With few exceptions the Oceania of Orwell resembles inner cities of today’s US. Instead of a relatively few people in poverty like today, most of the proletariat in 1984 led grim and dirty lives.
Long ago I had to put the book aside for a while after reading the section regarding Winston’s childhood. His father was disappeared by The Party when he was very small. When a little older, Winston, his mother and baby sister were dying from starvation. After he didn’t share a morsel of chocolate with his mother and sister, he ran off. When he returned, they were both gone. He never knew precisely the fate of his family.
In 1984, Winston thinks he is about forty years old, but can’t be sure. There are no records. There is no truth, but he seeks out the truth. It is his demise.
The screws of today’s Thought Police will only tighten.
It is a remarkable, prescient, and truthful book.
I read recently that the 20th Century was the century of Tyranny.
I fear that the 21st Century will be the century with Total Tyranny, with the melding of 20th Century brute physical tyranny of the Nazis and Soviet Union with the technological tyranny which the German Democratic Republic wished for, but did not have the technology to achieve.
One of the most remarkable books I have have read recently was “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept” by Gen. Robert Spalding (Ret.)
He was interviewed a year or two ago, and was asked who is the greater threat: Communist China, or Big Tech. He answered both, and when asked why, stated “They both use the same business model.”
It was startling to hear, but he explained that, in Communist China, the Communist Chinese Government owns your personal information. By next year, it will have one surveillance camera for every two citizens, not to mention everything from your bank records, spending habits, social media postings, surfing habits...everything.
And then he asked the rhetorical question: In the United States, who owns your personal information, your bank records, spending habits, social media postings, surfing habits, etc.? It is “Big Tech”.
I swear, I feel like one of those people living in the 1930’s who can see the dark black skies forming on the far off horizon, and am filled with foreboding. I know I am not the only one, but it feels lonely enough seeing that I feel like I am the only one who feels that way.