I come to you today hat in hand. I owe you all an apology. As you may recall, my election prognostication was something that looked just like 1984:
In my defense, I would just like to say that technically I was correct. It’s just that I pulled the wrong 1984 bitmap from by hard drive; this is the one I intended to reflect:
So, I’m sorry, okay?
I feel my inaccurate prognostication may be partially responsible for some of the PEDS (post election depressive syndrome) that we’ve all been experiencing. So today, in order to assist you in throwing off the lingering effects and thus avoid any long term effects from the malady, I’m requesting – no, make that REQUIRING (because that’s how we roll nowadays) you to go read Clarice’s Pieces at American Thinker:
She will convince you, if you’re still hanging out on that ledge, to come down. It’s not as grim as we initially thought. And we all have work to do even if it’s just getting on with our normal lives once again. So read it. There will be a test later.
Now, allow me to explain how a glitch in my imaging system inadvertently contributed to what proved to be my irrational exuberance as far as the election of 2012 was concerned. For one thing, the images on my hard drive both shared the identical title, “1984.” As you know, that phenomenon is theoretically impossible and, I must say, an odd coincidence for images of two diametrically opposed visions of America:
One reflecting Ronnie’s vision of a shining city on a hill,
the other, Big Brother’s Guy’s vision of Fantasyland.
It is, actually, Orwellian - a case of digital imaging doublethink:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... George Orwell, 1984
I’m just going to chalk it up as one of those computer blips that sometimes occur inexplicably when the votes are counted. So, assuming that this error on my part has now been explained away to everyone’s satisfaction, let’s use this opportunity as a “teachable moment” and explore George Orwell’s dystopia a little further. Just so you’ll know what to watch for.
“Nineteen Eighty-Four” is a novel by George Orwell published in 1949. It is a dystopian and satirical novel set in Oceania, where society is tyrannized by The Party and its totalitarian ideology.
The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.
Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality…”
So far so good.
"It was one of these pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath ran." George Orwell, 1984
People have argued for years over whether Nineteen Eighty-Four was satire or if George Orwell was just a very gifted seer.
You may recall that in the novel Julia, protagonist Winston Smith’s love interest, was a “prole:”
“Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason…He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”
In Orwell’s world of Oceania, you had little reason and less opportunity to think for yourself, the government/media complex took care of all that for you. All you have to do was play along.
“The choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and… for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.” – George Orwell, 1984.
“Big Brother and the Party justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good.” - George Orwell, 1984.
Because nobody should have to pay for their own birth control
Oh sure, you may have to make a few changes to your life:
No longer required
“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." - George Orwell, 1984.
You’ll have to “play by the rules” because otherwise there will be consequences:
“Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” - George Orwell, 1984.
And you may even require a little re-education:
“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.” - George Orwell, 1984.
Well, I don’t want to ruin the book for you if you haven’t already read it:
"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated."
So I’ll just say it didn’t end well. Butt keep in mind, it was fiction…and we all know that truth is much stranger than fiction. We can make it so. As long as we never give up.
And speaking of fighting on, I would like to close out today with a Veteran’s Day thought from Mr. Orwell as well:
“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
Thank the soldiers, who cling to their guns and religion…so that we might be free.
Linked By: Temple of Mut, and Victory Girls, and Mireille Buser and Gary Gale on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!
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