“We have always been at war with Eastasia”

“He who controls the past controls the present,” George Orwell wrote nearly eighty years ago, “and he who controls the present controls the future.” Orwell’s novel “1984” remained a work of fiction in the United States for most of those 80 years. Today, much of what he wrote is a dim but growing reflection of daily reality.
In the novel the protagonist Winston Smith is listening to a hectoring speech given by a party fanatic about the evil doings of Eurasia, Oceania’s enemy. The speaker is handed a piece of paper. He quickly reads it. Without a word or hesitation the speaker suddenly begins inveighing against Eastasia. At that point “a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia!”
Without prompting the crowd begins tearing down posters that proclaimed Eurasia the enemy. In the twinkling of an eye one enemy is swapped for another, one ally is swapped for another, and the mob is prepared to hunt down, renounce and see liquidated anyone who dares to contradict them.
Just two hours after Trump again said that she was wrong to cast doubt on his claim that Iran could have a nuclear weapon “within a matter of weeks,” Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national complete lack of intelligence, posted a statement on social media reversing her original claim.
This isn’t an incident that exists in isolation. Gabbard’s reversal is emblematic of all of MAGA. Trump’s core lunatic zealots must be ever ready to do an about face to conform to any whim of the moment that possesses the Dear Leader.
To be sure America remains a democracy, and proclamations of the moment take time to sift downward into the feeble comprehension of the fools who continue to carry water for this hypocritical madman. But that’s only because America isn’t Russia or North Korea — yet. If Trump and his gang of thugs have their way it will be.
The baffling reversal of the Republican Party’s longstanding hostility to Russia is easier to understand in an Orwellian context. In the final analysis, “1984” is a cautionary tale on the goals of cultism, total world domination. Conformity to the impulses of one man is the sine qua non of cultism, and MAGA is a quintessential cult in all of its aspects.
Big Brother is Trump, and the Thought Police are MAGA reinforced by a corrupt DOJ and an even more corrupt ICE. It’s ironic that Big Brother today is known largely as an American (and Dutch and British and Australian, etc.) reality TV show, and Trump is a former reality TV host himself. The world’s most terrifying example of fiction becoming reality is now trivialised by television.
Does Iran have nukes, or a nascent nuclear program? Maybe. But if it does it’s probably Trump’s fault. Out of racist spite Trump cancelled President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that limited the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and other provisions. So once again the arsonist is trying to take credit for (presumably) putting out the fire.
In other words, as far as MAGA is concerned, we are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Until Trump says otherwise.

Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.