...the author is addressing the underlying arrogance of Imperialism.
The author liberally belittles the gullible Americans who would lap up the condescension of the Empire's apologists, as surely as they lap up the fascism that drips like venom from the lips and pen of the Neocon's intellectual whore, Christopher Hitchens.
In fact, Orwell's thesis, which I once found so clever, is a cliche of Imperialist apologists. I developed an eye for these the hard way; they kept coming up whenever the Irish were mentioned in my favorite British books. I'd be reading along, happy little Anglophile that I was, and suddenly my favorite authors would spew hatred for us, the Irish and the Catholics. It not only hurt, it puzzled me for years. They were the winners, the ones who did the massacres; isn't it the victims who are supposed to be angry?
Years later I heard a joke that explained it concisely. An Irishman has been bayoneted by a British soldier, and as the Mick dies slowly in a ditch the Brit kicks him over and over, cursing him and wishing him a painful, slow death. With his last breath the Irishman asks, "Why are you so angry at us?" The Brit leans down, whispers, "You swine, we will NEVER forgive you for what we've done to you."
It's one of those jokes-a lot of Irish/British jokes are like this-that are more true than funny. The Empire was a lot of things, from piracy on a global scale to Evangelism, but as its more concrete benefits started looking short-lived after 1918, its value as a point of pride, a shared happy dream, became relatively more important. Bumming the Imperial high was the last worst crime a native could commit.
This is not ad hominem 'bashing', the author provides plenty of examples to lend credence to his observations.
His concluding paragraph sums it up;
America is now neck-deep in a war so stupid that nothing in our native speech can contain, let alone defend it. Enter Mister Hitchens. He's channeling Orwell, he says, and alas, he's right. Until now, it was easy and harmless to let Orwell be a dead saint. But Hitchens called that bluff; when he says he's come to do Orwell's work, the evidence says he's telling the truth. Because Orwell's work, once you tear off the camouflage, is fanning the hate of a fading Empire for a disobedient, turbulent world where the wogs refuse to obey it. The worst news America could ever receive is this: Hitchens really is Orwell's heir.
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