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| Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them." -George Orwell
(I'm sorry this week's column is late. I was arrested on Friday for illegal word use and didn't get out till today (Sunday, 11/12) when a lawyer from the Poetic License Association was able to get me released on a technicality.)
Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),
When we read (a condensed) 1984 in high school I was blown away. Not just by the story but also by the writing chops of its author.
When I read Animal Farm on my own a few years later I was blown away, Not just by the story but also by the writing chops of its author.
When I re-read (an uncondensed) 1984 a few years after that and again a few years ago I was blown away by the writing chops of the author.
Orwell, a democratic socialist incidentally, who wrote two globally recognized literary classics that are still studied today, before dying at the age of 46 from tuberculosis 73 years ago, is currently under attack by Wokies for thoughtcrime.
Author Anna Funder, for example, feeling that she had been "spiritually drained by the monotonous demands of motherhood" came across a collection of Orwell's essays in a used bookstore and "embarked on a project of re-reading his work, hoping his explorations of tyranny would help her liberate herself from the 'motherload of wifedom I had taken on'".
Long story short, she winds up writing a biography of Orwell's wife detailing what a monster he actually was (much of it speculative) and how the patriarchy was, and still is, responsible for repressing all women all the time.
He was dead less than a year after 1984 was published and personally I see no point in digging him up and killing him.
George Orwell was obviously right about the unmitigated disaster that was/is communism (Animal Farm) but may have been wrong about what life in the average dystopia of the future would be like (1984).
Communism is (dis)credited with a body count of 100,000,000 H. sapiens, more or less, and although the killing — and enslaving, and torturing, and imprisoning — continues, the running total, communism's mur-dom-eter if you will, racks up the bodies at a much slower pace these days.
{Not bad, but I would've used kill-ometer myself.}
Clever, but that doesn't quite work, Dana. A murdometer keeps track of total deaths; a killometer measures how fast people are being deliberately killed. Think odometer v. speedometer.
What I find fascinating is that irregardless, there are still plenty of people in the world who declare, with a straight face, that if communism was ever properly implemented somewhere, by someone, it would finally have a chance to shine.
{There's no such word as irregardless, it's regardless, without the ir.}
That's what I thought, however, if you go a-googlin' you'll quickly discover that while irregardless is considered to be nonstandard by the language police (and verboten by my spellchecker), it's not illegal and has been in use since 1795 according to Merriam-Webster.
While I admit that logically it makes no sense when you think about it, I like the sound of it.
If China's current emperor and his minions can claim with a straight face that China is a communist country (socialism with "Chinese characteristics"), and certain American college professors and no shortage of Zoomers can claim communism is a valid political philosophy — logic be damned. Irregardless, it's my column.
{Okay fine, but what's any of this got to do with 1984? And whaddayamean China's not a communist country?}
1984 features a world-class traditional dystopia with an evil dicktater, and a relative handful of minions. Everyone else is, for all intents and purposes, a miserable slave.
{Right, like China.}
Nah, that's old-school China. With occasional limited and brief exceptions, China was a relatively traditional dicktatership for millennia and a Communist Utopia for half a minute, but now it's a new-school dictatership.
It's a dystopia for certain minorities, of course, but that's for their own good. Once they're assimilated, and so far resistance has been futile, they'll be happy, well-adjusted, and productive members of society striving to help make China the planet's most powerful hegemon... while keeping an eye on their social credit score.
{So what exactly is socialism with Chinese characteristics?}
Easy peasy:
"...Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, ...the Scientific Outlook on Development, and the Thought on socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as well as the Party’s basic line and basic policy."
For more details please refer to:
Hold High the Great Banner of Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics and Strive in Unity to
Build a Modern Socialist Country in All Respects.
This is the catchy title of Emperor Xi Jinping's Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China — 58 pages of sparkling and inspirational prose.
In other words, just now, socialism with Chinese Characteristics is Xi Jinping's name for a hooge-steaming pile of Bonkercockie, the official rationalization for a dicktaterhip that promotes capitalism and limited liberty when it's convenient but exerts central control (with an iron fist) when it ain't.
This is how you pretend, with a straight face, that the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party (the Emperor and his minions) is running a communist country, the Chinese version of a "dictatership of the proletariat."
Socialism with etc. is whatever Emperor Xi says it is, subject to change.
If he changes his mind, dies of natural causes, is assassinated, or is just removed from the chess Go board and put back in the box by someone who has ascended to the apex of the Yellow Patriarchal Hegemonistic Sino-imperialist Dominance Hierarchy, he/she/they will decide.
{Who/What?}
Whoever takes over the Emperor's current job. As everybody knows, the world is currently run by Pasty Patriarchal Hegemonistic Euro-imperialists, but the Emperor has made it clear that he thinks China should be in charge and I suspect that any given potential successor will feel the same.
{China in charge... wasn't that the name of an 80s sitcom?}
You're thinking of Charles In Charge, starring the anti-Christ, Scott Baio.
{So you're saying that since Orwell didn't predict a dystopia like China he missed the rickshaw?}
No, let us not forget Cuba, Venezuela, my personal favorite, North Korea, and other lesser-known, much less powerful/threatening um... poop holes.
In his defense, he was a man of his time. I don't think anyone would've predicted that Stalin's Russia would eventually become the Pooteen's Russia; the Pooteen plays the Tzar and a gaggle of greedy, corrupt oligarchs play nobles. At least the stores actually have stuff on the shelves.
Irregardless, I'm just grateful I live in a country where people can legally say, within certain limits, almost anything they want wherever they want without fear of being doxed, de-platformed, or disappeared for hate speech.
{You're being sarcastical... right?}
And although everyone knows there's no such thing as online privacy we gracefully accept this as a small price to pay for personalized advertising that points us to cheap merchandise and expensive iPhones (often, unfortunately, made by virtual slaves) in the People's Republic of China.
Also, don't forget being able to watch perfect strangers getting naked and/or having sex 24x7x365 via the worldwide web of all knowledge without feeling any guilt, shame, or responsibility now that what used to be called porn is now called female empowerment.
Poppa loves you,
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