Posted on 11/11/2019 6:00:11 PM PST by bitt
Like it or not, 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
For a variety of reasons, the 2020 election is going to be a referendum beyond Donald Trump’s record and his Democratic opposition.
The furor that Trump has incurred, and the radical antithesis to his agenda and first term, have redefined the looming election. It is becoming a stark choice between a revolutionary future versus American traditionalism.
The choice in reductionist terms will be one between a growing, statist Panopticon, fueled by social media, a media-progressive nexus, and an electronic posse. Online trolls and government bureaucrats seek to know everything about us, in Big Brother fashion to monitor our very thoughts to ferret out incorrect ideas, and then to regiment and indoctrinate us to ensure elite visions of mandated equality and correct behavior—or else!
In other words, the personality quirks of a Trump or an Elizabeth Warren or a Bernie Sanders will become mostly irrelevant given the existential choice between two quite antithetical ideas of future America. In 2020 we will witness the penultimate manifestation of what radical progressivism has in store for us all—and the furious, often desperate, and unfettered pushback against it.
We are also well beyond even the stark choices of 1972 and 1984 that remained within the parameters of the two parties. In contrast, the Democratic Party as we have known it, is extinct for now. It has been replaced since 2016 by a radical progressive revolutionary movement that serves as a touchstone for a variety of auxiliary extremist causes, agendas, and cliques—almost all of them radically leftwing and nihilistic, and largely without majority popular support.
When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and a number of Democratic presidential candidates sympathize with the New York subway jumpers who openly
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
p
I hope it will come out like the real 1984 election.
Read this Morning, a MUST READ FOR ALL!!!
Excellent article. As always, a bit verbose, but spot on.
...the Democratic Party as we have known it, is extinct for now. It has been replaced since 2016 by a radical progressive revolutionary movement that serves as a touchstone for a variety of auxiliary extremist causes, agendas, and cliques—almost all of them radically leftwing and nihilistic, and largely without majority popular support.
Thanks bitt.
Read this Morning, a MUST READ FOR ALL!!!
+++++
I’ve read it more than once. Jim should make it mandatory reading to qualify for Freeperhood.
Just kidding of course, But your MUST READ is spot on. Thanks for posting.
VDH is trying help us avoid going into Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four
Like it or not, 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. One side advocates a complete transformation not just of the American present but of the past as well. The Left is quite eager to change our very vocabulary and monitor our private behavior to ensure we are not just guilty of incorrect behavior but thought as well.
The other side believes America is far better than the alternative, that it never had to be perfect to be good, and that, all and all, its flawed past is a story of a moral nation’s constant struggle for moral improvement.
One side will say, “Just give us more power and we will create heaven on earth.” The other says “Why would anyone wish to take their road to an Orwellian nightmare?” The 2020 election is that simple.
Ceebass: (The only thing, Orwell got wrong was the date!)
Thought Police/1984:
In the year 1984, the government of Oceania, dominated by the Inner Party, use the Newspeak language to control the speech, actions, and thought of the population, by defining “unapproved thoughts” as thoughtcrime and crimethink; for such actions, the Thinkpol arrest Winston Smith, the protagonist of the story, and Julia, his girlfriend, as enemies of the state. Among the means for maintaining social control, the Thought Police are said by O’Brien, an inner Party member and agent of the Thinkpol, to operate a false flag resistance movement to lure ideologically disloyal members of the Party to identify themselves for arrest.
Acting as an “agent provacateur”, O’Brien gives Smith a copy of the forbidden book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, authored by the opposition’s leader, Emmanuel Goldstein; yet the factual reality of The Brotherhood in Oceania remains uncertain because O’Brien refuses to reveal to Winston whether it does, in fact, exist.
Every member of the Outer Party has a two-way telescreen in his or her quarters, by which the Thinkpol audio-visually police the behaviour of the populace; listening for unorthodox opinions and spying for visible indications of stress that the observed person is suffering an inner struggle (ownlife), such as the words spoken whilst asleep. The Thinkpol also spy upon and eliminate intelligent people, such as the Newspeak lexicographer Syme, who is disappeared and rendered an unperson, despite being an Ingsoc true-believer of fierce loyalty to Big Brother and the Party.
To eliminate possible martyrs, men and women of whom popular memory might provoke anti–Party resistance, at the Miniluv (Ministry of Love), the Thinkpol break thought-criminals with conversation, degradation (moral and physical), and torture in Room 101. Breaking the prisoner persuades him or her to sincerely accept the Ingsoc worldview, and so love Big Brother without reservation, conscious or unconscious. Afterwards, the Thinkpol release the politically rehabilitated prisoners to the social mainstream of Oceania, for a while, before re-arresting them to reprise torture and interrogation that conclude with execution and vaporisation into an unperson.
Every member of the Inner Party and of the Outer Party who ever knew, was acquainted with, or knew of the political prisoners must forget them, lest they commit the Thoughtcrime of remembering the existence of an unperson. Such ideological self-discipline, of not thinking such thoughts, is crimestop, an indication of the cultural success of Newspeak as a means of social control. Moreover, at Minitru (Ministry of Truth), the records of the unpersons are destroyed and replaced with false records.
The Thinkpol usually do not interfere with the lives of the Proles, the working classes of Oceania, although Thinkpol agents provocateur continually operate amongst them, planting rumours to identify and eliminate any proletarian man or woman who shows intelligence and the capacity for independent thought, which might lead to rebellion against the Party’s cultural hegemony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Police
Where will the GOP be in all of this? There will be some lead by Romney and other RINOs who will themselves try to replace Trump. The GOP could go the way of the Whigs and a new populist party could rise. The Democrat Party will become a totally leftist radical party and traditional support groups like labor will be siding with the new populist party.
Where will things be in say 20 years? One possible outcome could be the break up of the United States with whole regions succeeding. Another possible outcome could be revolution with the US military intervening to crush the leftists. This scenario would be very likely if the left creates a shadow government and invites the U.N. or other foreign powers in to the country to “ restore order”. If the left succeeds in gaining power the US could become a mirror of East Germany. I see tough times ahead and fear my grandchildren will never see the wonderful country in which I grew up.
1984, my very first Presidential Election when I was old enough to vote. A 49 State and 18 point mega wipe out. I see many similarities between today and back then.
Choose INGSOC or liberty. It shouldn’t be a hard choice.
In AOC I see a cold blooded Marxist pragmatist with no conscience. As I listen to her beside good ol' party hack Burn'em Sanders I hear a Felix Dzerzhinsky ready to do whatever it takes to advance the Bolshevik supremacy. At present she is one of the most dangerous people in America.
This Brooklyn bartender is not dangerous just in and of herself; she was launched from a catapult of money and power; launched way over the head of Nancy Pelosi, who has spent a lifetime building a power base in the House of Reprehensibles. Any other freshman Congress person would spend years climbing the precarious ladder to leadership power, but AOC had rocket fuel in her catapult.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and it is becoming apparent in AOC. She hasn't the experience that comes with maturity to corral that giddy power, nor are her handlers directing her to do so. Today a Space X rocket was launched from Florida's Cape with 60 satellites on board... emblematic of AOC's explosive ascension into America's political stratosphere.
Bump
More on the writer:
About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Call them the Bolshevik Party!
Lots of fancy words.
Not quite sure this is the essay of the week: mostly a verbose rewriting of what’s been on the conservative commentary menu for a year or so.
I guess we get very impressed these days when academic-sounding rhetoric meets conservatism.
Hanson is awesome generally.
Thanks for the post, though!
This article sums up our society. Orwell was quite the predictor of what was to come.
JoMa
Maybe Ayn Rand did.
Rand and Orwell, each week gain more respect and awe from me with their insight to our possible future.
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