I'm pretty sure I was in junior high school when we read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I have a confession to make: I was not a big reader as a kid. In hindsight, it was mostly due to the material we were assigned, because I would read the book if the story was interesting. Nineteen Eighty-Four was one of the first novels I remember really getting into. It was my introduction to dystopian fiction.

I watched the film adaptation recently, and today I'd call it a horror film.

Before I go on, there are spoilers ahead. If you've never read Nineteen Eighty-Four or seen the movie, maybe stop reading this and go watch it. And no judgment from me if you've never read it. Given the state of things today, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the book is no longer required reading as it was in the '70s and '80s, when I was growing up.

The Ministry of Truth

That introduction to doublespeak is the hook. Winston, the protagonist played by John Hurt, works in Backnumbers, a department at a government agency responsible for retroactively changing news and statistics to present the current state of affairs as normal—nothing to see here. All records of the former truth are burned in the memory hole.

As I watched this opening scene, I began to think of how Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn't like a correction she made that reflects the true and dismal state of the current job market. Why? Because if the job market is bad, we might start asking questions like: could it be the president's economic policy? Or what is the government doing to improve the situation? It seems like they've purposely tanked the economy.

In Orwell's world under the control of the all-seeing Big Brother, exercise is compulsory. And yet everyone seems sickly. John Hurt coughs through the entire film. The people are eating gruel. The juxtaposition of a sickly people who are forced to exercise every day while being denigrated in the process reminds me of Pete Hegseth playing Defense Secretary and RFK Jr. as the head of Health and Human Services. It's a contradiction that could be funny if the joke wasn't on us. Have you seen that Frontline episode about RFK Jr.? What I saw was a junkie who is deluded enough to think he's qualified for his job. God help us if there's another pandemic. And don't get me started on Hegseth. When I look at that dude, what I see is such a goofy loser. A cartoon.

The Destruction of Words

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words," says a character in the cafeteria—not only is the food shit, the workers seem to eat every meal together in a dirty cafeteria. This destroyer of words loves his job as the guy who eliminates words from the dictionary. It makes me think of how the words diversity, equity, and inclusion are being scrubbed from every website, grant application, scientific inquiry, corporate mission statement, and educational institution curriculum. This is being done so that we forget diversity, equity, and inclusion are good for business and result in a more level playing field. These things matter. Everyone doesn't have the same experiences, opportunities, access, or ability, and because of that, all things are not equal. Erasing the idea that these things matter allows systems to be perpetuated and created with reckless abandon without regard to the lives of actual people.

The characters in this movie are bureaucrats. I don't think I realized the significance of this when I experienced the novel as a kid. They're the equivalent of the DOGE boys. They are like the people recruited from that Heritage Foundation database. They're the ones carrying out the orders. It takes everyday people carrying out orders to keep a fascist dictatorship going.

The people who work for the regime in the film are true believers who align themselves in proximity to Big Brother. They see themselves as above and apart from their fellow citizens. "The proles? They're animals," one character says as he slurps up his gruel. As long as he's got someone to look down on, he's eating that shit and he's happy about it. That's how MAGA looks right now.

Confessions and Character Assassinations

Under Big Brother, there are constant public confessions of crimes and executions. They are constant throughout the film, and the confessions include all manner of things like giving the country's enemies war plans to having sex with a prostitute, contracting syphilis, and purposely spreading it. So there is disease in society. It isn't being addressed. The regime is blaming it on dissenters who are making the confessions. The regime has made mistakes in war, and this is also blamed on the confessors. Basically, these people are blamed for all the failures of the regime.

Damn if that doesn't sound familiar. Trump blames everyone else for the problems he has failed to resolve, but the public confessions remind me of something else Trump is doing: trying his best to assassinate the character of his opponents because he himself is of low moral character. He is bringing bogus charges against Fani Willis, Adam Schiff, Letitia James, John Bolton, Miles Taylor, Alexander Vindman. I'm sure there are others I've forgotten. There are so many at this point. He seems to be trying to put some shit on John Brennan and President Obama too now. It's abuse of power and it is corrupt.

Sexual Frustration as Control

In this Orwellian world, sex is discouraged. I can't help but draw some parallels between this part of the storyline and the currently incel-infiltrated, toxic male energy the current regime is spewing all over the place. Sexual frustration and war between the sexes is meant to keep people from forming real love bonds. Do the self-proclaimed incels not understand that being lonely makes you easy to manipulate? It's why those romance scams work so well. I wish everyone would find somebody real to love. But folks should find themselves first. Or at least try to find yourself and learn your own triggers and default behavior. When you know yourself, you're much harder to manipulate.

The Bloodthirsty Children

The children in this movie are bloodthirsty. They exhibit a gleeful meanness, and the adults seem afraid of them. I'm sorry to say but it makes me think of all the mass shooters, the leaked group chats full of bigotry, the videos of white kids trying to throw a Black kid into a meat grinder, a lynching on a college campus. Where does that bloodthirstiness come from? In the film, the kids are being fed a diet of blood, violence, and dehumanizing language. The group chats call for violence and use dehumanizing language. I think we should be taking that more seriously. It's wild to me that it isn't more of a conversation. Dehumanizing language has become so normalized.

But back to the film—it hit me that this is a horror movie when the kids were singing that propaganda song on the train. A generation has been hijacked. And they don't give a shit about mom and dad.

Annihilation in the Past, Present, and Future

In a later scene, a character named O'Brien is monologuing while torturing Winston. O'Brien says, "We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us. As long as he resists us, we never destroy him. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. We make his brain perfect before we blow it out. And then, when there is nothing left but sorrow and love for Big Brother, we shall lift you clean out of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you. Not a name in a register. Not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future."

Listen, I think the current regime is genocidal in the end. I am under no illusion of who the targets will be. The AI slop coupled with the attempted erasure of our history leads me to believe this regime wants to annihilate us in the past, present, and future. I take this seriously.

I know it's dark to think this way, but look at what they're doing. These digital tools remove control of our image and put it in the hands of anyone who can figure out how to use Sora or similar AI tools. I'm seeing people's Blackness being questioned. I'm seeing people who have worked to secure our rights or speak up about injustices against us now being called anti-Black. The ops keep doing it because it works. When someone is not trusted by the community, they are out of the community. And the ops know how deeply that could hurt a person's sense of self. They are trying to undermine our sense of self. It's taking something you love and destroying your connection to it. It's psychological warfare. So while the regime works to unite white people under the banner of white supremacy, they also work to divide the Black community and Black diaspora.

War Is Peace

Winston is given a book called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism and reads a passage to his honeypot, Julia. It's Goldstein's book—Goldstein is the boogeyman that everyone in society is indoctrinated to hate. The book says, "In accordance with the principles of doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact."

The war issue makes me think about the bombs they're dropping on boats in the Caribbean in the name of the war on drugs. It also makes me think of the bombs they're dropping on Nigeria in the name of protecting Christians. But the keeping society in poverty—well, that makes me think of this regime's economic policies and the culture war the white supremacists are waging on everyone else.

Everyone is Being Watched

If you know nothing else about Nineteen Eighty-Four, you know the phrase "Big Brother is Watching". Hell, if we haven't set our society up this way. Algos, those questions and ideas you're feeding into LLMs, tracking cookies, that phone in your pocket with all the apps, your Smart TV, that ring that tracks your health and fitness and tells you when to drink water and stand up. Big tech is watching. And haven't we built ourselves a mighty fine trap where the malevolant technocrats have all the power now because they have our data. They know where we are, how much money we have in the bank, if we're ovulating or pregnant, who we are hanging around with, and on and on. There aren't any rules on how they use this data and in fact, data from private companies whose apps we use is being shared with government agencies and they're using it to create a centralized government database. I'm old enough to remember when an idea like that was anti-American.

If we don't break up the tech surveillance state, we'll never be free of fascism in America.

But if you think you've got it bad, try working for Hegseth. He is so hated, his ego so fragile, his sense of security so perilous, dude is giving the staff polygraphs. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the actions of the buearuacrats are clocked hard. And so it is in real life, it seems.

Two Plus Two Equals Five

The movie does not end well for Winston or the people of Oceania. They are still under a dictatorship, and things look pretty bleak. By the time the end credits rolled, I was asking myself why I watched this movie. It did not put me in a better mood. We are living through a real-life version of the broad strokes of Nineteen Eighty-Four right now, and I have no idea what I can do about it.

On election day, I woke up with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach but tried to remain upbeat. I even gave a freelance client an extra year on some designs she was licensing. She wrote back to thank me and said she hoped the election turned out okay. Immediately, the first chords to "2+2=5" from Radiohead's Hail to the Thief started playing in my head. I played the song, and it felt like a warning or a prophecy coming to fruition. I felt the dread I'd been avoiding since July. I'd avoided the dread by working really hard on my business. I'd worked to raise some money for the Harris campaign by designing a silk scarf. I'd talked about the election on my platforms. I avoided anyone who talked of a possible Trump win. But it all came crashing into dread with that note of hope that was dripping in doubt.

While Winston is being tortured, this is what I'm thinking about. It's the scene where Winston is tortured into wanting to believe 2+2=5.

"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, you can picture a boot stamping on a face forever," O'Brien says. I think we can add the vision of a giant, drooling oligarch holding a person upside down by the heel and shaking them down for every cent.

Speaking of torture, the regime is torturing people who have migrated to this country, in concentration camps on American soil and also outsourcing torture in countries like Venezuela. People have died.

What We Can Do

This isn't about political parties. It's about political power. The power has never really been in the hands of the people. It has always been in the hands of the wealthy. Sure, one party may have thrown the people a bone every now and then, but I'm tired of incremental progress. If Trump can wreck norms in the direction of lining his pockets, I want norms disrupted in a way that takes care of people so we can thrive.

The good news is in 2025, I can google "how to fight oligarchy" and I will be served a podcast episode with someone talking about that very topic. And I might not agree with all of Jeffrey Winters' solutions, but I do agree that a good beginning is to talk about how to fight oligarchy.

In 2025, we at least know the motivations of our oligarchs and the current fascist administration. For some, it's just money. For others, it's racism. For both groups, they want the odds to be forever in their favor.

I have no idea how to overcome the racists. I think they're always going to be with us. Some people are small-minded and won't change because they don't want to. We can divest from the oligarchs' businesses as much as we can, but it is really hard to do. They have tentacles in everything. But we should be making plans to break their companies up if we ever get power back from corporations. The people have never really had any power.

We should be making plans for what we'd like to see. I'd like one-person-one-vote and no electoral college. I think people who make less than $50K a year shouldn't pay income taxes at all. I think we should tax the rich. Make your money, but pay your taxes because shit ain't trickling down. It never has.

One of the things we can do is to keep talking about the enormous wealth gap and inequality and imagine ways to fix it. We should have free healthcare in this country. Nobody should be homeless in this country. People should be able to afford to feed their families after working an honest job. People should have equal access to opportunity. We have been fed lies about the best-qualified people getting jobs, but we know that isn't true and it never has been. I'd like a say in who has access to my data and what it can be used for. Our water and air should be clean. We should have fast and reliable public transportation, and it should be affordable, safe, and clean. More places in America should have public transportation because transportation equals access to opportunity. College shouldn't put you in debt for 10-20 years, and people should have equal access to quality education that tells the truth and equips people with skills, not just to go and work for someone but to work for themselves. We need to stop raising a nation of workers and raise more inventors, artists, and thinkers because that's how we innovate. The good and the bad of this country should be taught, and we should all be working on ways to make this place better for everybody. People should get the day off to vote early or on election day. And haven't we had enough mass shootings? Are we finally ready to protect kids at school or even ourselves out running errannds?

Black people deserve reparations. And I want Black people across the diaspora to build with us Black Americans. We can be trading resources of all kinds with each other—information, history, traditions, stories, and knowledge. We should be connecting because we've been fed lies about each other. I'd love to see some organized and organic cultural exchanges happening. Links in a chain. Pieces of stories. Squares in a patchwork quilt. Fractured diamonds coming together to form the crown jewels.

This is just a start. There's a whisper in my ear. It says, "Dream bigger."

Whatever happens next, my wish is that the country never finds itself with a dictator in charge again with so many helping hands to do his bidding. I don't know what 2026 has in store for me but my intention is to remain an informed witness to what is happening. But I also understand that the fascists love to steal joy. I will continue to do my work and find ways to bring some delight into my days, to rest, and to connect with people in real life. Stay close to the ones you love. It is a way to fight.

May 2026 find us all evolving into our higher selves.