W.J. Astore
The modern world is a kluge of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with screens everywhere in which people submerge themselves, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World with “soma” of all sorts to keep us drugged and happy, and of course George Orwell’s 1984 with constant surveillance and the “two minutes of hate,” directed mainly at “the enemy,” especially the enemy within, known in 1984 as Goldstein (for some Americans today, “Goldstein” is Donald Trump; for others, it’s Hillary Clinton; for a few, it’s Ted Cruz or perhaps all of the above).
Dystopic elements characterize our American moment, hence the appropriateness of dystopic science fiction novels. Bradbury was especially good at poking holes in the idea technology was in essence a liberating force. He captured the way people might submerge their identities within screens, neglecting the real people around them, even those closest to them, for the “virtual reality” of infotainment. Huxley was keen to debunk mass production as a liberating force, but his invention of “soma,” a mood-enhancing drug that leads to detachment and inaction, captured our overly medicated ways. (I can’t watch network news without being bombarded by drug ads that promise me release from pain or acne or other nuisances and hence a better life, as long as I take this pill or use this inhaler.) Finally, Orwell captured the total surveillance state, one driven by fear, obsessed by enemies created by the state to cow the masses. Perhaps the darkest of the three, Orwell left little hope for the “little man” oppressed under the jackboot of a militaristic and totalitarian state.
The times are not quite that dark in America today, but these three classic novels offer warnings we’d do well to heed. An aspect of these dystopias we most definitely see in America today is the degeneration of news, of information, of knowledge. As a society, America is arguably less fact-based today than at any point in its history. Even as we’re immersed in information via the Internet, the news itself has become shallower, or trivial, or frivolous, when it’s not out-and-out propaganda.
I grew up watching the news. Before going to school, I used to watch the “Today” show in the morning in the 1970s. It was a decent show. Some real and serious news made the cut. Now it’s largely a laugh-fest featuring celebrities making sales-pitches. The news as soap opera; the news as vanity.
To state the obvious: The network “news” has been dumbed down. Image is nearly everything. Stories are far shorter and without context. Designed for people with limited attention spans, they’re also designed to keep people watching, so they feature sensationalism and “quick hits” — nothing too taxing or disturbing.
Of course, the real news is still out there, as Tom Engelhardt notes in his latest probing article at TomDispatch.com. It’s just much harder to find on the network “news”:
What’s left out? Well, more or less everything that truly matters much of the time: any large, generally unphotogenic process, for instance, like the crumbling of America’s infrastructure (unless cameras can fortuitously zoom in on a bridge collapsing or a natural gas pipeline in the process of blowing up in a neighborhood — all so much more likely in an age in which no imaginable situation lacks its amateur video); poverty (who the hell cares?); the growing inequality gap locally or globally (a no-interest barrier the WikiLeaks-style Panama Papers recently managed to break through); almost anything that happens in the places where most of the people on this planet actually live (Asia and Africa); the rise of the national security state and of militarism in an era of permanent war and permanent (in)security in the “homeland”; and don’t even get me started on climate change…
Coming to grips with the real news would require thought and necessitate action – changes, radical ones, to the status quo. And what powerbroker wants that?
Focus instead, America, on your screens. Take your soma. Hate your Goldstein. That’s the method driving our madness. Dystopia, anyone?
Bracing Views 
“The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” — 1984
Fast forward to the U.S.A., circa 2004 and we have the observed failure to utter a compulsory prepositional phrase declaring the nation subservient to an imaginary Spook.:
Congressman omits ‘under God’ from Pledge of Allegiance
Congressman omits ‘under God’ from Pledge of Allegiance
Fast forward to the U.S.A., circa 2015 and we have the observed failure to display sufficient enthusiasm for a foreign politician.
Rand Paul found guilty of not clapping hard enough for Bibi Netanyahu
In other words, fellow Crimestoppers, we have seen Orwell’s facecrime and raised him by two orders of dystopian stupidity. Hence:
The Boobie Pledge of Subservience
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America’s post-linguistic retreat to Plato’s Cave)
I offer my obedience
I pledge undying love
To any symbol formed to serve
The needs of those above
Who rightly feel that I deserve
The fist inside the glove
I stand and mumble publicly
With fear upon my brow
Lest some mistake my silence for
An insufficient vow
Let all who see and hear me know
How easily I cow
Authority need never fear
I swear I know my place
I pledge to take the gauntlet slapped
Across my beaten face
The Seizure Class knows I’ll accept
Chastisement with good grace
About such things as freedom, I
Have not the slightest clue
By birth and class it’s come to THEM
I know that it’s THEIR due
To hand me down instructions as
To just what I must do
And so I promise faithfully
To play my scripted part
Each day I’ll chant Two Minutes’ Hate
To finish, from the start
Until I love BIG BROTHER from
The bottom of my heart
I swear to do as I am told
I will not think too deep
I’ll huddle in conformity
Just like the other sheep
To take my whipping like a slave
And utter not a peep
I pledge to stand up every day
Within my schoolroom class
And mouth my mantras on demand
Without backtalk or sass
Until the program makes me a
Compliant, docile ass
I swear upon my loyalty
To stuff my head with fat
And place my nation “under” “GAWD!”
Supinely prone and flat
With me then going “down” “beneath”
And “lower” “under” that
I swear to go to Sunday School
Upon the public dime
Each morning in my homeroom class
I’ll mouth my dreary rhyme
And if I leave out words
THEY can Indict me for my crime
I pledge and vow and promise that
I’ll swear from dusk to dawn
And never fail to chant or moan;
To never blink or yawn
And with each cry of “GAWD IZ GRATE!”
My own soul I will pawn
The Papal bulls and fatwas tell
Me all I need to know
Which isn’t much because I see
I’ve nowhere left to go
I swear to never set my sails
Against the winds that blow
The Popes, Imams, and Rabbis tell
Me what and where and how
The master’s overseer tells
Me which row I must plow;
To toady, genuflect, and crawl;
To grovel, scrape and bow
I’ll train to “hurry up and wait”
And do the Bulgar drills
To stand at rapt attention dressed
In military frills
Just point me and I’ll drop the bomb
No matter whom it kills
I pledge and promise on my word
To do the things I ought
To work for lower wages
So my labor comes to naught
I swear to vote Republicrat
To prove I can be bought
The Party keeps us all at war
Which makes us quake with fear
And so we give up all those rights
Our ancestors held dear
Which saves our enemies the need
To take them from us here
But I won’t think of bygone days
The past I’ll just rewrite
I’ll call my history “old news”
To make it pat and trite
Which sleight of mind will help me keep
Its lessons out of sight
With this capitulation I
Agree to sell my pride
Before I even own it or
It grows too big to slide
Into the shabby, craven cave
Wherein I must reside
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2005
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I’d forgotten facecrimes, Mike. Thanks for the reminder.
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