I just finished re-reading George Orwell’s 1984. As my son is introduced to literature like All Quiet on the Western Front and 1984 in his sophomore English class, I am re-introduced to these books. We don’t talk about them too much, my son and I (he’s deep in that uncommunicative teenage phase), but I see the books lying around and pick them up, remember where I was when I first read them. Times change, cultural tools change, governments fall or reinvent themselves, world leaders enter and exit the stage, but these enduring books remind us that regardless of era or place or circumstance, people largely remain the same.
As I was reading 1984 I was reminded of how necessary it is for a nation to have an enemy. For four decades or so America feared the Soviet Union and Soviet-style communism, that grey, humorless KGB-Gulag-police state that lay like a heavy blanket across Eastern Europe, and we devoted economic, political and military resources to contain the Soviet threat wherever in the world it reared its head. Our spies shadowed their spies; our nuclear arsenal kept pace with theirs, warhead for warhead and tank for tank; our proxy states matched up against theirs. Tensions rose, tensions fell, but during the Cold War we always knew where to find our nemesis.
And then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and got bogged down for nearly a decade in a hostile land that would not bend to their will, their centrally planned economy failed to expand as promised, Gorbachev began to loosen the reins of State control, the Soviet edifice creaked and cracked, the Iron Curtain went up in flames and the Berlin Wall crumbled.
Our primary global adversary had morphed into a free market opportunity.
But as if to prove that nature abhors a vacuum, a new bogeyman arose to take Communism’s place: radical Islam, represented by bearded men in flowing robes, with sandals on their feet and ammunition belts draped across their chests, AK-47’s held at port arms, and defiance in their eyes. Jihad, they cried. God is great and Death To America. Our new enemy, everywhere and nowhere, moving in the shadows and on the margins, until they brought the Twin Towers down and instigated the worldwide, never-ending War on Terror, which -- to bring this back to 1984 -- is reminiscent of Oceania’s ceaseless war against its enemies.
The other eerie echo of 1984 lies in the grotesquely oversized American surveillance state, much of it contracted out to private companies with minimal accountability. By now, most Americans grasp that our government routinely eavesdrops on domestic phone conversations, e-mail messages, tweets, Facebook posts, and other on-line activity, though little public protest has resulted from this massive assault against personal privacy. Posters of Big Brother may not be everywhere in contemporary America, but Big Brother is definitely watching and listening, ever alert for allusions, hints, associations or phrases that might be a harbinger of another attack. In a war without end, the threat never abates, and the citizenry is exhorted to exchange constitutionally protected freedoms for the illusion of security; thus it becomes permissible for the President of the United States to authorize the killing of American citizens on foreign ground, without bringing formal charges in a court of law; or authorize the military to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of subversion or alliance with our enemies, right here on home soil. The current occupant of the White House assures us that he will never abuse these extraordinary powers, but once the genie escapes the bottle, there’s no telling what might happen two or four or six years from now.
Fanatics are always dangerous, and it makes little difference whether those fanatics are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Capitalist or Communist, wild-eyed oil drillers or tree huggers; fanatics become blind to any cause but their own, and in the fanatical mind, the means always justifies the ends.
I fear America has passed a dangerous marker in its history as a functioning democracy, but outside of the ACLU and writers like Christopher Hedges, few people recognize the peril we are doing to ourselves. True liberty and total security from external threats are antithetical. Rights once relinquished don’t return. It’s worth quoting Christopher Hedges here:
“Totalitarian systems always begin by rewriting the law. They make legal what was once illegal. Crimes become patriotic acts. The defense of freedom and truth becomes a crime. Foreign and domestic subjugation merges into the same brutal mechanism. Citizens are colonized. And it is always done in the name of national security.”
I want to believe that Hedges is overstating his case, but I don’t think he is. Orwell described a dystopian country engaged in perpetual wars, constant surveillance of its people, and total control of information; citizens only knew what the Party wanted them to know. As I said before, all of this seems eerily familiar in contemporary America; we are at perpetual war with Muslim fanatics, under watch by our own government, and subjected to a corporate-owned media that filters, distorts and misinforms.
Very eerie indeed.
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