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submitted 2 days ago by davel@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml

Relevant rant:
📺 Why the Democratic Party CANNOT and WILL NOT be Reformed
Democrats would rather lose to a Republican, to a conservative, to a fascist, to Trump, than address the material conditions of the American people.

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[-] Grapho@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

It's short, but not punchy. It's a
hundred pages of diatribes, some misogyny, a story beat, another fifty pages raving about bureaucracy, a story beat, and 100 pages about brainwashing and how socialism fucking sucks. Then the most half-baked "how do I tie this bad essay together?" ending.

It's Atlas Shrugged for people who do take showers.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

It’s a hundred pages of diatribes, some misogyny, a story beat, another fifty pages raving about bureaucracy, a story beat, and 100 pages about brainwashing and how socialism fucking sucks.

The joke of 1984 is that Orwell neatly described the modern capitalist British State virtually to a T. Hell, it wasn't all that far off from the contemporary British State, given the conditions of paranoia and economic decline the island suffered during the postwar aftermath.

In the era it was written, a lot of the diatribes about the nefarious villains of socialist politics felt like a guy throwing on a big spooky ghost custom with a light under the chin. But in the modern moment... fuck it if cops busting down my door because my elementary-school son was tricked into accusing me of ThoughtCrime during a mandatory Two-Minute Hate doesn't feel like a thing that could really happen.

Then the most half-baked “how do I tie this bad essay together?” ending.

The execution was a forced ending. But the psychology at the end - this desperate liberalist clinging to an individualized, compartmentalized psychic resistance - absolutely strikes a cord. I know plenty of people (hell, I regularly indict myself) over the reflexive meekness draped atop rebellious fantasy. This growling whipped-dog sentiment, where liberals will say everything in a loud whisper, but duck their heads in terror at the first whiff of authority or consequence... as we move further and further towards fascism. I see it everywhere.

Orwell very neatly diagnoses the failure of the liberal opposition in the personage of Winston Smith and his peers. And it is even further pronounced in the meta-textual narrative, as Orwell himself is an embodiment of Winston. A man who has rewritten history at the behest of his imperialist paymasters (after a career as a fucking Burmese cop and nark, ffs) goes to his grave subsuming the revulsion of his own country with a fear and antipathy towards a distant foreign land.

[-] Grapho@lemmy.ml 1 points 45 minutes ago

I do agree with your points. I think it's certainly an insightful book (just not in the way Orwell intended) but certainly not a good book.

this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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