Orwell, the genius

     In the novel 1984 by George Orwell(a great and terrifying book) the world is shown as a psuedo futuristic society controlled by three extremely opressive nations. Eastasia, Oceania, and Eurasia. The main character is Winston Smith who lives in Oceania. I'm not going into a complete review but the society controls everything through surviellance and a group dubbed the "thought police". Winston gets into the only thing he can think of as a revolution, a small unknown group led supposedly by the book of Emmanual Goldstein(oddly a name that reoccurs in pop culture ie hackers and somewhere I've forgotten). I'm skipping a lot which I regret but here are ym findings of similarity.
     The thought police for one are becoming more and mroe realistic. With that stupid fucker John Ashcroft destroying our Civil Liberties one by one, for "security", we soon won't be able to take a shit without a camera overhead and in the bowl. The thought police in 1984 could supposedly tell when you were thinking evil thoughts about the government and they "took care" of you. The people were skeptical whether they actually read thoughts or read expressions and such. Some believed they listened to the people talk in their sleep to catch disloyalists. In today's society the government has mroe means of monitoring then we like to think. My best example is the Carnivore. The device when attached to an ISPs network monitors everything that goes through it and if you know anything about ISPs that means every single user on that ISP has every webpage and email recorded by this thing. It is a physical device so there is no "hacking" around it. the government supposedly has to ask permission of the ISP but what ISP do you know will reject them? AOL one of the biggest is also a huge corporate sponser of republicans and democrats.      The Big Brother in the book seems like Josef Stalin but I think that was just a reference to opression, it was believed in the book that Big Brother either never existed or did but was long dead. In any case he was used as a figure to respect and fear, because "Big Brother is watching". The people in the three countries were only fed media propaganda by their own governments never even knowing a person from the other two countries. This kept they distanced and they would never see that they were all people being controlled. It was directed hate. Sex in the book was strictly controlled, the sexual energy was used to direct hate onto the other countries. The point of the three warring country was the ultimate nightmare for the lower classes in real life. The Permanent War...
     The Permanent War is the ultimate control and is all too relevant to our real life situation. In the book the three countries always warred and never got ahead any. By doing this they all three mutually existed in control of their region. But here's the kicker, by spending all their labor and money on war goods(bombs ships planes) there was barely any left to spend on bettering the quality of life. Thus the people never experienced anything good, they had poor wine, poor cigarettes, poor clothing. But it was all too keep them disparaged and controlled. What is the relevance in real life you may say? The "war" on terrorism.
     Just like the poor souls in 1984 we too can not see our enemy, we have no sense of who they are. EXCEPT of course by what our government media feeds us. Pictures of Osama bin Ladden and Saddam Hussien looking menacing or at meetings plotting our doom. Everything we see of them is submitted to us by CNN a corporation with government ties and basically controlled by them. Do you see the comparison? How about those goods to improve life you may say? We're still building them right? Oh yes we are, sortof...
     We are fighting guys hiding in caves and we have already "liberated" Iraq correct? So why did Bush give a $200 billion contract to Lockheed Martin for fighter jets?? Those are not needed! For half of that he could have renovated our entire public school system and paid every American college student's tuition... and had money left over... do you not see this?? And yet education spending has been cut about $39 million. Why? There is no reason! He's helping prepetuate a permanent war, by allocating so much money to "defense" spending and cutting spending from anti-pollution, education, and destroying our civil liberties(ala John Ashcroft) he is keeping us behind this media curtain and helping himself get rich in the meantime. What a douchebag. And what about those cures for cancer and AIDS? Where are they? After so many years and so many contirbutions you'd think we'd of solved them but no. They'll make more money charging hundreds a month for "treatment". They don't care if people die, they don't have the disease. So long as we'll pay for the treatment that only lengthens our life(to further buy more treament) then they'll keep making treatments and only treatments. Our country has the worst prescription plan ever because Republicrats allow the privatization of medicine companies that then charge outrageous prices. Unlike Canada(for example) that gets the same treatments at about half the cost.      As for my main objective. The Goldstein book in 1984 is analagous to the protesting and demonstrating the government allows us to do. This protests or "right to assembly" are their allowance to keep us content. By simply picketing and such they keep us in the frame of mind that we can change their minds. Trust me if our politicians are corrupt(and they are) then why would they care about some people protesting? It's only when a huge number of people rally together can they do anything because then the politicians will have bad publicity, which they can't have. But even then there's little doubt in my mind if they give nothing but hollow promises or compromises to make sure we are content again and they have there way as well. But when people actually act out like at Kent State or L.A. or anywhere when someone turns violent out of rage. The police step in. Tool #1 of the government. I think a violent protest is a sign that something needs changed now. Obviously the police are armed and dangerous but people in street clothes didn't care to assault them. That's a lot of anger wouldn't you agree? All the more reason to change some policies quickly. But instead they blame the protestors as dangerous and enraged, no shit, but why? Because of the politics of our country.

For a good overview try here.