I turn 41 this year, meaning I’m now 23 years post High School, although only 8 post College due to being “too smart for my own good” in the mid-1990’s. I can remember not only being taught civics, forced to debate counter to my beliefs, hearing about WWII from those who fought and survivors of the nazi regime, and no matter GOP or DNC, my classmates are generally well adjusted adults. We don’t always agree on politics, but we don’t shout each other down and demand obedience.
Today, however, we have people graduating High School and College, so assured of their own superior intellect, they can’t accept that they aren’t given total and complete control over every aspect of life on the planet. We watched in the 80’s and 90’s as the USSR and all their subject nations languished in poverty until they finally fell, yet students today, watching the same thing happen in Venezuela, defend communism so vehemently that to disagree with them is treated as an attempt on their life!
Starting in 1991, while I was still in a Middle School building, I was earning credits for my high school graduation. Ninth grade English Lit saw us reading Animal Farm, 10th grade was 1984, then Brave New World was over the final two years, as the language from 1930’s Britain was a bit difficult to get through for us, so we had a bit longer. Yes, there were students who actually argued for each of the societal models we read about, but they were a vast minority.
Brave New World – Society in the 1930’s is in a depression, but Henry Ford’s assembly line would revolutionize the manufacturing world, and beyond. Just 700 or so years AF (after Ford) all life outside of “savage reservations” is engineered in a lab. Embryos are carefully controlled, not only to eradicate disease, but to stunt mental or physical development, creating a caste system. Controllers rule the world, the Alpha Plus and Alpha caste below them, with Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon below them. Each caste is programmed from birth either via aversion conditioning or sleep programming. Babies are shown flowers or colorful books, only to be shocked when they reach for them, toddlers and up have programming played to them as they sleep, so even the most subjugated of people actually defend their place in the world. Sex is common place, birth control is mandatory, and abortions required if any pregnancy occurs. Drugs are used to keep people docile, entertainment is plentiful, and in general, people are so doped up and entertained, they would fight to remain slaves to the controllers.
1984 – Written almost 20 years after Brave New World by George Orwell, Huxley’s nightmare vision of the future is turned on it’s ear. Rather than the over entertained, programmed from birth, doped out of their mind people, Orwell saw a world where a global police state comes to be. Phrases similar to the “See Something, Say Something” campaign of a few years back are common, children are encouraged to inform on their families, and fear rather than blind ignorance to subjugation and tyranny rules the world. Yet again, those running the show are above all people in more than their job, they live separate lives. As in Brave New World, the rules don’t apply to the controllers, nor in 1984. Those making and enforcing the rules disregard them without a second’s thought. This type of world can be seen in the movie Equilibrium, a not so big hit for Christian Bale, where people are required to take a dose of Prozium regularly every day. Emotion is banned, “Sense Offense” is punishable by death, and books/art/etc are destroyed so as not to provoke responses from the people, while those in power, as always, do as they please.
Animal Farm – The shortest by far of all three, Animal Farm is a tale about animals when the farmer goes away. At first nothing seems to be amiss, but the longer the farmer is gone, the more each species notices things aren’t right. The pigs first bring this up, forming a council of animals so that work gets done, food is provided to all, and life can continue. Rules are laid down, but soon edited. As they find they are “running the show,” the pigs begin to officially exempt themselves from rules, until the one rule is “All animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others” explaining the “do as you are told without question” attitude that takes over. Before long animals are sick or dead, but the pigs don’t care, as their new life of luxury is not affected, until the farmers come home, and the book ends.
Each of these books is a cautionary tale, all three warning against the traps of socialism/communism. Granted, Brave New World is a kind subjugation, as people are entertained and, via drugs, happy, but it’s still subjugation. All three societal models also spring up from a desire to avoid ills and other problems in society, but in the end, bring only more trouble and strife into being. All three also depend on an ignorant populous, Brave New World by simply outlawing all books or other items that are about “the old ways,” replacing them with meaningless things. 1984 is a society controlled so totally, people literally just eat, sleep and work, while Animal Farm is a mixture, with the pigs keeping the other animals so busy they don’t have time for anything else.
We are, sadly, seeing views like the photo above coming more and more to the fore, despite mountains and years of evidence that it won’t work, because education is now just about indoctrination and preparing students for standardized tests. One to two in three millennials today honestly does not know what Auschwitz or Buchenwald are, or that millions died in those places or places like them. Millions believe the Holocaust never happened, and students are being taught that “gun control” is the answer to every crime they hear about. After Parkland on 14 Feb 2018, we saw a student give a speech, complete with hand gestures, that only differed from a 1930’s Germany speech in the language it was heard in.
We are at a crossroads, and this may very well be the last we get before it’s too late, before our choices are Obey or Death. We have cities, counties and states now banning firearms solely because of their looks, as none address the Mini 14, a rifle that uses the same magazine as an AR-15 that’s chambered in .223 or .556. People are being told to surrender private property, with little to no compensation, or they will be fined, or worse. Students and even adults are so convinced that the Second Amendment is only there to protect muskets, that even when shown that Italy had repeating rifles and the Puckle Gun was first built 70+ years before the Constitution, that they will explode with righteous indignation if and when contradicted. Yet, in the next breath, they will proudly state how intelligent the Founders were to phrase the First Amendment as they did so it encompasses new technology for speech, then go on to state a cross on a public patch of grass is tantamount to their being cuffed and forced into a Church for the Sunday sermon. They not only don’t care, but can’t even see, their hypocrisy, nor will they ever admit their goal is totally disarming all Americans, opening the borders so everyone can come in and thus, more crime will happen, so in the end, 1984 will cease being a warning, as it will have become their playbook.
I wish I was delusional, I wish I was dreaming this while in a psyche ward somewhere, but I’m not. I’m watching the world around me inch closer and closer to tyranny, and seeing millions cheer our slow march to our own death. Far too many did not learn from History, and now we’re all doomed to repeat the worst mistakes of humanity.