whosez

I first read 1984 in the mid ‘50s. I re-read it about 5 years ago. George Orwell is the most prescient person that I have ever come across.

He foretold Brainwashing (stressing someone into compliance) as Winston was taught to love Big Brother. He said, “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

He foretold politically correct speech: He called it Newspeak. He said, “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.”

He foretold the corruption of history in which what happened in the past was what Big Brother said happened. He said “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” In 1984 he was more efficient. He did it by daily destroying every document created. We do it with lies and propaganda about the past. Orwell said,” The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

He foretold the corruption of language by redefining words. We redefine marriage, we redefine a baby in the womb, we redefine racism (only a white man can be racist) we redefine eminent domain, we redefine taxes, etc. He said, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

He spoke of Doublethink: “…the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Spending more will solve the budget deficit brought on by too much spending.

Orwell said, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” President Obama tells the American people that if they like their healthcare plan that they can keep it. Click on the link to see what he tells his supporters: http://youtu.be/Kvg8qVKZYuM

I could go on but you get the idea. Orwell’s big mistake was in the title. He reversed the last two digits of the year in which he wrote it, 1948. Had he titled the book 2084 he would have been right on the money.