1984

and our Fiat Reality

Welcome, my friends, to another week’s newsletter.  Things are getting strange.  In his book 1984, published on June 8th, 1949, George Orwell captured a frighteningly accurate picture of our modern world, in just 38 more years than he thought to get there.  In this missive, I intend to shine light on the lunacy of our age by showing exactly how Orwellian our world has truly become.  I can’t tell you how many times, when I compared some aspect of our modern age to 1984, that I was corrected, usually by a true believer and party adherent, told that I was wrong, being silly, or that I really had to bend reason to fit our time into this work of fiction.  Sadly, it wasn’t always from a member of the left side of the party. It was just as frequently a member of the right wing of the party.  I say this because, in truth, Republicans and Democrats are not adversarial, outside of rhetoric.  If they were, than things would actually change when one or the other got in power.  The Congress, Senate, and White House have shifted numerous times since the 90s and yet all trends, social, economic, military, and totalitarian, have continued on the same line with no effort to slow the progression.

In 1984, Orwell starts by a very clear explanation of how the scope of thought was controlled by control of the language called ‘Newspeak’.  Mr. Orwell said:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

He isn’t wrong. By controlling language and outlawing words you absolutely narrow, not only the range of expression, but to a greater degree, what is accepted reality.  We see this every day by the redefinition of words into oblivion and their substitution.  Let’s take the word ‘woman’. There is a very vocal segment in our population that will tell you that is a social construct and anyone can declare themselves a woman.  They will go on to discuss female penises and accuse you of hate speech for pointing out that women don’t have penises (here) and these same people will tell you that men can have babies (here).  These are patently false notions that require one to abdicate thousands of years of shared experiences and knowledge to redefine the basic constructs of life.  Transsexual women are not women and transsexual men are not men.  The words man and woman do, in fact, mean specific and provable things, not social constructs.  I refuse to allow the language to be mauled in such a way.  Transsexual men and women are transsexual men and transsexual women and should be discussed as the distinct category they are.  This doesn’t erase them or unperson them. It defines them just as the term man or woman define themselves as their own thing.  If you decide you don’t want to be the gender you were born as, ok. You do you. I don’t care. But, do not attempt to force the rest of the world to redefine reality for your choices.  There is a push to redefine many words (man and woman are just examples), delete words from the vocabulary, and relegate certain words to certain groups but not others.  Sadly, these people pushing a real world newspeak are doing so through the use of social tools such as identifying micro-aggressions (here), bans on hate speech (here) defined as anything they don’t like, cracking down on opinions they don’t like by calling anything, regardless of how well founded, misinformation, and this is all being done with the goal of banning free speech all together (here and here).  The more the confines of acceptable speech are narrowed, the more difficult it is to express views not approved by those in power, thus crushing the possibility of decent.

In 1984, Orwell’s main character Winston Smith is an editor in the records department at the Ministry of Truth.  His entire job is to write stories and then re-write everything that touches the story leading up to that point to make his current story seem true regardless of what must change or be deleted.  It is described as follows:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

“As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.”

“As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.”

We see this being attempted today with things like CRT (here), the 1619 project (here), as well as once trusted media establishment’s outright denial of provable stories that contradict their political goals, from Hunter Biden’s laptop(here), the COVID lab leak theory (here), any type of American-funded biolabs in the Ukraine (here).  Nowhere can this be seen more than in social media platforms, that in many ways have replaced the public square for the sharing of thoughts and discussion of opinion, political or otherwise.  There is a constantly shifting set of rules against hate speech, misinformation, and incitement of violence.  These rules are unequally applied and ever-changing (here and here).   Essentially, you can say whatever you want as long as it conforms to the narrative du jour, and if it is counter you will be silenced.

Randolph Bourne said “War is the health of the state” and while this is unfortunate and true, it is also acknowledged in 1984 where Orwell writes:

“…the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”

This also ties in with the other ritual of unity in 1984, the two minutes of hate.  These things work in conjunction to keep the people constantly in fear and provided a constant focus for negative feelings caused by that fear.  On the two minutes of hate George tells us:

"The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in."

We see this every day in the hyperbolic nature of news reporting and political speaking.  Most recently the State attempted to focus the two minutes of hate on the unvaccinated (here, here, and here).  Now it is Putin (here, here, and here), and before that, for the last 20 years, it was some Islamist or Islamist group or another scattered across the Middle East.  That being said, it is always someone.  Be it the British, Native Americans, ourselves, some little country with few friends and fewer resources, or a major conflagration like World War II. Since the Declaration of Independence 246 years ago, we have had less than 17 years of peace (here).  It seems that by 1949 George Orwell had noticed a pattern.

This would bring us to one of the more advanced concepts in the book and that is the concept of doublethink. We are told in 1984:

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

We see this extensively in fringe groups in both wings of the party and in truth, it is the only way to rectify many politicians talk with their actions.  That being said, we recently had a huge and public exhibition of doublethink and the fact that enough people caught on to it gave me hope.  This is the Biden plan to hand out crack pipes.  We were told with a straight face that they were not giving out crack pipes, they were handing out drug smoking kits for the safe consumption of meth and crack (here, here, here).  Seriously, you can’t make this up. It is playing semantics at a world cup level.

Then there is the icon of the party, Big Brother in 1984, the perfect leader.  He is described thusly:

“Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration.”

Hum… We may not be quite that worshipful of the president yet, but some are close as long as the guy is on their team (here, here, here, and here).  However, all too frequently, so long as the guy in the oval office is from correct wing of the party, far too many sycophants will fawn over them like the second coming, elevating them above base men.

The last part of the control complex in Orwell’s dystopia is the surveillance state and the screens.  The screens were not only used to surveil the populace, but also to feed them propaganda all the time.  1984 says this about the screens:

“Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations—that they lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years ago.”

Ours are filled with just as much propaganda recently, the Ghost of Kiev, Miss Ukraine with a rifle, and Defiance at Snake Island all turned out to be 100% propaganda stories with no basis in truth.  However, they were, by far, not the start of it. You can read more on its history (here). This would bring us to the surveillance state of 1984.  About this Orwell wrote:

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence.”

We live in a state that is even more monitored than Orwell could imagine during his life.  All of our communications are recorded, scanned, and searched.  There are cameras at most intersections in every city, and they can even co-opt the cameras and microphones on our devices (here).

My dear readers, we may not yet be Oceania, but we are not as free or as far off as one might like to believe, and unless we stand up and refuse to cooperate, we or our children will know the vivid description of life Orwell warned us about:

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”

If we want to stop this, it is now or this is the future we leave to our children and grandchildren.

God Bless you

-Sam