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Back when I was in middle school reading "1984," I remember having the smug feeling (which I'm sure a lot of us had), after finishing that disturbing book, that "it couldn't happen here." Orwell was talking about totalitarian, dictatorial regimes and-- well, since the USA was the world's perfect democracy, we'd never become like Oceania, ruled by the Party, with free thought and criticism labeled as Treasonous to the Ruling Order. But there are some aspects of the country now that eerily seem reminiscent of 1984. We're not there yet, but another terrorist attack...
One is the strident, stentorian, almost implacable hatred of people who voice dissent, especially in regard to the Iraq War. Not just on FoxNews but even in supposedly "respectable" publications like The New Republic, you have writers virulently castigating critics of the foreign policy of Bush and Rice. Antiwar voices are branded as traitors, with many openly calling for them to be locked up or shot. Hyperbole? Probably, but when something is repeated often enough it pushes people closer in the direction of accepting something like that.
And then there's the way so many parts of the MSM so slavishly fall in line to tell the Dubya line, and refuse to even discuss counterexamples or look at them critically. The movements in the Middle East are chirpily declared as "vindication" for the neocon strategy of invading every country we don't like-- nevermind that Iraq is still a clusterfsck of a violent mess, that the rise of Abbas in Palestine was due more to Arafat's death than anything else, that the whole "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon was vastly overblown (much larger pro-Syrian protests took place after the "Gucci protesters", as some derisively referred to them, had taken to the streets), and that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have barely taken baby steps to open up their systems. Nope-- groupthink in the media says that all these things justify the neocon philosophy, so it's on to another great democratizing war against those meanies in Syria and Iran.
Then there's the way torture is becoming so acceptable, the way the often deliberate slaughter-- oh, sorry, "Collateral Damage"-- of innocent Arabs in a country we invaded is dismissed or even lauded as part and parcel of the job of killing terrorists, the way France is showered with unprecedented hatred for talking common sense to us, the general anti-intellectual and "bread and circuses" tenor of the current media, the way obvious FUBAR's by the Bushies are turned into seeming successes (MASSIVE CURRENCY-KILLING DEFICITS ARE GOOD! BLOODY BAGHDAD IS FREE!).
I don't think we're there yet, but if there's another domestic terrorist attack, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Bushies and corporate media make further intrusions on good sense, spout even more Orwellian nonsense, and see people willingly give up their rights. And like the Proles in "1984" (or the downtrodden worker bees being served up TV screen propaganda in Half-Life 2, for those into the HL series), those who question the established order and Groupthink will be increasingly shunned and punished.
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