KenSmet.com

2011: A Brave New Dystopia (that is likely coming)
Posted Dec 27, 2010 By Chris Hedges at Truthdig (edited considerably by Grandpa Ken)

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous
Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate [since those two books were published] has been
over who was right: Orwell, dominated by a repressive surveillance and [a] security state...
[or] Huxley, entranced by entertainment and spectacle...? Well, it turns out [they] were
both right: Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement; Orwell saw the second. And the
rest of Hedges' article makes that case.

As Huxley foresaw (and Orwell warned): we have been gradually dis-empowered by a
corporate state that seduces and manipulates us through sensual gratification, cheap
mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater, and amusement. And while that
is going on – while we are being “entertained” – the regulations that once kept predatory
corporate power in check are being dismantled, the laws that once protected us are being
rewritten, and we have become impoverished. (The American Dream is turning into a
Nightmare and you can almost stop right there to soak it all in – what has happened to us
and how it has happened over the past fifty years.)

Until today when: credit is drying up, good jobs for the “working middle class” are gone
forever, and mass-produced goods become more and more "unaffordable" – as we find
ourselves being transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” America is sliding
backwards into a bankruptcy of every kind. It’s time for Orwell's “Big Brother” to take over
from Huxley’s “orgy-porgy of centrifugal bumble-puppy.” We are moving from a society
“skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions,” to one where we will have to be “overtly”
controlled:

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where
no one wanted to read books.
Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture
diverted by mindless pleasure.
Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and
dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population,
preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information.
Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission.

And so, Huxley, it is turning out, was a prelude to Orwell... Huxley understood the process
by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement, Orwell understood the
enslavement. Until at this moment, 2010, the corporate coup is almost over, almost
complete, as we stand naked and defenseless and begin to realize (as Karl Marx knew)
that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is as brutal and revolutionary a force as any
war or highway robbery – that anyone who exploits human beings and the natural world
until exhaustion or collapse does not really “win” - but they can’t seem to resist trying!

The article goes on to make the case we must change our ways, but it doesn’t do so in an
upbeat manner... (Chris Hedges could never get a "corporate" job.)

He makes the case (from Sheldon Wolin) how the German Nazis and Russian Communists
came close to American Corporate leaders in their methods, but rarely had the courage to
admit their motives (pretending as they did to seize power unwillingly for a limited period of
time to make the world a better place) whereas American corporate leaders are not like
that, they know better, they know that no one with any sense ever seizes power with the
intention of relinquishing it (no one except George Washington of curse) – power is not a
means it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a
revolution, one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of
persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power!

He further mentions how: Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy Incorporated,” uses the term
“inverted totalitarianism” to describe our political system (a term he thinks would make
sense to Huxley) where the modern methods of corporate control and mass manipulation
far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states. Masked by the glitter, noise,
and abundance of a consumer society, political participation and civil liberties are gradually
surrendered as the corporate state takes over hiding behind the smokescreen of public
relations entertainment and materialism as it devours us from the inside out. It owes no
allegiance to anything except itself. It feasts upon the carcasses of the poor.

The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader – it
is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations hire
attractive spokespersons to “fool us and themselves and each other (and all of the people
some of the time) as much as possible,” to keep everyone confused, disoriented, and most
importantly "disorganized!" Corporations own most of the most important aspects of
science, technology, education and communication – to keep the masses uninformed,
misinformed, and in check.

Corporations control most messages in the news, movies, and in television programs, etc,
as prescribed in “Brave New World,” and they have perfected how to use those tools to
bolster their views... Their systems “block out and eliminate whatever might introduce
qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue into the discussion...anything that might weaken or
complicate their corporate control.” The result is celebrities masquerading as journalists,
false experts and special interest groups masquerading as real experts and trained
specialists - who identify and patiently “explain” everything so that anyone who argues
against or outside the imposed parameters of the controlled conversation are dismissed as
irrelevant cranks -- extremist members of a radical left, right, or fringe who must be
chastised. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B – no C or D or E. The culture
under corporate control becomes, as Huxley noted, “a world of cheerful conformity” – as
well as an endless and "finally fatal" optimism. (All of the celebrity pundits always smile all
of the time – ever notice that?) We busy ourselves buying products that promise to
change our lives, make us more beautiful and desirable, as we steadily lose our rights,
money, and influence.

All messages we receive on the nightly news, or from “Oprah” or whoever, all promise a
brighter, happier tomorrow – “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to
exaggerate profits, conceal losses, but always with a happy face.” We have been
entranced by a boatload of “continuous technological advances” that “encourage
elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, plastic surgery, etc – with
our actions measured in nanoseconds and instant replays – a dream laden culture of ever-
expanding control and possibility prone to fantasies because most of us have imagination
but little scientific knowledge.”

Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Our Treasury looted. Retirees are starting
to lose their pensions... Civil liberties have been taken away. Basic services have been
privatized. And among the few who raise their voice in dissent they are derided by the
corporate establishment as freaks.

Meanwhile, the reality of Huxley’s “Brave New World” facade (effectively put into effect over
the past fifty years in plain view and glorified) is finally starting to crumble...as more and
more people finally realize they have been screwed and ripped off. Society will now move
swiftly from Huxley’s Brave New World to Orwell’s 1984 – and 2011 could be the year!

The public will increasingly face some very inconvenient and unpleasant truths: that good-
paying jobs are not coming back; that the largest deficits in human history mean we are
trapped in a “debt peonage system” that will be used by corporate officials to eradicate the
last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security; and that the state
will devolve from a capitalist democracy into neo-feudalism. Anger will increasingly replace
cheerful corporate conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets (where some
40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called
“near poverty”) coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosure bank
repossessions and bankruptcy, medical bills – whatever – means "inverted totalitarianism"
will no longer work. We increasingly will live in Orwell’s “Oceania” not Huxley’s “World
State.” (Osama bin Laden and others like him will continue to play the role(s) assumed by
Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, is the public face of terror in 1984 – his evil
machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news, so that all
corporate excesses are justified in the titanic fight against “evil personified.”)

The recent in the news: psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning (of Wiki Leaks
fame) (who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any
crime) mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Pvt.
Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base
Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He
cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with
antidepressants. And so now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded “Room 101” to
become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly
imposed on dissidents – techniques that have psychologically maimed thousands of
detainees in “black sites” around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our
maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on all of us outside their
“inner sanctums.” It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells
him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love,
or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be
hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression.
Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the
government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of
us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits
are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are
patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. Public service announcements, car
inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report
suspicious activity... The enemy is everywhere!

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror (a war that Orwell noted is
endless) are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at
the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate to the level of
street activity – but they sent a clear message: DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of
antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in
Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s
official News speak. Agents (Thought Police) seized phones, computers, documents and
other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have been served on
26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “the providing of material support or
resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, the blunt instrument used
by “Big Brother” to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the
exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of
fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world
which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”
________________________________________
Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death of the
Liberal Class.”
HAPPY NEW YEAR!