Posted on 09/27/2004 9:33:03 PM PDT by Foolsgold
While George Orwell’s classic novel "1984" is a treatise on how totalitarian regimes maintain control over their populations, "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" is essentially an essay on how totalitarian regimes acquire and ascend to power.
The contention here isn’t necessarily that Democrats endeavor to establish a totalitarian regime in America; the contention is that the methods and tactics John Kerry and the Democrats are using in their quest to ascend to power are strikingly similar to those outlined by Orwell.
Story Continues Below
"Animal Farm" centers around a revolt on Manor Farm, set in England. Furious over the conditions on Manor Farm and the way the human farmer, Mr. Jones, treated the animals, the animals staged a rebellion and ejected Jones and his men from the farm.
The triumphant animals renamed Manor Farm “Animal Farm.” However, the more intelligent animals, the pigs, quickly discovered that they could use their superior intellect to manipulate and dominate the less-intelligent animals, who didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late.
Eventually, the pigs, led by a pig named Napoleon, took control of the farm and established a regime far worse than that of Jones. In the end, fittingly, the pigs restored the farm’s original human name, Manor Farm.
Directly after the initial rebellion, the animals established “Seven Commandments” for the animals to live by. The first two were 1) whatever goes upon two legs (i.e., man) is an enemy and 2) whatever goes upon four legs (i.e., animals) ... is a friend.
When the least intelligent of the animals, the sheep, had trouble grasping this concept, the pigs discovered that they could convey their propaganda more effectively by distilling the more complex concepts into oversimplified slogans. So Squealer, effectively the pigs’ minister of propaganda, taught the sheep a simple platitude: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” The sheep ran around all day bleating this slogan.
When I hear John Kerry say, in his stump speech, “W stands for wrong,” all I hear is “Four legs good, two legs bad.” When I watched leftists running around New York during the convention with signs that said “Bush lied,” all I thought was “Four legs good, two legs bad.” It seems the Democrats have found their flock of sheep.
One pig, Snowball, was expelled from the farm after a vociferous disagreement with Napoleon – Orwell’s allusion to Trotsky. Soon thereafter, the pigs would blame any disaster or mishap that occurred on Snowball, making him the ethereal scapegoat – an inscrutable, phantasmal mastermind. If the windmill was destroyed, it was Snowball’s fault; if eggs were stolen from the hen house, it was Snowball’s fault; if there was any act of sabotage on the farm, it was Snowball’s fault, etc.
If the Democrats are caught passing forged documents to CBS, it’s Karl Rove’s fault; if Vietnam veterans oppose and expose John Kerry in a television ad, it’s Karl Rove’s fault; if the Democrats can’t get their message out ... It’s Karl Rove’s fault. Karl Rove has effectively become Snowball.
Anytime Napoleon or the other pigs felt that the animals on the farm were starting to catch on and wise up to what was truly happening on the farm, the pigs would resort to their ace in the hole: scare tactics. If the pigs’ dictates were not followed, warned Napoleon, farmer Jones would come back! As baseless as this threat was, it always successfully scared the other animals into compliance. They would do anything so long as Jones would not return.
The Democrats have mastered this tactic: If you don’t vote for John Kerry, you won’t have health insurance; if you don’t vote for John Kerry, you won’t have Social Security; if you don’t vote for John Kerry, the draft will come back. If you don’t vote for John Kerry, Jones will come back!
As the pigs acquired more and more power, they took on more and more human characteristics, until they eventually were even walking on two legs. To get away with this, of course, they had to modify the original “Seven Commandments,” while convincing the other animals that the commandments had not, in fact, been modified at all.
To help achieve this end, this deception, the pigs taught the sheep a new slogan: “Four legs good, two legs better!” In the end, the pigs had but one commandment: All Animals are equal, but some Animals are more equal than others. This, in a nutshell, seems to be the contemporary maxim of the Democrats.
I only remember "Pigs" and "Sheep" from Pink Floyd's [i]Animals. Was "Democrats" something they added to the cd version?
Great analogy!
I love that book. Orwell was very insightful. be very careful with the constitution. What seems like an innocent change can come back and bite you in the @ss. Also the analogy of the pigs raising the dogs to be loyal only to them is very analogous to the left brainwashing our youth today.
I think we need to have a nationwide barbeque. How 'bout roast pigs for the main menu?
Most excellent.
What's scary is how much like George Orwell's books the modern Dems have become, yet no one seems willing to point out the analogies.
MGY
Wow, this is an interesting comparison!
Every time I heard about affirmative action quotas, I thought of the book 1984.
YES YES YES!!! You did it, Jon! Great job!!
The original post from last week:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1224853/posts
Orwell bump!!!
Excellent analysis!!
Thanks!
The concept of "attack dogs"
Democrats are pigs and sheet.
:)
Kerrythink:
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'Kerrythink' involved the use of Kerrythink.
But, of course, crimestop and blackwhite are essential to Kerrythink.
What's funny is the libs always compare things that they dislike to things from 1984... when in actuality, they're the ones closest resembling it.
Random note: Orwell rocks! Even if he was a socialist for a while...
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