Orwellian Politics
Oct. 28th, 2004 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liptonrm_backupI've had history and literature and politics battering the inside of my skull for the past few days, or weeks, or possibly years. There are so many things I want to say and I'm not sure if I'll be able to say them all in a very coherent manner but I do feel the need to try.
A little while ago I made an interesting observation about the War in Iraq and the Bush presidency that has colored my political thoughts and emotions since that time. I was reminded, at one point in the campaign season, of George Orwell's 1984. It's a fascinating book on many levels, not the least of which is how it describes a civilization that allowed its civil rights to be completely eroded for the good of the State. One of the ways in which Big Brother assured that the Proles (the working class) would remain firm in its patriotic fervor is that it continuously waged war with a foreign and domestic enemies. He/she/it/they understood the power of unthinking patriotism to such a degree that they were able to manipulate it in daily propagandistic loyalty presentations that were able to inspire deep emotional reactions in the great majority of the people who watched them, whether those people were overwhelmingly patriotic or not.
What so disturbed me when I was contemplating these literary moments was how well they coincide with what is happening in American politics right at this very time. We are all familiar with the large jolt of unthinking patriotism that has reasserted itself in the past three years. They way in which G.W. and his cronies have manipulated and remastered the understandable reaction to the tragedy of September 11th is downright Orwellian. They have gone to war, they have kept us in a state of war for the most frivolous of reasons, they have manipulated the vocabulary of public opinion to create an 'U.S. v. The Rest of the World' atmosphere both here and abroad, they have dismantled foreign diplomacy and refuse to compromise for any reason. They, much like Richard the Lionheart, are squandering the riches of their own country to fight a Crusade they cannot possibly hope to win and by engineering a dramatic polarization in the American electorate they believe that their bombastic propaganda will cause them to carry the day come November Second.
There are not only Orwellian parallels in the current administration, there are Hitlerian parallels as well. Adolf Hitler was never elected by the German people. He used the difficult and fractious political climate of a Germany still licking its World War I wounds and quagmired in a Depression caused by outrageous post-war reparations to frighten the duly elected (and rather short-sighted) German leadership to appoint him to the Chancellorship. He manipulated good, patriotic Germans until they became zealots for his cause, he made promises of glory and honor that appealed to a German national identity and history that remembered greatness and didn't understand how they could have fallen from such heights. He used war, whether it was against the rest of Europe and the world or against the Jewish people, to inspire unthinking obedience and belief in his ability and greatness and vision for Germany's future. Sit a moment and think about the damage that an unelected dictator who waged war as a way to insure his nation's obedience and love and then think about how the similar warmongering actions of a certain American president who may or may not have been duly elected have had frightening consequences.
Do I honestly think that George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler incarnate? No, absolutely not, I was simply shocked to realize that there are many similarities between Bush's administration and presidency and the most famous examples of fascism that we have, both fictional and historical. We have to realize how important each individual vote is. Not every German agreed with Hitler, indeed the Nazi party was only a small, while vocal, portion of the German electorate. We can never know what might have happened if regular Germans had had the opportunity to vote in an uncontrolled election the like of which we are about to participate in. We have the chance to change the future.
Another thing that has disturbed me for the past few years is the deep and ever deepening political divide in this country. Moderates are necesary, moderates broker the deals and look at both sides of an issue before coming to a conclusion, moderates keep the peace. More and more in frustration and disgust people are jumping on one side of the band wagon or another and begin shouting at the top of their lungs refusing to listen to the desires and complaints of the people on the other side. We have allowed the Bush administration to manipulate us, to frighten us and make us fearful of those who are different from us, whether they be liberal or conservative, christian or muslim or jewish or buddhist or pagan or atheist, foreign or domestic, friend or foe, Arab or European or African or Mexican. There is no reason why popular culture should continue to make jokes about the French, there is no reason for the hatred that is leveled against that country and others who do not agree with current policies or are simply different. We desperately need mature moderates, both in office and on our television sets, who aren't willing to stoop to such childish behaviour. We need to understand, not unilateraly condemn.
There are deep problems in modern American politics that we need to fix before they become worse. The United States of America has a history rife with disenfranchisment, slavery and hypocrisy but it also has a history of freedom, honor, and truth and it has slowly progressed, learned from its mistakes and gone forward beyond the hate and war and death. There is so much we can do, that we have to do and there is still time to do it. We still have the chance to fix what is going wrong, to make it better and by so doing we can continue increasing the rights and freedoms we all hold so dear.
A little while ago I made an interesting observation about the War in Iraq and the Bush presidency that has colored my political thoughts and emotions since that time. I was reminded, at one point in the campaign season, of George Orwell's 1984. It's a fascinating book on many levels, not the least of which is how it describes a civilization that allowed its civil rights to be completely eroded for the good of the State. One of the ways in which Big Brother assured that the Proles (the working class) would remain firm in its patriotic fervor is that it continuously waged war with a foreign and domestic enemies. He/she/it/they understood the power of unthinking patriotism to such a degree that they were able to manipulate it in daily propagandistic loyalty presentations that were able to inspire deep emotional reactions in the great majority of the people who watched them, whether those people were overwhelmingly patriotic or not.
What so disturbed me when I was contemplating these literary moments was how well they coincide with what is happening in American politics right at this very time. We are all familiar with the large jolt of unthinking patriotism that has reasserted itself in the past three years. They way in which G.W. and his cronies have manipulated and remastered the understandable reaction to the tragedy of September 11th is downright Orwellian. They have gone to war, they have kept us in a state of war for the most frivolous of reasons, they have manipulated the vocabulary of public opinion to create an 'U.S. v. The Rest of the World' atmosphere both here and abroad, they have dismantled foreign diplomacy and refuse to compromise for any reason. They, much like Richard the Lionheart, are squandering the riches of their own country to fight a Crusade they cannot possibly hope to win and by engineering a dramatic polarization in the American electorate they believe that their bombastic propaganda will cause them to carry the day come November Second.
There are not only Orwellian parallels in the current administration, there are Hitlerian parallels as well. Adolf Hitler was never elected by the German people. He used the difficult and fractious political climate of a Germany still licking its World War I wounds and quagmired in a Depression caused by outrageous post-war reparations to frighten the duly elected (and rather short-sighted) German leadership to appoint him to the Chancellorship. He manipulated good, patriotic Germans until they became zealots for his cause, he made promises of glory and honor that appealed to a German national identity and history that remembered greatness and didn't understand how they could have fallen from such heights. He used war, whether it was against the rest of Europe and the world or against the Jewish people, to inspire unthinking obedience and belief in his ability and greatness and vision for Germany's future. Sit a moment and think about the damage that an unelected dictator who waged war as a way to insure his nation's obedience and love and then think about how the similar warmongering actions of a certain American president who may or may not have been duly elected have had frightening consequences.
Do I honestly think that George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler incarnate? No, absolutely not, I was simply shocked to realize that there are many similarities between Bush's administration and presidency and the most famous examples of fascism that we have, both fictional and historical. We have to realize how important each individual vote is. Not every German agreed with Hitler, indeed the Nazi party was only a small, while vocal, portion of the German electorate. We can never know what might have happened if regular Germans had had the opportunity to vote in an uncontrolled election the like of which we are about to participate in. We have the chance to change the future.
Another thing that has disturbed me for the past few years is the deep and ever deepening political divide in this country. Moderates are necesary, moderates broker the deals and look at both sides of an issue before coming to a conclusion, moderates keep the peace. More and more in frustration and disgust people are jumping on one side of the band wagon or another and begin shouting at the top of their lungs refusing to listen to the desires and complaints of the people on the other side. We have allowed the Bush administration to manipulate us, to frighten us and make us fearful of those who are different from us, whether they be liberal or conservative, christian or muslim or jewish or buddhist or pagan or atheist, foreign or domestic, friend or foe, Arab or European or African or Mexican. There is no reason why popular culture should continue to make jokes about the French, there is no reason for the hatred that is leveled against that country and others who do not agree with current policies or are simply different. We desperately need mature moderates, both in office and on our television sets, who aren't willing to stoop to such childish behaviour. We need to understand, not unilateraly condemn.
There are deep problems in modern American politics that we need to fix before they become worse. The United States of America has a history rife with disenfranchisment, slavery and hypocrisy but it also has a history of freedom, honor, and truth and it has slowly progressed, learned from its mistakes and gone forward beyond the hate and war and death. There is so much we can do, that we have to do and there is still time to do it. We still have the chance to fix what is going wrong, to make it better and by so doing we can continue increasing the rights and freedoms we all hold so dear.
