Donald Trump and maga Republicans must call the Iran war what it is- World War III in Iran caused by inept Trumpism

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: Trump is at war with Iran.

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Jonah Goldberg.

What is my evidence❓

Turn on your TV. U.S. forces, working with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran and many of his top aides. We sunk Iran’s navy and destroyed most of their air force. We bombed thousands of military sites across the region. President Trump, the commander in chief, has demanded “unconditional surrender” from Iran. He routinely refers to this as a “war.” Pete Hegseth, 🤢who calls himself the secretary of war, also describes this as a war daily, such as last week when he said, “We set the terms of this war.”

The truth that we are at war is so simple, only politicians and lawyers could make it seem complicated.

Indeed, a slew of Republican legislators insist we’re not actually at war. House Speaker Mike Johnson: “We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission and operation.” Florida Rep. Brian Mast: “Nobody should classify this as war. It is combat operations.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham: “I don’t know if this is technically a war.” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin: “This isn’t a war. We haven’t declared war.” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: “Strategic strikes are not war.”

Pearl Harbor was a strategic strike too.

Then there’s the claim that we’re not at war with Iran but Iran is at war with us. This is half true, insofar as Iran has been committing acts of war against the U.S. since it took our embassy staff hostage in 1979. But waging a war in response doesn’t make it any less of a war.

One is tempted to invoke George Orwell’s “1984,” in which the existence or nonexistence so literary is at play. This is (mostly) legalism run amok.

The main reason congressional Republicans reject the W-word is simple. If it’s merely a “combat operation” or “strategic strike” in response to an “imminent threat,” then the president has the authority to do it without congressional approval. If it’s a war, then it’s arguably illegal and unconstitutional within the framework of the War Powers Resolution or the Constitution itself, because under the Constitution declaring war is the sole responsibility of Congress. And the last thing this Congress wants to do is take responsibility for anything.

This at least partly explains why Trump insists he had a “feeling” Iran was about to attack us. He has even suggested that Iran was just weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and that he prevented an imminent “nuclear war.”

The War Powers Resolution — nominally rejected by every president since it was passed in 1973 — was intended to restrict the president’s ability to use force without Congress’ consent. It backfired. It says the president can respond militarily to threats as he deems necessary, but then must go to Congress within 60 days for approval to continue hostilities. The result: Presidents have a free hand to wage war for roughly two months, unless Congress stops them.

But congressional Republicans don’t want to stop Trump. That’s tactically defensible, if you believe this war was necessary. But the tactic forces Congress to say, in effect, “Don’t believe you’re lying eyes. This isn’t a war.”

For those who only vaguely remember what they learned in high school about the War Powers Resolution — or for that matter, the Constitution — this riot of legalism only fuels confusion.

But, there’s another factor driving the evasion. Trump made the idea of staying out of “forever wars” a central tenet of America First. There’s no textbook definition of “forever war” — always a ludicrous term — so you can understand why some people believed it was code for “Middle East war” or just plain war of any kind. 

Moreover, the irony is that Trump could make a plausible case that this war is allowable under the Authorization to Use Military Force George W. Bush received in 2001. But symbolically, that would mean Trump is continuing Bush’s “forever war.”

Regardless, Republicans aren’t just under a legal clock to get this thing over with, but a political one too. Polling shows that Americans, including many Republicans, have no thirst for a long conflict, which makes sense given that they were not asked to prepare for this war at all. Hence, the insistence that this war will be short and tidy.

The problem is that Iran knows this. Which is why they don’t have to win, they just have to ride out the bombings until the public or Trump loses patience with this very real war.

X: @JonahDispatch

Donald Trump daunting hate filled speeches avoid discussion about policy issues- Social Security Medicare Project 2025

Donald Trump's hate and rhetoric filled "lie your way into an eletion again" campaign. Whatever happened to policy discussions? Echo opinion by Michael Gold and Simon J. Levien, published in The New York Times with editorial commentary inserted by Maine Writer....

Trumpzi Owellian anachronism:  “It was a bright hot day in July, and the Pennsylvania clocks were striking thirteen.” 

Trumpzism convention speech was "...merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another". (George Owell)

At the first campaign rapture rally since he survived an assassination attempt last week in Pennsylvania, former guy Donald J. Trump on Saturday July 20,  launched a litany of attacks that suggested his call for national unity in the wake of the shooting had faded entirely into the background.

Over the course of an almost two-hour speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan., Trump insulted President Biden’s intelligence repeatedly, calling him “stupid” more than once. 

He said Vice President Kamala Harris was “crazy” and gleefully jeered the Democratic Party’s infighting over Mr. Biden’s political future.

Even as Trump made numerous false claims accusing his political opponents of widespread election fraud, he presented the continuing push by some Democrats to replace President Biden on their ticket as an anti-democratic effort.

By contrast, Trump — who falsely insisted he won the 2020, election and whose effort to overturn it spurred a violent attack on the Capitol that threatened the peaceful transfer of power — presented himself as an almost martyr trying to protect the United States from its downfall.

“They keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’” Trump told the crowd of thousands inside the Van Andel Arena. “I’m saying, ‘What the hell did I do with democracy’? Last week, I took a bullet for democracy.”

The line — one of the few additions to a speech that culled from Trump’s standard rally repertoire — came as Trump was trying to rebut Democrats’ claims that he was an extremist and distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a potential second term that would overhaul the federal government.

The Biden campaign repeatedly tried to tie Trump to the Project 2025, effort, which involved Trump allies and former advisers.

But Trump on Saturday criticized the project as the work of the “radical right,” even as he acknowledged that he knew some of those involved. (Oh paleeeze❗😳😔 Donald Trump lies about everything❗) “They’re seriously extreme, but I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said of Project 2025 — which he kept calling “Project 25,” even as he has previously referred to it by its full name. (There he goes again😕)

Saturday’s speech was the latest signal that the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump had done little to change his political message. Though his closing convention speech on Thursday opened with a somber call for unity, he reverted quickly to standard rally repertoire, including an aside comparing himself to the gangster Al Capone and a discursive tangent regarding sharks and electric boats.

Saturday’s Trumpzi speech was the latest signal that the assassination attempt on Trump had done little to change his political message.

Though his closing convention speech on Thursday opened with a somber call for unity, he reverted quickly to standard rally repertoire, including an aside comparing himself to the gangster Al Capone and a discursive tangent regarding sharks 🦈and electric boats.

Trump did discuss the assassination attempt, in which his ear was struck by a bullet at a rally last week in Butler, Pa., even though he said on Thursday that after his convention speech he would not describe it in detail again.

Sporting a light brown bandage on his ear, smaller than the large white gauze he had been wearing, Trump once again cited divine intervention, telling the crowd, “I shouldn’t be here.” He offered praise for Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter and rally attendee who was killed in the gunfire, and thanked officials in Butler for their efforts.

But where Trump was somber and visibly affected in front of the Republican delegates and national network cameras, a moment of seeming vulnerability, on Saturday he at times struck a somewhat lighter tone discussing the shooting.

At one point, referring to a screen showing a chart on immigration that he was pointing to when the shooting began, Trump joked that “I owe immigration” my life and that the “sign was very good — I think I’m going to sleep with it tonight.”

Before Trump spoke, his newly chosen running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, took the stage and marveled at the former president’s resilience.

“I find it hard to believe that a week ago an assassin tried to take Donald Trump’s life, and now we have a hell of a crowd to welcome him back on the campaign trail,” Mr. Vance said, in his first joint rally with Mr. Trump since he joined the Republican ticket.

Though the security procedures at the rally were largely unchanged from past Trump rallies, the venue was held indoors after the Trump campaign had largely held events outdoors. There was a heavier police presence than typical inside and outside the building.

Sean Solano, a 22-year-old missionary to Nicaragua, said he had taken one extra precaution in light of the shooting.

(This is just radical opportunism. A self described missionary man had no effect or impact on the July 13, Pennsylvania Trump Rapture Fest tragedy. The shooting was the result of a 20 year old white male who had access to an AR 15 rifle, full stop.🛑 Praying over a building is engaging in sheer delusional fantasy.)

“On Wednesday, I prayed over the building,” Mr. Solano, of Cutlerville, Mich., said about the rally’s venue. 

Echoing several other rally attendees who spoke of Mr. Trump’s survival in religious terms, Mr. Solano added that he thought God had given the former president a chance and that now Mr. Trump would “fight with fury like never before.”

Trump’s dark message about the pernicious threat to the country posed by undocumented immigrants, Democrats and foreign adversaries, a signature theme from previous rallies, was largely intact. He broadly characterized those crossing the border as “prisoners and people from mental institutions,” whom he again likened to the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter. And he promised once more the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if elected.

Trump also joyously mocked Democrats as they contended with the viability of Mr. Biden’s place as the party’s presidential nominee. Trump called his rivals “the enemies of democracy” because Democrats who called for President Biden’s replacement would have to answer to the millions of primary votes the president secured over other candidates.

“They have no idea who their candidate is, and neither do we. That’s a problem,” Trump said in a tone that suggested he thought anything but.

Building on months of attacking Democrats as a threat to democracy, usually based on his false insistence that Mr. Biden has directed all four criminal cases against him, he argued once more that it was his political opponents who were anti-democratic.

“This guy goes, and he gets the votes, and now we’ll take it away,” Trump scoffed. “That’s democracy.”

Still, Trump showed little sympathy for Mr. Biden. After mostly, though not entirely, avoiding direct personal attacks against the president in his convention speech, Trump repeatedly called him unintelligent, saying that he had a low I.Q. compared with other world leaders and that he was incompetent. (Remember how Trump is reported to have paid for a surrogate to take his college entrance exams?)

He widened his focus to include Ms. Vice-President Harris, insulting her laugh and calling her “nuts.” He similarly called Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, “crazy,” and then mocked her over her having privately told Mr. Biden that he might not win in November, which he characterized as a sudden display of disloyalty.

“Crazy Nancy,” Trump said. “Did you see Nancy Pelosi is selling out Biden now? Did you see she turned on him like a dog?”

Republicans, he pointed out, were unified largely behind him. As evidence, Trump ceded the stage to a display of party unity: Sandy Pensler, a Republican running in Michigan’s Senate primary, took the stage to end his bid and endorse his Trump-endorsed rival, Representative Mike Rogers.

“Unifying the party,” Trump said as he took back the microphone, “it’s beautiful to watch.”

Michigan is seen as a critical battleground state for both Trump and Mr. Biden in November. It is one of several that Trump won in 2016, only to lose to Mr. Biden four years later.

The decision to hold Trump’s first joint rally with Mr. Vance in the state offered another signal of its electoral importance. Mr. Trump, when he announced Mr. Vance’s selection, singled out his ability to win over workers in the state, and Mr. Vance several times in his convention speech mentioned working-class people in Michigan as crucial to the nation.

J.D. Vance, on the other hand, gave a well-received 13-minute speech — a small fraction of Trump’s lengthy remarks — more than an hour beforeTrump took the stage. He returned later to introduce the former president to raucous applause, and the two embraced in front of the crowd.

“I chose him because he’s for the worker,”  Trump said after Vance left the stage. “He’s for the people that work so hard and perhaps weren’t treated like they should have been.” (Whaaadaya mean Trumpzi? Like hiring people and then not paying them, like you do❓)

Russian war euphemisms

Echo opinion by columnist Leonard Pitts published in the Northern Virginia Daily newspaper:

When Russian bombs began to fall on Ukraine, Julia Tymoshenko called her aunt in Moscow.

She told her about spending a night in the basement as explosions thundered overhead. Her aunt was unimpressed. "Well, you don't know who did that," she said. "We're seeing one thing on the news, you're seeing another thing on the news."

Tymoshenko, who is 22, sent her aunt photos: the bomb shelter, the refugee train packed with fleeing people. "It's not the news for me," she told her aunt. "It's my reality, and it's what I see with my own eyes."

In response, her aunt blocked her.

That story, told last week on "CBS News Sunday Morning," suggests that, for as much as this is a war against buildings, bodies and a legitimately elected government, it is also a war against objective truth. Richard Pryor, channeling Chico Marx, once put it like this: "Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Well, this is a war against your lying eyes.

Evidence abounds. It includes Russia's attack on TV towers in Ukraine, its crackdown on social media and other independent information sources, its detention and intimidation of journalists and its new law mandating up to a 15-year prison sentence for reporting so-called "fake news," i.e., news that contradicts the Kremlin. Some Russian TV journalists have quit rather than parrot Moscow's lies about the "special military operation" they are forbidden to call a war.

More ominously: At this writing, four reporters have been killed by Russian forces. War being as heinous as it is, it's impossible to say definitively whether journalists Brent Renaud, Pierre Zakrzewski, Oleksandra "Sasha" Kuvshynova and Yevhenii Sakun were specifically targeted. 

But Russia, being what it is, it sure seems likely the journalists were targeted. (Check the website: Committee to Protect Journalist ).

Four journalists killed covering Russia-Ukraine war
Two Ukrainian journalists missing since start of conflict

Yes, every nation at war seeks to control the flow of information, to shape the narrative to its advantage. That's why television and radio stations are prize targets for invading armies. But this feels like an Orwellian step beyond that, an extension of something with which we've become sadly familiar in this era of preposterous social-media conspiracies and multiple-choice truth. Meaning, an attempt not just to lie, but to overwrite reality.

America, unfortunately, has extensive recent experience with that.

So it's hard to watch this with any sense of detachment, to observe as though through some intervening window, as the very idea of knowable things is mauled. No, this is frightening stuff.

Julia Tymoshenko's aunt is, what you'd expect her to be, under a regime that weaponizes lies and interdicts truth. And Lord knows, truth has trouble enough even without that. "You can't handle the truth!" Jack Nicholson famously snarls in "A Few Good Men," but the thing left unsaid is that many of us don't really want it anyway -- all protests to the contrary notwithstanding -- because it challenges what they choose or need to believe.

In other words, truth is hard, but QAnon is easy. And defending truth grows harder still, not only in Ukraine, but also in Lafayette Square, where journalists were gassed, in Ferguson, where they were arrested, in Minneapolis, where police shot one in the eye. This, as some of us wait for John F. Kennedy to return from the dead and Donald Trump to be restored to the White House. All of which makes it difficult to have any sense of remove from Moscow's war on reality.

You'd like that war to be just some scary thing far away, glimpsed safely through a window. But it's actually a mirror reflection of us.

Distorted, yes. But not nearly as much as you'd like to believe.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Maine Writer post script:  I continue to be mystified about the delusional effectiveness of euphemisms: A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
"“downsizing” as a euphemism for cuts"

1984 in 2022: In George Orwell 's novel 1984, the government 's highest class, called the Inner Party, (could be a euphemism for "Putin's Party) uses multiple tactics and pressuring mechanisms such as using slogans/propaganda, persuasive surveillance and Newspeak to maintain social control. The Inner Party uses language as means of social control by using ¨doublethink¨ which is a major way the Party controls the Outer Party and Proles. They do not question the elimination of words from the vocabulary.

Existential commentary about truth - an echo essay from Texas

"....truth is an organic need.....both the most human and divine thing about us"....echo opinion published in the Dallas Morning News*

Truth needs another hero like George Orwell

Truth is a writer's first responsibility, to conquer the lie, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said.

Our need of truth is "more sacred than any other need," Simone Weil wrote. 

A compulsion, Aristotle taught, rooted in human nature, our need to hear and know the truth is ineradicable. 

It's why there are lies, because of our desire for truth.

It's why the loss of the arts and crafts of truth (the decay of literature, the demise of journalism) is a grave social problem, even existential, something more than economic, political or cultural. Because truth is an organic need, both the most human and divine thing about us.

The external threats to truth, of course, are familiar: shifting markets, the short-term logic of profit, aesthetic and moral tastes deadened by pop cultures and politicians, themselves merely instruments of profit. These are the tolls taken on our culture's guardians of truth. 

Newspapers, writers, those with public voices have been changed into something else. Most have been refitted to more lucrative business models or perished; survivors have been made into mere cashiers of influence.

Yet, there are dangers to truth that are equally deadly, and maybe more so, insofar as they go unnoticed. Not bias, but something else: it's the self-inflicted, unspoken temptation to write "sentences that sell," as Mark Thompson of The New York Times put it. 

This desire to be liked, to be hired, to be thought sufficiently "woke," is primevally serpentine, the Luciferian desire to shine. 

At the core of our cultural demise lies narcissism, that so many of us are untruthful for likes, for gigs, for ego.

Which is why we who write need a new hero to exemplify truthfulness. We need a hero who shows us how to resist those forces internal and external bidding us to betray truth. A hero like George Orwell, obscure as that may sound. 

After reading again books like 1984 and Animal Farm, I think him now something like a prophet or patron saint, a writer whom every writer should read.

This summer marks 70 years since the publication of 1984. Dorian Lynskey's fascinating new book, The Ministry of Truth, a "biography" of 1984, makes a similar appeal. He says Orwell's classic is a book "we turn to when truth is mutilated." It's a book, he says, "I urge you to read again," because it "continues to define our nightmares."

He's right. In this fake news, Russian-influenced, strangely over-screened world, and before yet another presidential campaign, we should read 1984 and Orwell's other works, because truth was his theme. Born from his experience of the Spanish Civil War, of seeing firsthand the evils of communism and totalitarianism. He saw, too, his confrères on the Left turn a blind eye as blatantly as those on the Right. It's a novel born of what he called the "nightmare feeling caused by the disappearance of objective truth."

It's the nightmare of 1984. In a world of rewritten history, suspicion and hate, the first, most mortal crime is "thoughtcrime," the crime of free thought unsanctioned by the Party. 

Everyone in the book holds everyone else in suspicion, and everyone acquiesces. "Always yell with the crowd, that's what I say. It's the only way to be safe," says the character Julia, explaining her charade as a good member of the Party. This is the moral substance of 1984, and of Orwell generally, and it's why the book's still so relevant and Orwell the sort of hero we still need.

Orwell's work underlines what's at stake. "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death," wrote Winston, the main character, in a diary he thought private and secure. They're words fit for an epitaph, for ours. They show what we lose when we choose ideology, identity, institution, party or political loyalty over truth, especially in a world in which we're afraid we'll be ridiculed and ratioed.

Tribal civil society, fickle corporate mob morality, politics and politicians of misinformation screaming "fake news," dividing the nation to strengthen their base: This is what we've become. Certainly, it's not yet Oceania. We've not yet come to the gray darkness of Airstrip One nor to the terrors of Room 101. Yet we've come too close. The terrors of Orwell's fiction are not fiction. 

We're in danger again, because truth is in danger. And where are the writers, the reporters, the preachers of truth?

It's why those who work in words should read Orwell again. Before history is erased and common sense becomes the heresy of heresies.


*Joshua J. Whitfield is pastoral administrator for St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas. He is a former Anglican minister. He was ordained a Catholic priest through the Pastoral Provision of Pope John Paul II in 2012. Before he became Catholic, he went to seminary in England at the College of the Resurrection. He holds degrees in theology from the University of Leeds and also Duke University. He is also the author of Pilgrim Holiness: Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness(Cascade, 2009). Whitfield is a frequent contributor to the Dallas Morning News.

Journalism is unethical at Fox News- opinion from Las Vegas Sun

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel..."
George Orwell. So, when will Republicans wake up?

Las Vegas Sun editorial echo: h

ttps://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/nov/30/fox-news-sacrifices-journalistic-ethics-to-protect/

Fox News sacrifices journalistic ethics to protect the the Trump administration

(In other words, FoxNews is Trumpzi speak!)

The extent to which Fox News has become an arm of the Trump administration grows clearer all the time.

This week’s signal came when The Daily Beast revealed emails showing that former Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt’s team picked topics for a Fox News interview with Pruitt, was fed all of the questions that he would face and OK’d part of the script.

So much for claims of independence and objectivity by the news channel. Although it’s common for TV news producers to discuss interview topics with subjects and even ask them some pre-interview questions, allowing subjects to call the shots is journalistic malpractice. That’s especially the case when the subject is someone as sleazy as Pruitt, who was up to his eyeballs in ethics scandals when he resigned just 18 months into his job.

And yet its says a lot about the news channel — none of it good — that the Pruitt emails aren’t surprising.

Fox News long ago forfeited any pretense that it was holding Donald Trump accountable. Rather, in promoting conspiracy theories, giving Trump a megaphone for his constant lies and helping him vilify immigrants and other groups, the news channel has become an active partner in the president’s tribal politics and assault on the truth.

In Trump’s attempt to turn Americans against each other, Fox News is one of the tools he relies on the most.

This goes beyond journalistic standards, or even becoming an American version of Pravda to help Trump spread propaganda.

As we’ve stated before, Fox News represents a threat to American democracy by helping Trump whip up his loyalists on the extreme right, gin up hatred and shake people’s confidence in our system of government. Vladimir Putin could hardly ask for more than what Fox News is doing.

The organization also provides Trump with a group of de facto advisers like Sean Hannity and Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, with whom Trump routinely consults.

And then there’s Rupert Murdoch. It’s been reported that Trump and the Fox executive chairman talk weekly, and at times daily, which is deeply disturbing considering that Murdoch’s recent track record includes fanning nationalist fervor to help spur the Brexit vote in his British newspaper, The Sun. Murdoch has long worked to erase the line between truth and propaganda in his news publications, where he’s also exhibited a disdain for journalistic ethics and standards.

The sum of all of these parts is that Fox News is doing much more than advocating a certain ideology or editorial position — it’s intentionally lying and trying to manipulate reality. It’s one thing to honestly express an opinion and try to argue the merits of it based on facts and real-world observations. It’s another to unleash a tsunami of lies, paranoia and baseless accusations, to foment violence against others and to foster race baiting and destruction of civic norms.

But so it goes. Trump and the channel have become so intertwined that Hannity and Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro (Ugh!- Trump in drag! Queen Trump!) were emboldened enough to appear onstage with Trump at a campaign rally this fall, where Hannity attacked “fake news” media and touted the president’s campaign slogan.

“The one thing that has made and defined your (failed) presidency more than anything else: promises made, promises kept,” Hannity said.

Fox News tut-tutted, issuing a statement saying it did not condone “any talent participating in campaign events.” But guess what? Hannity and Pirro (Ugh! Trump in drag. Queen Trump redux) haven’t gone anywhere.

The rebuke was less than a hand slap. It was so weak that even Fox News staffers expressed disgust at how the organization had wiped its feet on journalistic ethics.

For Americans who’ve quite understandably had enough, options include using a diverse variety of sources for news. Meanwhile, why would any responsible advertiser want to be associated with the hate-mongering that takes up so much of the network’s bandwidth?

Supporting Trump is one thing. But Fox News is going beyond simply being a cheerleader, and that’s troubling.

When Big Boss Trump is watching you- via the CIA

George Orwell (1903-1950)
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

George Orwell author of "Nineteen Eighty Four"- but, apparently, he didn't project out far enough.

What terrifies me the most about Donald Trump's new paranoia obsession with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is how he deliberately leaps to discredit the agency's credibility.  

Rather than rise up in protest against the Russian involvement in the US election, which is a fact, as far as I'm concerned, instead, Donald Trump is blaming the CIA for creating this story as though it never really happened. In other words, Donald Trump is playing mind games with the CIA and with the American people. Moreover, Trump (again) seems to get away with this and other crazy accusations.  There must be someone, somewhere who can discredit Donald Trump?  (Okay! I'm trying....I'm trying. I'll likely wind up in Guantanamo as a result.)

If Donald Trump gets away with an intimidation of the CIA, then he will undoubtedly exert his influence over all of us. In other words, by controlling espionage and clandestine operations, he will become the "Big Brother" who George Orwell warned us about in his now not so fiction novel. (English Literature review: "Big Brother" is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling Party wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants.)

Among many George Orwell quotes, "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

Well, in my opinion, we are now living in a "time of universal deceit" because the US election of 2016, was driven by "fake news", and sabotage of the election by the Russians and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey.

If Donald Trump is given free reign to criticize the Central Intelligence Agency, without reprimand, then he will be one big leap forward towards creating a "Big Brother" society, where everyone will be under surveillance (including me!) because his universal deceit will exert control over us all.

Although a healthy dose of skepticism is acceptable in all political commentary, the fact is this: I trust the Central Intelligence Agency and its assessment of the Russians a lot more than I trust Donald Trump. In other words, Americans don't want "Big Boss Trump" watching over us.

George Orwell Resurgence - Those of Us Forewarned were Forearmed

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Those of us who read George Orwell's now classic novel about the future (written in late 1940s) are not really surprised about the extent of electronic surveillance in our everyday lives.  We were forewarned about this impending intrusion when Orwell described the phenomenon of "big brother", now a cliche and euphemism for a mythical totalitarian government watching our every move.

So, now Americans are being told what we already knew was true.  Our lives are not private.  In fact, there's very little an ordinary citizen can do these days without some marketing firm catching on and trying to sell stuff related to what is known about us. Amazon.com sends me messages with lists of books they know I'm interested in reading. Talbots sends me sales messages about cloths I like to buy, with pictured fashions worn by advertising models who are about my size.  When I click on an Internet travel site, my email receives multiple 2 for 1 deals, promoting cruise ships.  If my husband and I were ever to be late with a federal tax payment to the Internal Revenue Service, do ya' think we'd hear about it?  Hello?

Now, some Americans are shocked because they're learning about what most of us already knew.  We're under surveillance.  Our phone calls may be monitored for security reasons.  

Moreover, the current controversy about electronic surveillance has caused a resurgence of sales of Orwell's classic describing a future phenomenon, set in the year 1984.  LA Times reports that sales of "1984", which concerns a discontented propagandist working for the Ministry of Truth in a time of endless war, are up 5,771 percent as of Tuesday morning.

But "1984" is not the future anymore.  It's now.  

Suspicions confirmed. Learning what we already know is true, is like Orwell's doublethink, described in "1984":  “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” 

― George Orwell, 1984

These contradictory beliefs are (a) Americans don't like to have "big brother" intruding in our everyday lives; and (b) Americans want assurance that National Security is preventing us from the horror of terrorist acts.  These are not mutually exclusive concepts. A trade off for improving national security means some form of big brother will be evident in our everyday lives. 

In other words, do you want to be the first person who flies in an airplane where the passengers were only selectively screened? 

Hopefully, Orwell's estate continues to collect copyright royalties on the sales of his classic books.  He deserves credit for inoculating those of us who read "1984" and "Animal Farm", by preparing us for today's "new normal".  If we want our lives to be "normal" (whatever that may mean) then we must accept a privacy trade off.  As Orwell wrote prophetically in the 1940s:

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness (ie: national security and safety) is (are) better.” ― George Orwell, 1984