The Beating Heart of 1984

I read 1984 during my senior high school English class; we read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in class. I argued with my teacher that 1984 was better - it was certainly scarier. While in prison, I re-read Huxley, this did not change my opinion. If anything, reading it again and reading a few more Huxley's books, reinforced my opinion that Huxley satirized his own society and gave us an image of its decadence, but that Orwell wrote jeremiad. This morning, I am thinking that Orwell showed us the ugliness in human nature, while Huxley showed us our stupidity.

The original draft of this post follows. 

sch 10/17 

 

 Discussing George Orwell by way of Anthony Burgess:

The Feral Historian's take on 1984 and the politics of language:

How Orwell Helps Us Remember Truth (The Bulwark)

The importance of being Bering (The Article) - oh, the examples of politicizing history abound.

Scholar says Trump’s efforts to reframe U.S. history is ‘reminiscent of McCarthyism’ (PBS News)

Amna Nawaz:

So the president complained online that the Smithsonian focused on how horrible the country is, in his words, how bad slavery was.

He also said this as part of that post. He said: "The museums don't focus enough on the success and on the brightness and on the future."

As someone who studies history and looks at this intently, what do you make of those concerns?

Peniel Joseph:

Well, Amna, this is really part of an ongoing narrative war that we have had in American history between those who are supporters of Reconstruction, multiracial democracy, and then redemptionists who are supporters of the racial status quo that existed long in this country, both during slavery and then during the period of Jim Crow after.

So when we think about what the president is saying, what he's saying is that the real unvarnished truth about American history hurts too much for all of us to understand and to know and to learn lessons from those truths. And that diminishes our democracy.

It diminishes American history and it diminishes the postwar American order that has really created the most effective multiracial democracy in American history. And that history is both a tragic history, but it's also a triumphant history.

And as somebody who's been a huge attendee at the Smithsonian since I was a boy, that history is always told in a very balanced way, where we talk about the evolution of American democracy, not just slavery and racial segregation, but also the civil rights movement and the suffrage movement and the women's movement and LGBTQIA, how queer folks transformed this country, the disability rights movement, immigrants.

Rewriting American history (International Bar Association)

How House Republicans plan to rewrite history of Jan. 6 (POLITICO)

sch 10/9

 

I like listening to The Feral Historian, and he has something to say about 1984:

 

 sch 10/17