Thanks to Trump, Orwell's
70-year-old classic is a bestseller again.
Tromp-tromp-tromp — troops are
marching to battles. Boom-boom-boom — bombs are blowing up communities.
Whoooosh — poisonous gas is being released.
Forget Syria, Iraq, and
Afghanistan — this is Trump’s War.
Our bellicose commander in chief
is at war in the homeland, deploying his troops to attack everything from our
public schools to the EPA, dropping executive order bombs on Muslim communities
and the Mexican border.
He’s spewing poisonous tweets of
bigotry and right-wing bile at the media, scientists, inner cities, “illegal
voters,” Meryl Streep, diplomats, Democrats, and people who use real facts.
Basically, Trump is at war with
everyone who doesn’t agree with him — in short, with the majority of Americans.
And you thought Nixon had a long enemies list!
Yet Trump’s most destructive
assault so far hasn’t targeted any one group, but instead an essential and
existential concept: truth. Bluntly put, he believes that truth is whatever he
says it is, and that he can change it tomorrow.
Years ago, in a futuristic
novel, the author wrote about the rise of a tyrannical regime that ruled by
indoctrinating the masses to accept the perverse notion of capricious truth. It
was George Orwell’s 1984, which depicted a dystopia he named
Oceania.
Now, in 2017, we live in
Trumplandia — with a delusional leader of a plutocratic party trying to
redefine reality with “alternative facts,” fake news, and a blitzkrieg of
Orwellian “Newspeak.”
But resistance to Trumpism is
already surging. Not least, Orwell’s 70-year-old book has become a bestseller
again — thanks to Trump resisters seeking… you know, the truth.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio
commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also the editor of the populist
newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. Distributed by OtherWords.org.