The ‘post-truth era’ of Donald Trump is, in fact, the dystopian world of Orwell’s 1984.
It seems the republican party itself may believe Trump’s lies (to their own detrement). “Fifty-two percent of voters think less favorably of the Republican Party because of Donald Trump's presidency, a new
Quinnipiac University poll reveals.“
As Orwell writes: “Science, in the old sense, had almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for science.”
Orwell knew authoritarian regimes craved the ‘heart and soul’ of the gullible uneducated.
The shift from ‘the rational’ to ‘a mistrust in facts’ was illustrated by the “denial politics” of many US churches and other ass-backward institutions (e.g. the NRA).
Trump is not the O’Brien fellow in 1984.
Trump is Big Brother himself (with hwlp from his FAUX friends).
Trump, with his tele-screen Twitter relationship and his cult following, is in charge.
As Orwell foresaw, Trump’s slogan is “Ignorance is strength”.
Trump’s office has dispensed factless propaganda an almost daily basis (with more than a little help from Boris and Natasha).
Orwell said political language can be “designed to make lies sound truthful... and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Trump takes doublethink to a new low.
As the Orwellian unmasking of Trump begins, I imagine the president will bellow, “Fake Orwell”.
It’s useless to pretend that this presidency isn’t the world of 1984.
Inevitably, much of Trump’s manipulation of his followers can be traced back to Orwell’s monitoring of that which was concealed inf the second world war. It was here, he later wrote, that he first read newspaper accounts of battles
that had not taken place and reports of
soldiers charged with cowardice whom he knew had fought bravely.
As for what Orwell might have thought of Trump, he might well draw attention to the steady attrition in white house staffing and claims that events definitely did, or did not, happen.
Meanwhile, it is worth asking what the average person is supposed to do in a country where the leader has such obvious disregard for truth.
Big Brother, at least, was pretending what he said was true.
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