Ineteen Eighty-Four Plus Twenty-Two

Nineteen Eighty-four plus Twenty-two

1984 has come and gone. The cold war is over. The collapse of oppressive totalitarian regimes leads to the conclusion that these governments by their nature generate resistance and are doomed to failure. The fictional world of George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is best described as hopeless; a nightmarish dystopia where the omnipresent State enforces perfect conformity among members of a totalitarian Party through indoctrination, propaganda, fear, and ruthless punishment. In the aftermath of the fall of capitalism and nuclear war, the world has been divided among three practically identical totalitarian nation-states. A state of perpetual war and poverty is the rule in Oceania. However, this is merely a backdrop, far from the most terrifying aspect of life in 1984; a total loss of individual freedom, thought, and privacy in exchange for false security and obedience to a totalitarian government.

Was Orwell describing something which he saw in his own lifetime, or, was he projecting a warning of things to come? How relevant is 1984 to modern society?

Most Americans don’t want to live in an Orwellian society under the heavy surveillance of Big Brother, but we do. Like it or not, we live in a society that accepts virtual strip searches at airports; surveillance cameras; "discount" cards that record our buying habits; bar codes; "cookies" and spywear on our computers; on-line access to satellite technology that can image our back yards; and microchip radio frequency identification devices that are already implanted in our family dogs and soon to be integrated into our groceries, our credit cards, our cash, and our new underwear. It is feasible that, in the not too distant future, our newly born will be “micro-chipped” before leaving the hospital delivery room.

There are all sorts of businesses that have records of what medications we take and why. Many aspects of our lives are available on the Internet. Even a black box in our new car--or event data recorder as they are called--is ready and willing to spill the beans on our driving habits.

Our Big Brother, Uncle Sam, is with us from womb to tomb. Fueled by the paranoia of "ists" and "isms," Sam has the capability of spying on everything and everybody--and no doubt is. But, as Sam says: "It's for our own good” (Nelson, 2005).

Many of the predictions made by George Orwell in his book 1984 in relation to corruption of language are recognizable in the United States today. Our language is in the process of changing. The introduction of politically correct words and phrases over the past few decades is based on the principles of Orwell’s Newspeak. Today, this phenomenon is a tool of liberals used to erase the opinions of the past, and to help propagate new ideas, and is rooted in the same motives as Newspeak. Although Political Correctness may not be all-encompassing as its Orwell’s Newspeak, Political Correctness is equally as dangerous and oppressive to free thought. For example, terms such as “Affirmative Action” implies Action which is correct ("Affirmative" means correct, and "Action" is normally good as well) when actually what is meant is the preferential treatment for a particular minority group. The word “Peacekeepers,” now refers to a soldier that occupies a foreign nation. During the cold war, when the USSR would do that type of thing, they were called an occupational force. These words were fabricated by government and special interest groups specifically for the purpose of misleading the public and swaying public opinion (Newspeak Dictionary, 2006),

But, as in Orwell's Newspeak, the state doesn't just stop with creating new words. In some cases a perfectly good word already exists, but has some sort of negative connotation attached to it. In order not to offend anybody, must make up a new word in order to get out of saying what he really means. Why would a politician utter a potentially inflammatory statement such as, “The U.S. occupational force in the Middle East has succeeded in securing the oil supply”, when any bad press can avoided by simply saying, “The U.S. Peacekeepers have succeeded in protecting American interest.” And when the Bush’s press secretary spews this sort of propaganda to the media, it would be too hash to say that he “slanting” the news. That would make it sound like he was doing something wrong. So instead, the happy playful term, “spin” is used (Newspeak Dictionary, 2006).

Orwell wrote of war without end; we're told the war on terror will last decades at least. In June, 2002, President Bush spoke at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In that speech he spoke of terrorists and stated, “…the best way to secure the homeland is to hunt them down one by one.