In the Mouth of Marxist Madness

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When President Trump was elected in 2016, movie theaters in cities across the country actually ran the 1984-released movie version of Orwell’s masterpiece, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, as some sort of cinematic censure of Trump’s rise to power.  At the time, the spectacle seemed bemusing.  Trump — the outsider — was clearly beholden to no Big Brother deep state.  Far from participating in the insidious programs of “political correctness” that 1984 so effectively damns as the building blocks of totalitarianism, Donald Trump has always been one of the most plainly spoken — and, at times, brutally frank — Americans to take the world stage.  Instead of hiding behind riddles, insinuations, and other verbal contortions, President Trump tells anyone who is listening exactly how he feels.  Yet the same Marxists whom Orwell criticized used Orwell to criticize their political boogeyman.  It was confounding. 

Seven years later and the language games have just gotten worse.  Anytime a majority of the American people express a preference for something at odds with the permanent “ruling class” occupying D.C. — curbing illegal immigration, profligate government spending, and endless wars, as examples — the U.S. government rejects the public’s wishes as “threats to democracy.”  The government insists that its bureaucrats represent the people’s will while expressing dismay that the people’s will could differ from that of the bureaucrats.  In other words, an “oligarchy” of “elites” now calls itself a “democracy,” and majority public opinion is ridiculed as “anti-democratic.” 

Pretending that authoritarianism is “democratic” makes it much easier to assist dictators overseas who do the same thing.  While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shuts down opposition political parties, church services led by priests pleading for peace, and the prospect of free speech, the U.S. government claims that support for Ukraine is support for “Western values.”  While the Gazan people overwhelmingly support Hamas terrorist attacks on helpless Jewish civilians, European and American leaders falsely claim that their bloodlust is actually “peaceful” in nature.  While Iran’s theocratic dictatorship threatens Israel’s existence and supports the torture and killing of girls accused of violating Shia law, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Joe Biden have spent the last fifteen years doing the murderous ayatollah’s bidding.  In Orwellian fashion, tyranny is defended as “democratic” and “Western” — which should serve as a warning to Western citizens of the direction their “leaders” are heading.

Of course, if Orwell prophetically captured the malicious spirit of our present age, it was Aldous Huxley who foresaw its moral degradation.  He understood that promiscuity, drug addiction, and other pleasure-seeking obsessions are not only gateways to eroding religious conviction but also the perfect tools for any authoritarian government seeking to keep the public mentally enslaved and subdued.  If a free-thinking individual can be relegated to a hallucinogenic state of narcotic dependency, then that person will never again possess the free will to challenge anything.  If adolescents can be taught to embrace a revolving door of sexual partners while joyfully “shouting their abortions,” then they can be prevented from ever creating stable families of their own.  Healthy marriages produce happy families with thoughtful children who, in turn, grow to be self-sufficient, productive adults.  Governments that require their citizens to be obedient are strongest when those citizens remain dependent upon government for life.  Drug-addled, psychologically confused adults who are incapable of taking care of their own families are the perfect candidates for government enslavement.

In Brave New World, Huxley describes a tyrannical society where sex has been stripped of love, intimacy, and its childbearing purpose.  In a scene where an authority figure attempts to explain the West’s forgotten notions of morality to a group of astonished children, he explains: “[E]rotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.”  In a world where babies are “decanted” in “hatcheries,” women use abortion to end pregnancies, and people are fed a diet of pills to keep them docile and compliant, the government has no trouble maintaining control over people’s lives.

Compare Huxley’s dystopian world in which the drug Soma is used to tranquilize the public to our own world today.  Recent figures show that nearly a quarter of Scotland’s adult population is being prescribed anti-depressants, while fifteen percent of Americans are being similarly prescribed some form of powerful selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors known to cause dangerous side-effects — including loss of sexual function, insomnia, brain fog, suicidal ideation, and self-harm.  In the U.S., fifty percent of the population over twelve has used illegal drugs.  Overdose deaths have tripled since 2000.  And fifty-five million American adults currently use marijuana.  Whether through alcohol, opioids, marijuana, or hallucinogens, Americans are walking around in a Soma-like haze.