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Mixing Orwell and Huxley Is Bad Tactic for the Democrats
In “1984,” George Orwell feared that Big Brother would use fear and force to gain control of society. In “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley feared that force would not be necessary, and that government could gain control of the population by doing everything for them. The people wouldn’t think that they were oppressed, because they had lost interest in thinking for themselves. As Neil Postman put it in his foreword to “Amusing Ourselves to Death” (emphasis mine):
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
For decades, the American left has been using Huxley’s “Brave New World” not as a form of literature, but rather as an instruction manual for gaining control of a previously free society. And it has been working just as well as Huxley feared. This is why every Democrat since FDR has fought against means-testing for Social Security – they want us all on the take. Just let government take care of everything. As George W. Bush said, “When someone is hurting, government has to act.” Once government takes responsibility for all our troubles, then we no longer need to take responsibility for ourselves. Which is nice. But Mr. Huxley knows where all this is going. And now that Democrats control the White House, Congress, and our elections, we’re starting to find out. Why are we just finding this out now? Because we didn’t listen to Mr. Huxley, who wrote “Brave New World” 90 years ago, in 1931.
The Democrat tactic of militarizing our Capitol is, in my view, a mistake. Huxley’s strategy of coddling the population into willing submission only works if they’re not scared. Huxley used Soma (a sort of relaxing sedative drug that the government handed out for free in “Brave New World”) to get everyone to relax and go with the flow. In today’s world, they would drink, take Prozac, watch Netflix, and play video games. And they would gradually lose interest in fighting the creeping oppression, which if they just relax, they won’t even notice anyway.
This only works if everyone thinks everything is ok. If something spooks them, and people start paying attention, then you move from “Brave New World” to “1984.” And nobody wants that. Not even the power-hungry leftists in charge. It’s so much easier if everyone just goes along, amusing themselves to death. Don’t do anything to give anyone the impression that the government is not their friend.
Razor wire and armed troops surrounding the Capitol gives the distinct impression that the government is not our friend.
I presume that Democrats have surrounded the Capitol with razor wire and troops to give the impression that Republicans are a dangerous threat to our society. At least, I think that’s why they’re engaging in this absurd theater.
But I really think it’s a mistake.
If the American people start to suspect something is wrong, that perhaps our government is not on our side – if the American people start to think like that, then all the Prozac and Netflix in the world won’t adequately sedate them.
Perhaps. Unless we’re so far gone, that we no longer care who’s in charge of us, as long as it’s not us. We may have reached that point. I don’t like the razor wire around the Capitol, but I would like another stimulus check, please. You’re banning authors from Clarence Thomas to Dr. Seuss? Yeah, well, just cancel my student debt and we’ll call it even. Maybe we’ve already lost the ability to think, and to care. I’m rewatching all six seasons of Bosch right now.
But again, I think the Democrats are making a tactical error by presenting such an overtly hostile front to those that they are trying to reassure into compliance. Why create conflict, when your Soma strategy was working so well?
When I see the razor wire and the troops around the Capitol, my first thought is not that the Democrats are hostile – my first thought is that the Democrats are incompetent. This is a mistake.
Or, maybe, I just hope it’s a mistake.
What do you think?
Published in General
There is another old SF novel, this one from 1954, which has uncomfortable relevance to our present situation: Kendell Foster Crossen’s Year of Consent. I reviewed it here.
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November 22, 1963: JFK wasn’t the only notable to leave us; Aldous Huxley died that day, too.
I appreciate learning about this difference between the two novels. It’s very interesting. But I don’t agree that the Left today is using only one of the two methods.
Below is what I think, which is, I believe, simply orthodox Christian thinking.
We are in spiritual warfare, and that the enemy has always used, is now using, and will always use lies and temptations and later terror and death as weapons.
Not just one, nor just the other.
The various specific lies, false gods, tactics, factions, and descriptions of the promised Godless paradise create the illusion that there is more than one spiritual enemy, or that it has more than one defining nature. There are many “roads” to Hell and they are called “wide”. There is only one Way to reunion with God, one gate, and they are narrow.
NB: When I say “the Left” I don’t mean just the Left, which is the ruling group of factions, one of which is the Democratic Party. I mean “the Distal”–the opposite of the “the Proximate”–whether Left, Center, or Right. I can’t explain it. Susan Quinn understands.
I don’t really mean “the Distal”, either. I mean “the Centripetal”–the opposite of “the Centrifugal”.
Excellent review. Thank you.
Doc, I think you may have missed your calling. I’m sure you are a wonderful physician, but you also write some very thought-provoking and stimulating little essays here. Just think what you might produce if you were able to devote more time to your writing. (Maybe when you retire from medicine, but it may be too late for all of us by then.)
Although I’m inclined to agree that government handouts are the functional equivalent of Soma (more stimulus checks please!), Trump and his ’20 vote count are accurately viewed by the Democrats as signs that the party’s strategy for pacifying the masses is less than ideal. Clearly, not everyone is even close to being susceptible to the Soma equivalent of the moment.
The highly affluent–the Democratic Party base and those most able to afford society’s “Somas”–are pretty much in line. But those pesky people who declined to toe the line in the last election must be accounted for. How to do this? Discredit them by portraying them as threats to the nation, against whom we must guard vigilantly. And what better way to do this than by turning the capital of the country—it’s most visible symbol–into an armed camp.
Just for the record, @drbastiat, since you asked in the other thread: writing posts like this one is what you’re doing here. Don’t know where you find the time. Thanks.
I suggest you mean there is an infinite source of light. There are an infinite number of ways to ignore it, but only one way to perceive it. Fortunately, that way is trivially easy. (That’s as least as good an analogy as centripetal or distal.)
The left is not exhibiting anything remotely Christian, either in their thinking or in their action. They are not corrupted or misguided Christians. They take on that color and shape, but that’s mimicry. They have simply chosen to ignore the light. The magnificence of reality isn’t enough for them because it doesn’t feature them in a starring role with soft-lit closeups. Sound familiar? Devilry is as close as they can get to Christianity.
I agree that the Democrats are making a mistake going along with the far-Left Progressives pushing the idea that everyone can/will live within a single set of conditions, that there is no room for differences. I think there are many Democrat voters who do not subscribe to this positioning. We must make sure the line of no return is not crossed.
It’s too late. They held a barely masked coup for four years, then openly stole the election. One may debate exactly when, but the line is crossed. There is no going back, only forward.
I think that today’s Democrats simply suffer from insatiable arrogance and the intoxication of power. There is no left or right for them, no real political philosophy, except that which works to make them perpetually important. Political labels are for them useful for defining the opposition and for appeasing their support. This can easily be seen in their misuse of the word fascist, or their condemnation of any opposition as “Nazi” and right wing, when the truth is, El Duci (the father of Facism) was a confirmed socialist and leftist, who used nationalism and a compliant industrial complex seeking favor, to rise to power. Hitler used much the same tactics in Nazi Germany, however, he nationalized (read socialized) all major industries and fully adopted coimmunist collective notions of national health, education, religion/culture, recreation and even diet. Had he not been an evil racist, this essay might have been written in German.
Our new Democrats have learned that the populace responds to any so-called crisis; global warming and COVID 19 have provided them with a one two punch. There is a neocrisis in the making; the narratives are churning. They are villifying the opposition, painting half their fellow citizens as treasonous and evil. We are no longer just deplorable; we are dangerous. We prove this by arming ourselves (even if this is our constitutional right) and challenging the veracity of their claims of existential crises everywhere. Their narratives are shouted from every leftist occupied watchtower, and yet, we resist.
Trump came along and in four difficult years, proved once again that America, if left to its principles, is exceptional and it works.
I take solace in the fact that the COVID crisis is on the ebb. Soon it will become apparent that global climate change is a non-starter. In the meantime, we have two jobs: sure up our election processes and make elections more transparent and break the hold that big tech has on the dissemination of speech.
Oh, there is a third job. Resist like hell.
“Seeing the light” refers to a perceiving, not a desire. “Being centripetal” refers to a desire, not a perception. So they are not two different analogies for the same thing.
In my view one phrase is not “as good as” or better or worse than the other. They refer to two different relationships with the light, the center, each as important as the other. I could not walk in the light, walk in the way, walk toward the source of the light, until I saw it. I didn’t desire to be in the light until I saw it.
Well put. All of the promise of evil is a counterfeit: “mimicry” as you say.
For an orthodox Christian, “Obey my Law, and you shall be like God” (to Man) is an alluring, but false promise. “Bow down to me, all of this will be yours” (to the Son of Man), likewise.
I agree with you, @dougkimball. In fact, labels can be inconvenient to them. They just care about doing what they want to do; nothing else much matters.
Excellent Post. Wow, it really shot me back to one of my Freshman English courses (in the late 60s), which consisted of four works (1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and Looking Backward). All quarter was spent discussing (and arguing) the merits of each work, not to mention the brand of totalitarianism that each covered.
Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. One of the biggest (at least in my own mind) was Huxley’s reference to Soma. Back in those days, the use of mind altering drugs (“blowing one’s mind”) usually referred to hallucinogenics of an illegal nature (LSD, Peyote, etc.). Of course, as Doc notes, we’ve advanced to Prozac and everything else that the generous Sackler family can give us. So, when you couple that with the unending flow of everything that the Mexican cartels can provide us, Huxley’s thesis is looking better and better.
As for the concept of the feelies; I’m still working on that…
Or maybe you just hope it’s a mistake.
Exactly, Dr. Bastiat.
This post (Great post, by the way.) reminds me of the point in the first Narnia book when the wicked queen obviously no longer needs to deplete her stash of Turkish Delight to keep Edmund in bondage. It’s fine with her that he now knows just what she is.
You might say she no longer needs the Huxley method of controlling Edmund, and has moved onto the Orwell method so as not to waste resources.
Re: comment 1
Excellent review, David Foster. I want to read “Year of Consent”.
Brilliant. Perfect.
That comment may be brilliant and perfect. But if it’s CORRECT, then we have a very, very serious problem.
I’m not sure. But I fear that @ansonia may be correct. Let’s hope not…
The Democrats are incompetent but the leadership is also evil.
I hope you’re right that they’re incompetent.
Re: Comment 13
So CA Crabtree, you said in freshman year of college, in the late 1960’s, you read “Looking Backward” ? I’ve heard the title but know absolutely nothing about the book. I looked on Wikipedia. Do you mean a book written by someone named Edward Bellamy ?
If so, it seems to have been wildly popular for a time—-not long before the Progressive era, wasn’t that ? I read clubs sprang up all over to study it, that a lot of socialists discussed it.
This is what I fear. They are now not bothering to conceal their endgame, everything they want is right out in public.
I agree with you, Dr. Bastiat, and Mark Camp, [and David Foster and Doug Kimball, Susan, Ansonia and actually everyone commenting here :)] but I think there’s something more. I think the Democrats and their Republican enablers are afraid. I don’t know of what, but if they are, that they are is even more frightening.
A curious selection of books, given that the first three are horrifying dystopias while Looking Backward was written as a socialist utopia.
Yes, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward was written as a socialist vision of a future utopia: A totalitarian society, and yet this was seen by socialists as a desirable and paradisaical thing. Even in the 1980’s I met American socialists who saw its vision as admirable and not at all disturbing much less repellent.
And C.S. Lewis . . .
I wonder who gave them the shirts . . .
You’re right on point @PaulStinchfield. That’s exactly what my prof (back in the 60s) was doing with her reading selections. Although Looking Backward was originally published in 1888, there had been a number of utopian experiments in the United States (the Oneida Community in 1848, New Harmony, Indiana in 1825, Brook Farm in 1841 and Nashoba in 1826 to name a few). I believe the prof’s intent was to contrast the harsh totalitarianism of 1984 and Darkness at Noon with the “softer” brand of utopianism espoused by Bellamy.
Needless to say, all those utopian experiments fell apart for several reasons, not the least of which was human nature. Of course, that sort of human nature was touched on by another of Orwell’s works, Animal Farm.
Yes, it was very popular (supposedly the third largest seller of its time; after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur). I sometimes wonder if people were trying to “get away” from the horrors that the Civil War had produced. Never mind that all previous attempts at Utopia had collapsed.
With some many young folks (and some not so young) believing that a “Socialist Paradise” is possible here in America, I’m not so sure that we’ve learned a d*mn thing…
A major goal of the Communists/Marxist doctrine (this appears to be the main influence affecting the American Left now) is to thwart the Capitalist economic approach, is it not? If I’m wrong, someone tell me and explain it. Was 2008 (the lead-up cause being abundant mortgage loans primed to default) a test of this approach? Is increasing the money supply and dumping it into the economy at zero interest a means to further this objective by thinking hyper-inflation will be the ultimate result? It looks to me as if the false image of prosperity created among those who have never earned amounts approaching what is being handed out today can be an effective tactic until the economy goes into total collapse. Then what? Will the capitalists be too late to the game?
To destroy capitalism (meaning, the belief in individual rights and responsibilities, including self-ownership and the ownership of property), yes.
Marxism and its predecessors, like the ideology of Hegel (“The State is God”), the French Revolution, and the Godless philosophies of the Enlightenment, are first and foremost a common humanistic religious faith, with infinitely many sects and sub-cults. They are all dedicated to the destruction of the Church, which they believe is a source of evil and tool of capitalist class oppression in this late Capitalist epoch of History (“Progress”).
In this humanist vision, the Enlightened ones have a historic mission to destroy capitalism and the institutions of individual personal and property rights, individual responsibility and dignity. The belief in any “truth” outside of the power of the State is rejected.
And C. S. Lewis