by Ray Jason
Two of the most enduring novels of
the 20th Century are Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD and George
Orwell’s 1984. Unfortunately, these dark
masterpieces have proven to be stunningly prophetic. Much of the grim, totalitarian future that
they predicted has already materialized.
And we are steadily careening towards a nightmarish Tommorowland even
more diabolical than they predicted.
Each author foresaw a bleak future where the Individual was completely
subordinate to the State.
Fortunately, we have not yet fully descended into a serf-like,
police/surveillance state dystopia, but that seems to be our trajectory. In both of these novels the State has already
achieved its mission of either Rule through Force or Control through
Distraction. But the reader does not
witness the lead-up and implementation of these dictatorial autocracies - which
is where we are today.
Some undeniable examples of this include the
militarization of police, the replacement of elected leaders with appointed
bureaucrats, a slow-burn state of perpetual war and control of the media in
only a few rich and powerful hands. Oh, and I forgot to mention the almost
inescapable surveillance - because I was busy replacing the tape over the
all-seeing eye on my laptop’s webcam.
In 1984, the State, as personified by Big Brother,
used a combination of brute force and perception distortion to control its
population. The regime’s power was so
total that it is described as “a boot stamping on a human face –
forever.” Their more subtle truth
obliteration tactic is exemplified in their slogans, “War is Peace – Freedom is
Slavery – Ignorance is Strength.”
The control grid in BRAVE NEW WORLD that insures their
citizens’ submission to the World State is a cornucopia of mindless amusements
and sensory stimulations. By keeping the
population constantly distracted and gleefully sedated, they insure that the
serfs will not discover and question their servitude.
*******
For decades, political observers have debated which
approach our rulers - who I have dubbed The Malignant Overlords - are using to
shape the perverse world that they desire.
But my conclusion is that they are actually using BOTH tactics. And a
huge portion of this tyrannical agenda is being orchestrated from the U.S.A. Certainly in this era of the Superclass,
where the 1% have only a puny allegiance to their birth country and an
all-consuming addiction to money and power, it is not just American elites that
are dictating policy.
But because of the U.S. global prominence with their
Reserve Currency status and the Petro-Dollar and their massive military, they
are undoubtedly controlling a large portion of the future direction of the
planet. Their dominance is so
overwhelming that I refer to the Eastern Seaboard power corridor as Orwellia.
That’s because this string of power nodes is consistent with the
1984 model of overwhelming strength and control. On the other side of the country – the
so-called Left Coast – the “everything is groovy” tyrannical game plan is much
more reminiscent of BRAVE NEW WORLD.
Therefore I call it Huxlandia. Please allow me to elaborate on this
proposition.
*******
Orwellia stretches from Virginia through Maine. In the southern sector one finds the CIA ,
the Pentagon and DARPA all ensconced in Virginia. It can be persuasively argued that since the
end of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency has clandestinely
orchestrated more pain and suffering for more people than any institution on
Earth. Whether it was coordinating the
secret overthrow of populist governments in Latin America or the faking of
invasion-supporting evidence in the Middle East, the CIA has had its invisible
fingerprints almost everywhere that has been plagued by intervention and
bloodshed.
Nearby is the Pentagon which is the headquarters of
the Department of Defense. More
accurately it should be termed the Department of Death. Its true mission is defending “national
interests” even though the people who comprise the nation have no say in what
those interests are - or should be. In a
nutshell, their true interest is to rule the world and to prevent any nation
from rising in stature so that they become a threat to American hegemony. This explains the insane demonization of
Russia and the intensifying tension with China over islands in the South China
Sea – not the South United States Sea.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or
DARPA, is the organization that transforms the Pentagon directive of “Full
Spectrum Death” into actual weapons.
These are the folks who manage to actually sleep at night even though
they are creating robotic soldiers and robotic military attack dogs. Check out some of these creations on Youtube;
and then try to imagine what you would say to your five year old daughter when
she asks, ”What is your job, daddy?”
Then, when you cross the nearby Potomac River you are
in Washington, D.C. where you find the federal government power nodes and the
all-knowing and all-powerful Federal Reserve.
These are the folks that have siphoned the wealth of the Middle Class
into the pockets of the banksters. These
are the people who have instituted a policy of perpetual war without any
approval from the citizenry. These are
the oligarchs who have militarized the police in preparation for the day when
the common person will not take it anymore.
Drive north a short distance and you will arrive at
the NSA headquarters in Fort Mead, Maryland.
The National Security Agency probably took 1984 not as a work of
cautionary fiction but as an operating manual.
They have managed to out- Big Brother the original Big Brother. They are listening to you, tracking you,
facial-recognizing you and possibly in the future arresting you for Pre-Crime,
which is exactly what Orwell dubbed Thought Crime.
Move up the coast to New York City and you get the
Wall Street bankers whose political contributions make them Too Big to
Jail. And don’t forget the Council on
Foreign Relations, which has been the incubator for some of the most
destructive and hideous foreign policy ideas in recorded history. A short train ride away in Connecticut you
will find the hedge fund mansions. These
guys are masters at conducting economic and monetary warfare in order to help
the already obscenely rich become pathologically rich. And our final stop is the Bush Family enclave
in Kennebunkport , Maine. Need I say
more? Is it true that Big Brother
actually vacations there???
*******
So in Orwellia you have all of these institutions that
are relentlessly but subtly steering humanity towards a future where the
individual is constantly surrendering more freedom (“Please remove your shoes
and approach the X-Ray machine.”) Meanwhile, the governments are persistently
becoming more powerful and more centralized.
And to worsen this already repugnant vision of the future, there is the
power of the surveillance grid to almost completely eradicate any personal
privacy.
Defenders of the status quo will argue that the
utterly inescapable and suffocating
oppression depicted in 1984 has not swept across the planet. And thankfully, that is correct. But I fear that none of the paths that human
society is currently traveling lead to greater peace and freedom and justice
and prosperity. On the contrary, they
steer us towards the wasteland future that Orwell and Huxley so eloquently described. Their prophetic warnings should not be
ignored.
AUTHOR’S
NOTE: I had intended to also include my discussion of Huxlandia in this
essay, but I would prefer to share that with you in the next one. However, rather than my normal two weeks
between essays, I will try to have that for you in about a week.