If I had to choose a single “thing” to represent the past decade, it would be a book…

George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel.” Published in June 1949, it is a dystopian novel depicting life in the future, specifically in the year 1984. While the book deals with authoritarian governments and persistent state surveillance, its central theme is how language can be perverted to obfuscate meaning, alter definitions and understanding, repress individuality and independent thinking, and to be used as a tool to seek power over others.

Some crucial points in the book:

Newspeak and Doublethink –

“The novel explicitly shows people learning doublethink and Newspeak due to peer pressure and a desire to "fit in", or gain status within the Party—to be seen as a loyal Party Member. In the novel, for someone to even recognize—let alone mention—any contradiction within the context of the Party line is akin to blasphemy, and could subject that person to disciplinary action and the instant social disapproval of fellow Party Members.”

“The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

"The Ministry of Plenty (Newspeak: Miniplenty)-- rations and controls food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, it publishes false claims of having raised the standard of living, when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production. The Ministry of Truth substantiates the Ministry of Plenty's claims by revising historical records to report numbers supporting the current, 'increased rations.;”

"The Ministry of Truth (Newspeak: Minitrue) controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. [The main character,] Winston Smith works in the Minitrue RecDep (Records Department), 'rectifying' historical records to concord with Big Brother's current pronouncements so that everything the Party says is true."

Can you honestly say that we are not experiencing many of the political realities described in 1984 when you replace the word government with the words “progressive socialist democrats.” The progressives are still working on capturing government an implementing Miniplenty with their proposed healthcare and climate policies. However, the progressives appear to have created their own form of Minitrue and control much of what is done in the news, entertainment, education, and the arts

We have increasingly persistent surveillance with our self-purchased electronic devices, many of which aggregate personal information and transmit it to an unknown server in the internet cloud. We have increasingly personal dossiers, self-created, and uploaded to social media servers.

Awaken from what?

Apparently, to be “woke” is to be mindful of the doublethink and newspeak as promoted by the progressives, or should I say, communists-in-waiting?

Science tells us that our sex is determined by our chromosomes at birth, not by what we believe or wish it to be. We live in an age where white people can self-proclaim to be black; men can self-proclaim as women, and variations on the theme. To deny or disrespect any individual’s beliefs, no matter how outrageous or disruptive, is to be labeled a bigot – or even worse, a ‘phobe as in homophobe, xenophobe, or Islamaphobe. To deny fashionable science or even falsified hypotheses is to be labeled a “denier” and shunned. Coerced into silence by your peers.

If you follow the pronouncements of the progressives, you find tyranny by the minority where being gay is better than being straight, but not as good as being trans or any one of the more exotic flavors of the month. Being white is inferior to being a person of color, and being a vegan in superior to being a meat-loving carnivore. And the ultimate manifestation of wokeness, being a socialist is more “woke” than being a capitalist.

Bottom line…

The past decade is marked by the continued infiltration of communism into our societal institutions and the slow destruction of our societal norms by a fifth column of individuals, both domestic and foreign, which seeks to destroy America from within by using our own laws and tolerance for divergent thought against us.

The key to combatting much of this insane behavior by the progressive socialist democrats is to reject their misuse of language, redefinition of common terms, and their continual revision of our history. A history that shows that their ideology is bankrupt and has lead to the death and suffering of hundreds of millions of people.

Make them prove their positions before ceding political or financial power.

If this progressive socialist democrat nonsense continues, we are well and truly screwed.

-- steve