You are here.
Posted on 03/20/2013 1:13:41 PM PDT by Mozilla
George Orwell published the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949. It is a satirical vision of a future society dominated by omnipresent government surveillance and public mind control. Individualism or any independent thinking is prosecuted as a thought crime. Since we now live in a world that seems closer to Orwell’s vision, a world where more and more it seems individualism is discouraged, a closer appraisal of Mr. Orwell’s work might be in order. Oh, you don’t see the connection? Take a look at Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village or President Obama’s warning to achievers, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
We live in a time when our government and a compliant press cause words and concepts to be reinvented whenever convenient. It is a world Orwell would have recognized. He wrote of a world where alternative thinking is a crime so the language has been reduced and meanings altered to discourage “thought crimes“. One character even says, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
Just a short time ago the nation was racked with introspection about the legality of using water boarding during interrogation of captured terrorists or even the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Now there is silence as the president, with the aid of the great ethical philosophers, orders targeted assassinations around the world and his attorney general contends they have the legal right to kill an American citizen on American soil even if he poses no immediate threat of harm.
Remember the ceremony when the body of Chris Stevens and three other Americans were returned to the United States? You would have sworn that the ambassador was a close personal friend of Ms. Clinton and the vice-president. It was “Chris,” “my friend Chris,” and Chris this and Chris that. You simply had to conclude these people were close; they might have even had lunch together just a few days before the ambassador died. Not so: This was the same man who had tried for six months to get additional security for the mission in Libya but his friends had not even bothered to read their close friend’s Emails. Orwell’s so called Ministry of Truth couldn’t have done a better job of obscuring the truth of the matter.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid currently blames Republican filibusters for any and all inaction by the senate. Mr. Reid was not always of that mind. A few years ago, Mr. Reid told us, “The need to muster 60 votes in order to terminate Senate debate naturally frustrates the majority and oftentimes the minority . . . But I recognize this requirement is a tool that serves the long-term interest of the Senate and the American people and our country.” (Congressional Record, S.11591, 12/8/06) The media’s job when discussing filibuster seems to be erasing memory of Reid’s earlier support for the rule, or as they would say in Orwell’s world — let the earlier statements disappear down the Memory Hole.
When Mr. Obama or his minions at MSNBC talk about government, they always talk of investments in big, grandiose projects. We are reminded of an earlier age when government built Interstate highways, developed the Tennessee and Missouri River Valleys, put a man on the moon and created the massive infrastructure that now supports a country of 300 million. Who can forget Rachael Maddow, with Grand Coulee Dam as a backdrop, reminding us of what government spending accomplished in the good old days.
The White House Press Office and the main stream media — but I repeat myself – don’t want you to know that building great things is not in the cards for 21st-century government. As Rich Lowery wrote, “We excel at studying things, and putting up obstacles to building them. We delay, cavil, and sue. We protest and micromanage. It is not the age of the engineer but of the bureaucrat, the lawyer, and the environmental activist.” So we talk of shovel ready jobs while only shoveling money into the financial black hole that we call the federal government.
There are two classes of wealthy people. Liberal billionaires become wealthy only so they can bestow benefits on society as opposed to those on the right who become wealthy only to enrich themselves and to hell with society. It’s not always easy to tell which category a particular individual falls and Victor Davis Hanson had that problem when considering Al Gore. “When watching Al Gore . . . I can no longer remember whether he is supposed to be a selfless public intellectual who, at enormous financial risk, started a new progressive television channel to promulgate long-needed awareness about politics and the and the environment, or whether as a rank speculator he scrambled to push through a secretive deal to sell his $100 million inflated interest in that channel to an anti-Semitic, anti-Western news conglomerate, run by an authoritarian Middle East dictator laden with oil-cartel profits − right before new higher capital-gains taxes might lessen his take by 5 or 6 percent.” Have some sympathy for Hanson, it’s not always easy to tell, especially when Orwell’s Newspeak is becoming the language of the 21st Century.
Orwell’s Thoughtcrimes are mirrored today in the hate crime designation applied to any crime in which a favored societal segment is the victim. The Thoughtpolice of 1984 have their counterpart in today’s America but it comes under the name of political correctness which holds there are thoughts not fit for publication or words you simply cannot say out loud and the self-appointed elite will let you know what they are from time to time.
Orwell was more prescient than even he knew.
Maybe you’re getting confused with Bill Clinton being into socialism for the easy women.
You are here.
Orwell’s most important insight in 1984 was not how the state uses surveillance, propaganda, ritual, intimidation, etc. to obtain total control.
Rather, it was his recognition of how the state hijacks language itself and, by extension, the process of thought itself, in such a manner that it becomes impossible for its subjects to form a politically incorrect thought.
America’s government-run schools have made great contributions in preparing young adults for such a totalitarian state.
The first time I read, I thought it was an extrapolation of the USSR.
When I recently re-read it, it seemed more like an extrapolation of the US. Especially the part about the permanent “low-intensity” state of war with civilian casualties exceeding those of combatants and shifting alliances. (We have always been allied with Islamic fundamentalists - Afghanistan/Pakistan & Iraq 1976-1989. We are at war with Iraq. 1990 We condemn Islamic fundamentalists. 1990-2008 We have always been opposed to Al Qaeda. We love Islam, a ROP. We support the Muslim Brotherhood. We categorically condemn Islamic terrorists. etc etc etc)
Fixed it.
Orwell knew instinctively the genesis of tyranny. The difference between the French Revolution (which resulted in tyranny) and the American one was that one (the French) was all about the “we” as opposed to the American one, with its emphasis on the “I”. The American Revolution fought for individual rights for every person, whereas the French one fought for the rights of groups. When you have Groupthink, as we have today, it can lead to nothing but tyranny, as the individual is crushed by the tribes (groups), especially with the willing alliance of the press. Most of the progress in history has resulted in an “I” doing the unimaginable, taking risks, and inventing new ways of thinking and doing. The “we” is limited by the herd mentality. Sadly, Marshall McLuhan prophesized that electronic media would increased tribalism. He was right.
Low information voters (morons) used to recuse themselves from political discourse to handle the tougher issues of the best tasting beer, best dressed celebrity and what so and so’s batting average was.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.