As Orwell goes on to say:
As soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged . . . the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when “our” side commits it . . . one cannot feel that it is wrong, Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.
Nationalism turns people into assholes or—as they’re called everywhere in America except the part of New England where I live—Patriots fans.
Yes, we call ourselves “Patriots,” but everybody knows we’re really “Patriot Nation.” It’s Chicago Cubs fans who are patriotic.
Cubs fan: “I hope our team beats all the other teams.”
Patriots fan: “What other teams? There aren’t any other teams. And if there are any other teams I hope they die in a plane crash!”
I am myself a native patriotic Ohioan—“Round on the Ends and ‘HI’ in the Middle!” I am devoted to that particular place and to the Ohio way of life, which I believe to be the best in the world.
But I have no wish to force other people to go on family vacations to the birthplaces of all seven U.S. presidents who were born in Ohio (William Henry Harrison, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Taft, and Warren Harding), eat salads with miniature marshmallows in them, mist up when they hear Chrissie Hynde sing “My City Was Gone,” argue about whether WKRP in Cincinnati or The Drew Carey Show was the best TV program ever, and get suicidal if something goes wrong in “The Game” and Michigan beats Ohio State.
I don’t want Ohio to conquer the world, or even Michigan. I don’t want everyone in the world to become an Ohioan. We’d run out of miniature marshmallows. And, come to that, I haven’t personally lived in Ohio for almost fifty years. But I’m still a loyal Buckeye.
Reading further in Orwell’s essay I discover, to my surprise, that the way I feel about Ohio means I’m making a moral effort.
Nationalistic loves and hatreds . . . are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it’s possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias [Boo, Wolverines!] . . . The emotional urges which are inescapable . . . should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. [Okay, okay, Tom Brady played for Michigan.] But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort.
So become a patriot and you, too, like me, can turn into a more moral person than Michael Corleone turned into—not to mention those fearful, hateful, jealous, power-hungry people who root for Michigan.
Big Brother (and Everyone Else) Is Watching You
Thoughts on Rereading 1984
I confess that until recently I’d given George Orwell’s 1984 short shrift in my personal memory hole of frightening books. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought, “a ‘telescreen’ that watches you while you watch it. Big deal. It’s called a pop-up ad.” And I thought, “At least Winston Smith can smoke anywhere he wants.”
I’d forgotten what a powerful, terrifying, and tragic novel 1984 is. I forgot because I had read the book a couple of times and was under the impression that I understood it.
1984 tells the story of a totalitarianism so total that it’s not satisfied with eliminating Smith, a decent, conscientious individual, but must eliminate his decency, his conscience, and his individuality before it kills him.
When I read 1984 in high school I thought, “This is what the commies are doing in the Soviet Union.”
When I read 1984 in college I thought, “This is what the Man is doing in AmeriKKKa.”
But when I read it as a mature (that is to say, old and worried) adult I was shocked. I realized, “This is what we’re doing to ourselves!”
In 1984 Winston Smith can’t turn off the spying, intrusive telescreen. Our situation is much worse. Winston had only one telescreen. We have dozens of the things—desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, game boxes. And we, of our own free will, refuse to turn them off.
We don’t live in Winston Smith’s horrible world—yet. But we seem to be doing everything that Orwell foresaw to create that world.
Everything and more. The nation of Oceania where Winston lives is a one-party state like Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R. We’ve topped that. We’ve got two parties in our one-party state.
Both the “progressive” Democrats and the “conservative” Republicans are intent on making 1984 come true.
The LeftRight Party is the party that rules America. Members of the LeftRight Party practice the doublethink that Big Brother demands in 1984. As Orwell explains it, doublethink is “to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.” (Ask former Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the dueling Republican/Democratic House Intelligence Committee memos on the Mueller Russia probe.)
Orwell captures totalitarianism’s interference in every aspect of existence in the first sentence of his book: “. . . the clocks were striking thirteen.” Whenever the authorities start meddling with ancient and customary traditions something is wrong. So it was when President Jimmy Carter tried to put America on the metric system. And so it is today with an ancient and customary tradition we used to have, that the president of the United States was someone you would welcome into your home.
1984 has a “Two Minute Hate” where everyone has to stop what they’re doing and despise Emmanuel Goldstein, “Enemy of the People.” We voluntarily stop what we’re doing and spend lots more
