judges who would approve his policies, we wanted to “pack the court”. Words are powerful tools in the hands of the ruling class, if you can shape the narrative by manipulating language, then controlling the masses becomes easier. “packing the court” became a rallying cry for the left in its never ending outrage of all things Trump. To quote Orwell again, this is from “The Ministry Of Truth”, which is basically the ministry of propaganda “WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”. Very telling. In another example, “There is a word in Newspeak… I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise”. Precisely. In Orwell’s world all the classic literature were being replaced with continually edited versions, entirely different from the original texts. Tactics like erasing the past, demonizing the founding fathers, you have groups like Antifa and BLM tearing down civil war monuments, “cancel culture” calling everything racist or offensive, all examples of the radical left trying to control the narrative.
In one instance, the main protagonist of the book, Winston, notices a riot starting up among the “proles” (the proletariat). He hopes that it is the start of the proles finally rebelling against Big Brother, and is greatly disappointed when it turns out to be a quarrel over a limited supply of saucepans. This quote really struck me as appropriate for these times, “until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious”. How many times have we seen this played out in today’s headlines. Outrage over relatively minor or non existent (systemic racism for example) problems, often times manufactured by the elite ruling class to “wag the dog”, to deflect public opinion from more serious matters that might cause harm to the state, they are very good at it and it works. People become “sheeple”. Remember the toilet paper shortage at the beginning of the Wu-flu? These days when I see a story in the news expressing outrage over something that is basically inconsequential, I immediately look to my sources to try and find out what is really being covered up.
In Orwell’s world there is a main bad guy, Emmanuel Goldstein, the enemy of the state. He’s described as “a renegade and backslider who once long ago…had been one of the leading figures in the party”. Goldstein became a counterrevolutionary and was condemned to death, but somehow escaped. He became the focal point of the daily “two minutes of hate”. Orwell’s vision is of a society that is constantly at war, the past is being constantly rewritten so that Big Brother is always right, he is always responsible for every good thing, and blame for every bad thing is placed on Goldstein. The past, before the revolution is rewritten into a version that bears no resemblance to actual history. Winston’s job is to do just that, so that both history and current events, fit into the narrative of the party, think of Mao’s “cultural revolution” in China. He runs into problems however, because unlike most party members he has a conscious. He has proof of history being changed, of people who were once considered heroes that have now been “disappeared”. He tries to find people who remember what life was like before the revolution, but he has little success. The party has done a very good job of erasing the past. Now look at what’s happening in today’s world. We have the 1619 project, with its Critical Race Theory, pundits, educators, politicians and propagandists (the main stream media). A new social media phenomenon called “influencers” who try to persuade or influence the general public to a particular point of view. All of this is done to try and tear down our culture, our history. The denigration of our founding fathers, destroying monuments of our history. Calling everything done by Caucasians as racist, using actual racism to counter imagined racism! The one Ivy league psych professor said she fantasied about killing white people, or an editor from the N.Y. Times who said she was “triggered” by the American flag! It’s totally insane! I even heard one of these useful idiots say that apple pie is racist. All this is being done to divide our society, to destroy our history, to change our society into an Orwellian hell.
Like I said I’m only a little over halfway through the book, and the parallels are too similar to ignore. Orwell’s description of this despotic utopian socialist society is spot on. These days you see the left trying to implement this utopian socialism under the guise of “equity”. There is always an ongoing crisis, always an ongoing war. A news media that is nothing more than a sycophantic mouthpiece for “the party”. All of this was prophesied remarkably by Orwell. I can hardly wait to finish the book, on the other hand it has been scarier than any Stephen King story I’ve ever read.
The main problem with socialism and communism is that it doesn’t account for basic human nature. Humans have an existential desire to be free. A desire to forge a better life for ourselves, and our family. Yes, we have compassion for our fellow man, especially those who are unable, for whatever reason, to take care of themselves. But we also have a sense of fairness. That is why equity is different from equality. We are all created equal, with an equal opportunity, but we are not all the same, there are differences between men and women. There are cultural differences that make humanity human. These are things that need to be celebrated, to be embraced, not cancelled. Jesus told the apostles that the poor will always be with us, but he also implored us to feed the poor. He also said that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Aside from the obvious truths of these things, even if you aren’t a Christian, if you critically think about it, you have to realize how true they are. It’s obvious that everyone is not the same, that this “equity” the left is pushing down our throats is a lie, an impossibility. One of my favorite quotes, I don’t know who originally said it, but it is so appropriate, it goes something like “man makes plans, and God laughs.” Or for those who don’t believe in God, Jeff Goldblum’s line from Jurassic park “nature always finds a way”. To put it simply socialism/communism is basically unnatural, and therefore completely untenable. The idea of America, of our founders is still the best hope for humanity, but as Ronald Reagan said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”. Freedom has to be continually fought for.
As always PEACE AND LOVE AND ROCK ON Y’ALL!!!!!