Orwell's "1984": The Novel To Read For The Trump Era

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth or falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."- John F. Kennedy

Emmanuel Goldstein - below- the Ultra "terrorist" in '1984'. Oceania's enforcers went crazy trying to ferret out all his allies for 'thought crimes'. Are we near such a future in the U.S.?


With Kellyanne Conway's recent defense of "alternative facts", it should  come as no surprise that sales of George Orwell's "1984" (written in 1949) are spiking beyond all expectations. It appears sensible people in the country wish to understand how governments can debase and mutate language in order to control thought. If a government is successful in controlling thought then it has a clear path to spreading propaganda and brainwashing many of its citizens.

In previous posts I've given examples of assorted deformations of language, mainly the substitution of political euphemisms for events or actions that don't need any soft soaping, because they are what they freaking are. Some examples:

"enhanced interrogation" for torture

"rendition" to remove someone to a hidden site for purposes of "enhanced interrogation"

"Collateral damage" - deaths caused to civilians when bombings or attacks are indiscriminately launched

And the classic:

"war on terror" - when one cannot make war on a mode or strategy. One makes war on a nation state.

Other examples of the uses of euphemism are well known - mostly employed by Republicans and conservatives for the purpose of mind-fucking, such as "DEATH taxes" for estate taxes, and "entitlements" for Social Security and Medicare, when people have to actually pay in for the former (out of each paycheck) and have to pay nearly $250,000 over a lifetime for what Medicare doesn't cover, including dental care.

Then there is the more recent  use of  "scandal" to replace "conspiracy". Thus, we are now supposed to accept "the Watergate scandal" as opposed to Watergate conspiracy, and the "Iran-Contra scandal" as opposed to Iran-Contra conspiracy. The effort here clearly to expunge the concept of political conspiracy from public consciousness.

With the ascension of Trump to power, along with the appointment of a long time propagandist (Steve Bannon) to a top security post, we are in a language skewering era that rivals or exceeds anything that came before, and may be one of a kind.  Trump's assorted spielers, like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, can seemingly blurt anything they want without most media doing due diligence. Spicer actually had the chutzpah to accuse former deputy AG Sally Yates of "betrayal" for her principled stance to defend the constitution from a clearly lawless executive order. Some Trumpies, so smitten with language mutation, have actually gone off the rails totally and called it "treason". Well, they need to read Orwell's "1984" to get a grip. Taking a principled stand of dissent to defend the core of American values (in the Constitution) is emphatically not "treason".

The plot of the Orwell novel follows an everyman drone who lives in Oceania, specifically in a region formerly known as England. The tenor of the scenes and descriptions clearly shows a society in a state of perpetual war. There are bombed out shells of buildings all around, and Winston himself lives in a dilapidated apartment.

More to the point, the society of Oceania is controlled by an omnipresent, totalitarian agency (INGSOC) which monitors citizens comings and goings, as well as erasing and altering evidence of the past as it distorts the truth by continually altering the language - even in dictionaries. (The defining language being Newspeak).    Kids in INGSOC uniforms are mandated to report every bit of odd behavior detected in adults - whether 'proles' or those like Winston Smith, charged with altering the language to Newspeak in their little agency cubbyholes.

To fix ideas, throughout the novel readers are introduced to a litany of phrases and terms describing the Oceania government's actions such as: "doublethink" (believing contradictory things and "Big Brother" the ever present controlling image on every citizen's monitor screen.

The arch villain of the Oceania state and Big Brother is intellectual Emmanuel Goldstein. One sees that  at every interlude the hapless denizens of Oceania must sit in vast halls  as Goldstein's face appears on a screen  - whereupon they begin screaming  'TRAITOR!' until they're delirious and emotionally spent.

What vile deed did this "traitor" Goldstein commit? Well,  insisting that citizens think and reason beyond Big Brother's endless lies such as "war is peace'.  Instead Goldstein argued that continuous war was used to siphon off the wealth of society to keep people living at bare subsistence. Goldstein's exact words:

"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. "

What or who represents Goldstein in the Trump era?  From what we've seen, it is anyone, or any group that  challenges what it is being told to believe by the so-called authority. Such dissenters  would be the "liberal" media as well as reflective politicians and all intellectuals worth the name. Thus, when Kellyanne Conway and other Trump lackeys (e.g. Sean Spicer) insisted the rest of us were wrong when we said his inauguration crowd was less than those for Obama (in 2009, 2013), it evoked the words from "1984":

"The party told you to reject the evidence of  your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

Compare that to Spicer's claim of "record breaking crowds" at his inauguration despite clear evidence to the contrary.

The takeaway here is that those who read "1984" are likely to be more prepared as the Trump blitz on language and evidence continues. These readers will see a fictional portrayal of what is playing out on many levels right now.

Professor Heath Brown, an expert in presidential translations at John Jay College in New York, quoted in today's Colorado Springs Independent, observed:

"The Trump administration is obsessed with controlling the message".

This we must resist with every fiber of our intellectual being. Those who haven't read Orwell's book, you might want to do so before the Trump first term runs to the conclusion of its first year. By then who knows how much havoc will be wrought on thought and  intellectuals who are the embodiment of 1984's Goldstein.

Yes, It CAN Happen Here!

Winston Smith strapped to the rat cage in Room 101. As the rats approach he screams and betrays his lover telling O'Brien to "Do it to Julia, not me!" This is what the fascist state wants - to divide each from all others to enable totalitarian control.

In the movie '1984' prior to being led to "Room 101" (roughly the equivalent of the torture-water boarding room in our modern era, except worse), "O'Brien" (the INGSOC inquisitor)  informs Winston Smith what the future will look like: "It will be a boot stomping on a human face.....forever!"  He was referring to the unstoppable spread of fascism across the planet. Winston is first forced to submit to electro-shock torture:  his body placed on a large conductor and administered shock after shock  because he has refused to betray his lover (Julia) and submit in 100% devotion to the State ('Big Brother').  Also, because he refuses to say O'Brien is holding up five fingers, when it is really just four. (O'Brien: "If I say it is five, then it is five!")

But after Winston expresses distinct disgust for "Big Brother" it is to Room 101 he must go where the torture is the manifestation of one's worst fears. In Winston's case- rats - two of which are put into a rat cage-cum-mask that can be strapped to the head and allow the vermin to approach his face as different levers are pressed and wire partitions collapse. One more partition and they will be eating away at his face- likely boring right through his head. The scene from the movie is shown below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLFIxt2cK_0

Orwell's novel was meant to be a cautionary tale of what can transpire within the most obnoxious, obscene,  totalitarian systems, such as Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Third Reich. It never crossed his mind to consider the possibility of a fascist state emerging in a democratic nation, say like the U.S. However, unknown to too many Americans, Sinclair Lewis did consider such a possible future and wrote about it in his novel: 'It Can't Happen Here'.

Those who are interested can find the entire text of the novel here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html

A brief synopsis:

It is (1935), and there's a  highly contested election of an oafish yet strangely charismatic president, who talks like a "reformer" but is really in the pocket of big business, who claims to be a home-spun "humanist," while appealing to religious extremists, and who speaks of "liberating" women and minorities, as he gradually strips them of all their rights. One character, when describing him, says, "I can't tell if he's a crook or a religious fanatic."  After getting elected, he puts the media - at that time, radio and newspapers - under the supervision of the military and slowly begins buying up or closing down media outlets.  The biggest media tycoon of the time directs his newspapers to heap unqualified praise upon the president and his policies, and a special relationship with the government. The president, taking advantage of an economic crisis, strong-arms Congress into signing blank checks over to the military and passing stringent and unconstitutional laws, including seizing property and mass spying.



Hmmmm.......sounds very familiar, similar to what happened in the U.S. after the Bush II bloodless coup in 2000. We saw Bush entrain Big business and the military by exploiting a terror attack then getting unconstitutional laws passed in the form of the Patriot Act - including provisions to enact martial law on the flimsiest pretext, as well as getting a pussified congress to pass the Military Commissions Act in 2006, removing habeas corpus.

Recall earlier I'd warned of one of the outstanding hallmarks of the fascist state, tied to demolition of privacy protections as enshrined in the 4th Amendment. I noted, referencing the language of the amendment:

" 'Being secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects'  implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. Hell, let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em! This is why in a fascist dictatorship 'personal effects' don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person has, even his own body. Hence, in fascist dictatorships, such as existed in Nazi Germany, all personal effects, papers could be seized by the Nazis on a whim or remote suspicion "

Enter now the barbaric recent seizure of property of Glenn Greenwald’s Brazilian partner David Miranda by British police during a flight transfer at London’s Heathrow Airport. Without offering any reason whatsoever, they seized his property (laptop, jump drives, computer games)  on the basis of an anti-terrorist statute, passed in 2000, with the Orwellian name “Schedule 7.”   As blogger David Lindorff writes:

"Miranda was subsequently detained and held, without access to a lawyer, for nine hours -- the maximum amount of time allowed under the draconian terms of Schedule 7 -- and was during that time questioned by at least six security agents, whom Miranda says asked him about his “entire life.” Never was there any suggestion that he was a terrorist or that he had any links to terrorism. Rather, the focus was on journalist Greenwald’s plans in relation to his writing further articles about the data he had obtained from US National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, now living in Russia under a grant of political and humanitarian asylum"

In other words, it was obviously payback for Greenwald's reporting of Snowden's leaks in the UK Guardian newspaper.

Lindorff goes on:

"In a related action, police also went to the offices of the UK Guardian newspaper, which is where Greenwald works, though from his home in Brazil, and, in an act of wanton destruction reminiscent of Nazi storm troopers or Chinese public security bureau thugs, destroyed hard drives of the newspaper’s computers containing leaked documents provided by Snowden."

Are we entering the era of Newspeak and Orwellian-style  fascism written about in '1984' and Sinclair Lewis' 'It Can't Happen here'? You be the judge. But bear in mind, as in those novels, once liberty is lost it is unlikely to be recovered. Miranda's case is now being investigated in Britain, see e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/22/terror-law-watchdog-report-david-miranda and civil libertarians will rightly see this as a test of whether the UK is tilting toward becoming "Oceania" and remaining a lapdog of the U.S. spy state, or if it truly values civil liberties.

The jury is still out and the clock is ticking.  Meanwhile, the release of recent government audit reports disclose even more unauthorized NSA seizure of emails, communications, etc. violating the 4th amendment. See: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/nsa-illegally-collected-thousands-emails-court


Will congress do anything now? This is another test, for our own nation!

'Big Brother' Haters Merit Neither Sympathy, Respect......or Ratings!

No, not the NSA's Big Brother spies and lying troglodytes, who merely merit firing for violating the Constitution. I am talking about the haters ensconced in the 24/7 spy camera residence of the CBS "reality" show Big Brother, which is drawing the ire of assorted critics - as it should.

Look, it's one thing to be a demented, friendless loser (entertaining fantasies of "salvation"),  who sits in a squirrel cage hideout in his apt. and churns out blog after blog of hate:  deriding those he despises as "monkeys", "black apes", "libtards" or "c*nts" (in the case of potential female presidential contenders) - but it's another thing to have it on a network prime time program. In the first case, the creepazoid psycho may have barely five regular followers, in the latter case we're talking about millions. This may be one reason Barbados opted never to have the 'Big Brother' show as part of its mixed STV (subscription TV)  schedule,  though it did accept 'The Amazing Race' and 'Survivor'.

According to a piece in The Denver Post yesterday by media critic Joanne Ostrow ('Racist, Boorish 'Big Brother' Houseguests Light Up Ratings', p. 6C) this installment of Big Brother has out done all others in hate, over the top nastiness, and racial epithets - all issued by the whiteys (including two Jews, if you can believe it!)   While one can make allowances, perhaps, for those from the South - like Aaryn Gries from San Marcos, TX, and 'Spencer' from Ark.,  it's difficult to understand the basis for the hate spewed out by the Jewish female contestants. Have they not read their own history or studied the history of the holocaust? Are they not aware that similar racial opprobrium as they now spew forth was also part and parcel of Hitler's propaganda films on German Jewry?

Enter Gina Marie Zimmerman, of Staten Island, NY who (according to Ostrow's article):

"in the online feed used the N-word to describe welfare as 'insurance' for black people"

An aside:

This is interesting indeed, coming from a privileged white woman, who likely has never known poverty in her life. It's even more interesting because her recycled trope fits in almost perfectly with the current FOX campaign to denigrate food stamp recipients. Chris Hayes' featured this on his 'All In' show two nights ago, displaying a Fox News (Fox Nation) banner header: 'Unabashed Surfer Receiving Food Stamps to Buy Sushi and Avoid Work'.   Chris noted the content was all about how the guy was receiving food stamps to avoid working. He also noted it is a case of "perpetuating lies on a program that has one of the lowest rates of fraud in the U.S." and "just about the most dishonest depiction of food stamp fraud ever."

Chris portrayed it as "lies" but at a deeper level,  of course, FOX commits the fallacy of distribution,  when an argument assumes there is no difference between a specific person belonging to a given class and the class as a whole. In other words, it makes no distinction between  the distributive (referring to a given member) and collective-  referring to the class itself as a whole.  Thus, FOX Nation sought to show-  and hoped its ignorant viewers would accept- that because one loser surf bum avoids work using food stamps, ALL those who need food stamps are of the same exploitative inclination.  It also reminds me of Michelle Malkin's attack on Social Security disability two years ago, in which in which she attempted to link the outrageous behavior of a couple of extreme cases (adults with adult baby syndrome' - who needed to wear diapers all day so couldn't work- had to have disability)  to the behavior of all those receiving Social Security disability.

The same fallacy is employed to attempt to stir bitter outrage over "voter fraud" - to justify the use of photo IDs which would essentially disenfranchise most African-Americans especially older ones - who were often born at home and with no birth certificates. In fact, the actual cases of voter fraud are so rare as to not be worth a mention. Yet yahoos and haters try to turn it into some major conspiracy against proper white voters!

So what we find in each case is an outrageous insult to the intelligence of the prospective viewer (in the case of the Fox Nation bunkum) or reader, in the case of Malkin's odious tripe.  Does Ms. Zimmerman buy into these moronic fables? I hate to say it, but it seems so!

She,  like other demented loons, appears to be buying into what Chris Hayes has called the GOP 'turning its institutional attention to fighting the scourge of hungry people getting food'. In other words, the Goopers "want to turn food stamp recipients into the next welfare queens"  according to Hayes, and would rather all those hungry people, 1 in 3 of whom are kids, starve.

This whole shtick was exposed on FOX in a disgusting propaganda piece called "The Great Food Stamp Binge", grossly misrepresenting a program that feeds millions of hungry Americans - many of whom fell out of the middle class and may be your neighbors. What do these nattering FOX turds expect? That the hungry in our nation starve? The kids go without food? Are these morons even aware that one of the ways McDonald's lists for employees to "try to make ends meet" is to use food stamps (since their wages are so low). Oh, they also mention trying to get an extra job or two!


Meanwhile,  Hayes provided the reality check facts on food stamp recipients, including:

- Less than 2% of SNAP benefits go to households that don't need the food stamps

- The program is actually under-used with roughly 25% of people eligible signing up

- Less than 40% of seniors eligible participated in 2010.

WHO is actually receiving help? Hayes again gives the facts from actual government statistics.

- 91% of SNAP benefits go to families living under the poverty line of $23,550 for a family of 4

- 55% of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes below half of the poverty line.

- Most of the food stamp recipients live in Red state counties.

According to Bloomberg News, "among the 254 counties where food stamps doubled between 2007 and 2011, Republican Mitt Romney won 213 of them (in red states) last year".

This is eye-opening and shows something is rotten in Denmark, or rather down Dixie way (which are all red states).  It's also interesting that some of the biggest hater bloggers are also gov't benefit recipients, who are blessed by not having to work any more - so they can blog on and hate! They castigate others taking handouts but don't look at themselves. Maybe they can't spell hypocrisy.

Back to Big Brother.

Aaryn Gries, the 22 yr. old white girl from Texas, also earned fame in the house by "calling one fellow contestant a 'queer'" according to Ostrow (ibid.) and telling an Asian-American contestant to "shut up and go make some rice".  She also "warned others to be careful what you say in the dark you might not be able to see that n-bitch" in reference to the African -American girl, Candice, from New Orleans.

Then there is Amanda Zuckerman who Ostrow notes "called another housemate a 'monkey'." She also went one step further and "complained about a black cast member putting a headband on her 'greasy, nappy hair head'". Not yet satisfied, she mocked the accent of a Korean-American woman.

Of course, some dunderheads - like a certain intellect challenged hate blogger- will likely say this is all an example of "political correctness" run amuck. But really what it's far more likely to be is civility gone lost. And please, calling out hateful remarks and bare-faced prejudice is not the same as being politically correct. And anyone who believes so is a moron, just like anyone who seriously  believes that all food stamp recipients are 'welfare queens'.

None of this would matter much, as Ostrow notes, if Big Brother wasn't enjoying sky high ratings. As Ostrow observes:

"This week, up against the 'Teen Choice Awards' on FOX, Big Brother was the highest rated show of the evening with 7.2 million viewers."

The saddest remark of all was perhaps the one quoted from CBS honcho Les Moonves who told critics in Los Angeles recently, according to Ostrow:

"What you see there.....is reflective of how certain people feel in America."

Well, let us hope it's only "certain people",  mostly losers, like the pitiful hate blogger referenced earlier. Let's hope it isn't over thirty million mostly in the South and red states that wanted desperately to see Obama go down in the last election. And when he didn't, found their new racist 'oats' on steroids. It's one thing to feel your racist 'oats', another to broadcast them.

Let's also hope that when the racist house guests on Big Brother finally exit, they get a good look at themselves when they play back the episodes...and then ask if those people, those bigots, are individuals they can live with.