by The_Toecutter » Fri 20 Oct 2006, 22:34:58
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ave you actually read 1984? Sure doesn't sound like it.
Yes. In grade school.
Perhaps you need to take a look at just what our government has been doing as of late if you don't see the similarilities between the government depicted in the novel and the recent legislation passed by and the proposals of our current government. We aren't there yet, but we are headed in that direction.
Lets note the more glaring similarities:
-perpetual war. The U.S. has constantly been at war or engaged in an armed conflict with another nation since WWII. In the novel, the state depicted remained constantly at war with some vague enemy that changed every so often.
-editing of government documents. The U.S. has edited transcripts of the words of our president, censored and/or documents pertaining to climate change, reclassified intelligence of a threat that existed prior to 911, and financial data pertaining to companies like Halliburton or pertaining to Bush's earlier financial actions has been revised. This is quite similar to the actions taken by the Ministry of Truth throught the novel.
-surveillance. The 4th amendment has been eroded by the war on drugs and various surveillance tactics put in place after. ameras are becoming very commonplace, the government has granted itself to tap phone lines as it sees fit, programs like Echelon scour the internet for material the governments of the world find threatening, an attempt by the Bush admin to put a citizen spying program into place was made(Operation TIPS), and the government has granted itself the ability to monitor library usage, internet usage, and other data. That ever watchful eye of big brother is beginning to open towards the direction of U.S. citizens. We may not have a telescreen in each home yet, but we're getting there, at least on a symbolic basis.
Other similarities include legalized torture, manipulation of the media, and an ever present military force(eg. militarized police in America's case, implemented during the war on drugs).
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson