When cameras started being installed in stores, on traffic lights, and everywhere else, I said Orwell’s 1984 was a few decades late, and we're not there yet.
Then China got in the news more and more: the tennis player who disappeared after accusing a high level communist leader of sexual misconduct reappearing after world-wide protest, claiming that she never accused him of any such thing.
Then came news of the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China, and our and many other nations keeping diplomats away from the Olympics out of protest. But no Muslim nation joined in the protest! This made me start wondering what the Muslims have against us? Why did Al-Quada attack the US rather than the genocidal Chinese who have outlawed Allah and are committing genocide against Muslim peoples there?
The answer wasn't long coming. The terrorists have nothing to do with Allah or Islam and are warring for personal wealth and power in Islam’s name. The only religion on Earth that supports war is the worship of money and power. President Eisenhower warned us about this in our own nation, warning of the “military industrial complex”.
Now I wonder why no one else has figured this out? It's not like I'm the smartest person on Earth or anything. I'm no idiot, but I'm no Einstein, either. If others have figured this out, which is very likely, why are they silent? Are they in on the deal?
The Uyghurs made me remember the time I met a group of Chinese citizens, right off the boat. The year was 1984 and I worked at Disney World. One day after work I hopped on a monorail (rides and most everything else are free for employees, although one was fired for taking two packets of sugar in the lunchroom) to EPCOT for a beer. I enjoyed going there after work and sampling the world's various brews.
I like beer.
I decided to try some Chinese beer one day. Rather than fighting through the throngs of rich tourists, I took a route only an employee (they called us “cast members”) could take, where tourists were forbidden, and entered the Chinese pavilion through a back door known only to employees. The new Chinese arrivals were happy to meet an American who they weren't serving; I was an employee like them.
They wanted to know everything about America, one praising the great American President Reagan, who had unleashed an orgy of corporate takeovers that resulted in my hours and pay getting cut by 25%. As any American would, with the freedoms we enjoy in our democracy, I excoriated the horrible President Reagan.
The Chinese were shocked. Not just shocked, but frightened, as if the FBI or the CIA would jump from the bushes and arrest me for sedition for speaking badly about the president. They all left the break room as politely as they could, and I went out to the front for a Chinese beer.
They seemed to not want to wait on me. They were incredibly frightened by my American freedom!
As I thought back on that nearly half a century later, I realize that Orwell got it right on the money: 1984 China. His only mistake (or maybe Wikipedia's mistake, I haven't read the book since the 1960s) was pegging Great Britain as Oceana, rather than China.
Wikipedia says:
|
Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, ruled by the Party, who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the dictatorial leader of Oceania, enjoys an intense cult of personality, manufactured by the party's excessive brainwashing techniques. |
That's China today, and in 1984.
Buy American when possible.
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