2013/1984, Part 6

Trey Smith

Now we come to the Ministry of Love which dovetails nicely with the current NSA spygate.  In Orwell's Oceania, this ministry is responsible for spying on its own citizens and dispensing torture upon anyone who doesn't show the utmost love and respect for Big Brother.  It reminds one of the Third Reich and how those who didn't show sufficient dedication to the Führer were imprisoned, systematically reprogrammed (tortured) or executed.

For the most part -- though someone like Bradley Manning might argue otherwise -- we aren't that far down this road, but we certainly are laying the bricks today to get there.  

On Wednesday, in the US House of Representatives, a vote was taken to prohibit the NSA from collecting metadata from millions of Americans without probable cause and for specific investigation.  Former constitutional scholar [President] Barack Obama implored representatives to turn a blind eye to the US Bill of Rights and to vote the measure down.  Big Brother should not be constrained!

He got his wish!  Though the vote was very close, he twisted enough arms to insure that the measure was defeated.  Now, with the blessing of the majority in the House of Representatives, his administration can get back to the job of unfettered spying on everyone.

Just like in Oceania, the President has made it crystal clear that he doesn't trust the people he serves.  Utilizing the strategy of fear of nebulous bogeymen, we are being told that our constitutional rights must be thrown to the side of the road in order to protect them!  We must give up our rights of privacy in order to have them!

Talk about doublespeak!!

Here is how Glenn Greenwald -- referring to Orwell -- summarized the Obama administration's vehement opposition to the measure shortly before the vote was taken.

Using Orwellian language so extreme as to be darkly hilarious, this was the first line of the White House's statement opposing the amendment: "In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens" (i.e.: we welcome the debate that has been exclusively enabled by that vile traitor, the same debate we've spent years trying to prevent with rampant abuse of our secrecy powers that has kept even the most basic facts about our spying activities concealed from the American people).

The White House then condemned Amash/Conyers this way: "This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process." What a multi-level masterpiece of Orwellian political deceit that sentence is. The highly surgical Amash/Conyers amendment - which would eliminate a single, specific NSA program of indiscriminate domestic spying - is a "blunt approach", but the Obama NSA's bulk, indiscriminate collection of all Americans' telephone records is not a "blunt approach". Even worse: Amash/Conyers - a House bill debated in public and then voted on in public - is not an "open or deliberative process", as opposed to the Obama administration's secret spying activities and the secret court that blesses its secret interpretations of law, which is "open and deliberative". That anyone can write a statement like the one that came from the Obama White House without dying of shame, or giggles, is impressive.

And so, just like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, almost ALL of our communications are being collected, scrutinized, analyzed and stored in giant databases.  What will be done with all this massive data?  Only Big Brother knows!