Events of the past several weeks have prompted me to remember a quote from George Orwell’s novel “1984:”
“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.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation. The superstate and its residents are dictated to by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism, shortened to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak, the government's invented language. The superstate is under the control of the privileged elite of the Inner Party, a party and government that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime", which is enforced by the "Thought Police.” There is no respite nor escape from the powers that be.
Today, logos are being changed, statues destroyed, buildings and military bases renamed, movies banned, public streets and private property confiscated and occupied with impunity, arson and burglary committed without remorse, states told to change their flag, high schools to change their mascot, the reading of certain books discouraged, television programs canceled, highways renamed. Even the CEO of a national company tells us to shine someone else’s shoes to atone for our white privilege. We are being told that if you like white picket fences, drinking milk, white wall tires or drive a white car, you are racist. 1984 was full of jackbooted thugs and snitches and America has an ample supply of both waiting in the bowels of the leftist revolution.