Wulfie's Wurld

Commentary: 1984 Revisited

I read George Orwell's 1984 back when I was in high school. This was in the mid-Sixties so the time setting of the book was still almost two decades off. Back then it was considered a cautionary tale about how society could devolve into a distopia. I suppose it would be considered so now, even though the year in question has come and gone. Somehow, the images of Big Brother, the Thought Police, the Hate Rallies, and rewriting history and pretending it had always been so, stick with us and have invaded our everyday speech.

Back then, I used to tell people how we were on track to 1984. We don't rewrite history, they'd say. We just changed all the clocks an hour an now we pretend the time has always been this way. We don't have hate rallies, they'd say. We're playing our cross-town rivals this weekend and our rally is scheduled at 10:00 this morning. You're wearing a button that says "Drop dead, Little Red" (the other high school's colors were red and white).

You get the picture.

I was reminded of all this over the weekend, when once again the world plunged into madness and changed all their clocks. Now, instead of getting up at 3:00 a.m. to go to work, I get up at 2:00 a.m. Thanks world. I don't even understand how anyone is "saving" an hour of daylight. All they've done is chop it off the morning and scotch tape it to the evening.

As I thought about how I used to tease my friends in school about being tools of Big Brother, I thought about what's happening today. When I pondered the Thought Police, I was reminded of the NSA and the illegal wire-tapping that is probably still going on. I thought about Rush Limbaugh telling his listeners that HE is "the only news they need to listen to." I thought about Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter preaching hatred of the Left. I thought about Randi Rhodes and Al Franken preaching hatred of the Right. I thought about the FCC, chartered to keep the RF signals and interference under control, with controlling content instead.

I thought about how congress and state senates keep trying to legislate people from being stupid. Rewrite history? In late 2002 we were all supposed to believe Iraq had WMD. Now we're supposed to believe they didn't. In the Fifties and Sixties Red China was our enemy. Now Red China is our friend and business partner, and we no longer call them "Red." Are they no longer Communists?

Hate rallies? Just tune into any talk radio and you'll get your own, personal hate rally. But if you want something official, you get two to choose from. We call them the DNC and the RNC. To invoke another Orwellian image, we need to remember although the ruling oligarchy of animals was evil, the farmers they threw off the land were equally as evil. If really doesn't matter whether you're in lock-step with one political ideology or goose-stepping with the other. As long as you succumb to the political and religious Thought Police, you're in the thrall of Big Brother.

I wonder if there's a Blog Police.