Off By 40 Years

 Off By 40 Years

The dystopian future promised by George Orwell in his novel 1984, arrived 40 years late. Orwell wrote his famous novel in 1949 when I was four. He wrote of a totalitarian society where individual freedoms were no longer tolerated and the government asserted total control over its citizens. What has arrived in America is perhaps more aligned with authoritarianism where our citizens have been blinded into submission by a corrupt state intent on limited political freedoms and suppression of dissent. Our near future could be called disTrumpian, after its founder.

We no longer need Orwell’s Big Brother or the Thought Police, these have been replaced by corrupt influencers using the mental narcotic of social media. The propaganda of our present is not the “Newspeak” of Orwell’s novel, but a similar corruption of language using euphemism. It is here where that which would otherwise be offensive is now tolerated. Making America Great Again is a catch-all euphemism that covers the sins of xenophobia, antisemitism, and bigotry with a sense of national pride and White Christian supremacy.

Our current thought police are rewriting our history to further their own ideology. Books are being banned and the new thought police are trying to control what is taught in our schools. An example of doublespeak would be, “Stop Woke” where the mere mention of certain ideas found to be distasteful to some are banned. W.O.K.E. is a doublespeak acronym that means “Wrong to our Kids and Employees.” This concept, being promoted in the name of freedom, is that the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors. The Stop Woke Act, aka Individual Freedom Act, would permit professors to promote speech that the government sanctioned but would prohibit speech it did not like. Under the guise of "protecting freedom," the law would also control a Florida corporation's right to conduct training that the government saw as WOKE. Florida would have its own "Ministry of Truth" to restrict free speech using the doublespeak of protecting speech.

America was once the shiny apple of democratic freedoms. That apple began rotting at its core in 1976 with the Supreme Court ruling in Buckley v Valeo that decided that limits on election expenditures are unconstitutional. The second decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission in 2010 allowed corporations to join the unincorporated masses with unfettered financial access to government officials. Those decisions made political decisions subject to the unfair influence and prejudice of financial gain. What would be “right for the country” would mean “what is financially expedient” for the politician.

Our metaphoric shiny apple was now awash with cash. It wouldn’t be long before the lure of all that cash would attract some hungry worms. One such ravenous worm entered the political mainstream who was a master of doublespeak. He honed his skills in the entertainment industry. He is the promised one. He is the Big Brother worm that will feast on the fruits of our labors to his heart’s content.

This new entrant on the political scene will mesmerize the masses with promises of a better life that only he can deliver. He points to the obvious corruption of the existing political machinery, and the banality of their current existence. He provides scapegoats for their wrath and tells them he will make them great again. They are ripe for the picking. They line up to be shorn. They bleat out their delight. They ignore his flaws.

They ignore any of his scary rhetoric with, “he was just kidding.” They have become Mizaru and Kikazaru, the first two of the Three Wise Monkeys of the Japanese maxim. They see and hear no evil even as it engulfs them. They will ignore Iwazaru, the third wise monkey, and will shout their evil. There is safety and comfort within the cadre of like-minded souls.

On March 16, 2024, our worm with a combover threatened a “blood bath” if he loses another election this November. Assumably, the insurrection of January 6, 2020, was just a rehearsal for the carnage that would ensue if things didn’t go his way. In usual fashion, our blonde invertebrate called the not-unexpected outrage resulting from his remarks, Fake News. We should have known that he was talking only about auto imports.

Here is the verbatim quote, “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.” As hard as I look, I have failed to find the words auto or import anywhere in this statement.

While Orwell was referring to Nazism and Stalinism where any who dare to think thoughts not promoted by the state may be tortured into submission. Where political propaganda is superior to truth and trumps (no pun intended) free speech. Americans will have to decide this November if this worm represents the future of our democratic apple or if we should toss it to protect the good apples left in the bushel basket.

Are we to suffer the fate of Winston Smith of 1984 fame and emerge from the horrors of Room 101 blinded by the false promises of a charlatan? Will we opt for a solution much worse than the problem? Will we blindly accept a government of unchecked power that will lead to unchecked corruption, or will we make the effort to actually solve the multitude of problems that face us? Should we accept our dysTrumpian future? Nobody ever said democracy would be easy.