Do you genuinely fear that 1984 is happening?

Am I alone in that when I read Animal Farm and 1984 that I seriously see these things happening all around us under Bush? Or am I really that paranoid?

n/t

considered "1984" a manual instead of a novel.

from the Whitehouse, he said the * administration was saying: "what is the problem? it is all there in the manual..." and then he showed 1984 book!

of high school when we were studying 1984, we all talked in class about how glad we were that we'd never have to deal with any of that, that we lived in a country where that would never happen.

Well, what a difference 21 years makes! I'm seeing things that I NEVER EVER EVER in a MILLION YEARS thought I'd see in this country, and it's so similar to so much in that book that it's beyond eerie. And I remember our teacher shaking her head at our naivete, saying that things like that could happen in ANY country, given the right set of circumstances and that you just never know, we needed to always be on our guard.

She then asked us how we knew that what we were told by the media and those around us was actually true? Good question!

She's got to be a DUer now.

of course, this was in 1983... and at that point I already had a healthy distrust of government. Regan was president, and 1984 would be upon us soon, on sooo many levels. Only two years later, Ray-Gun started the 'War on Drugs' and Big Brother was born into this world.

1983 as well, and I, too, was not too trustful of government, especially since I couldn't stand Raygun and knew he'd be trouble from the moment he was elected when I was fifteen.

Think about the Reagan's cozy relationshiop with Hussein and read this:


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(From Chapter 3)


The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

Reagan's papers.

(From chapter 5)

The degradation of civil discussion and tolerance of opinion..

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'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? 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. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

Doesn't the war against Eastasia/Eurasia look eerily similar to the war on terrorism? Every day, we find out about a new enemy - a new shadowy figure that's always just outside our grasp. One day, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were our friends and we helped them with money and training. The next we're told that they're our enemies and have always been trying to destroy us. One day, Pakistan is our ally in the war on terror - the next, they are safe haven for terrorists. Fucking creepy if you ask me.

As the book was a manual.

Anyone who doesn't think the goal of this group is anything else then an Orwellian existence is sorely mistaken, IMHO.