Orwell & Trump's "Brave New World"
I often ask my Trump friends, what is it about the guy that attracts you? And their reply is often centered around their paycheck—they take home more—and the fact that he is a bit rough around the edges, unconventional, meaning, he voices attitudes and hate they don’t have the guts to say out loud. It is all about them, not the less fortunate, the voiceless, the forgotten. And by their silence, they validate Trump’s hate strewn rhetoric and policies.
“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.” George Orwell
There is something deeper, insidious, cancerous, that is swilling around our political landscape. Trump is seeking to institute fascism in this country, surrounded by a band of enablers. He lost the election, but he is creating a false reality that he won, that there was election fraud, a lie his cult embraces and advances. As Joseph Goebbels stated: “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.”
From George Orwell,?1984
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
During a speech in July 2018, Trump said: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
George Orwell,?1984:?“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
Dare I say the press—what Trump has labelled an ‘enemy of the people,’ the one institution that has the courage to speak truth to power.
And then there was Kellyanne Conway’s coining of a new Orwellian phrase on January 22, 2017: “alternative facts”. In other words:?1984?“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
He is seeking to be reinstalled as President by positing an alternate, false reality.
The president also meets most of the criteria of Orwell’s 1944 definition of fascism: “Something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘fascist’.”
As the last days of his Presidency tick down, Trump has become unhinged, soaked in disinformation, surrounded by conspiracy theorists who validate his insanity: for example, his phone call on Sunday to Georgia’s secretary of state where he commands: ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes.’ He has no clue that this command breaks federal law, nor does he care, nor does his enablers care.
In a way, it was good that Hillary didn’t win in 2016. It made us realize that Democracy is not a given, that it needs to be fought for, 24/7. A lot of Americans really don’t want Democracy, as it threatens their favored nation status, their first in line status. The deck is stacked in their favor, and they are too fearful to embrace America’s signature concept: ‘all men are created equal’. Trump has tapped into and exploited that fear, serving up scapegoats to fan racism and the other isms…
We have come so far this year, but we need to close the deal. The amount of destruction Trump is capable of in the next 15 days should not be ignored. We need him out yesterday so our Democratic institutions can be fortified.
1984:?‘The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power – pure power.’