Are We Living in George Orwell's 1984?

This past week we celebrated All Saints Day, followed by All Souls day, acknowledging the saints who have gone before us and praying for the souls of our departed friends and family.  The readings for these wonderful feast days remind us that dying is not the end of our existence and that those who have died are more fortunate than us because they are enjoying eternal life in the presence of God. 

“The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace.”  (Wis 3:1-3)

While the faithfully departed enjoy the Beatific Vision, we continue the struggle to practice our faith and discern the truth.  We take religious freedom for granted in America, but increasingly, Christians are being marginalized, penalized, and even prosecuted for living our faith in the public realm.  Our president makes reference to the “freedom to worship,” but he and his administration insist that we may not assert our belief in the course earning our living.   It is as if we are expected to check our religious beliefs at the door, before entering the workplace.  There are now over 200 lawsuits filed by organizations and corporations who object to the HHS mandate, and not all of them are religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor who will face millions of dollars in fines next year for operating their 50 nursing homes in the USA.  They do not qualify for a religious exemption because they do not care exclusively for Catholics, nor do they require all their employees to be Catholic.  ­There are 30 private, for-profit, employers who believe that abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization are intrinsically evil, and they refuse to pay for it in their health plans.

How did we get to the point that our government is forcing compliance with rules that violate the moral convictions of so many Christians?  I believe it is because we have gradually descended into a situation very similar to what George Orwell described in his dystopian novel, 1984.  In this literary classic, the government controls what people think by using newspeak, a method of controlling thought through language.  The form of government in the novel is English Socialism (Ingsoc in newspeak) and they maintain power by altering everyday thought through language.  The party in control of government persecutes independent thinking as thoughtcrimes, and justifies their actions in the name of supposed greater good.  They employ a tactic called doublethink to brainwash people into believing almost anything.  Here’s how Orwell describes doublethink:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again…”

What makes me think we’re living this Orwellian nightmare?  Consider the fact that prominent politicians claim to be faithful Catholics, but at the same time support abortion, not only by advocating for it, but funding it with ever more tax dollars.  Our president repeatedly campaigned for Obamacare with the twofold promise that, “everyone who likes his health insurance can keep it,” and “the average family will save $2500 a year on the cost of their health insurance.”  He promised over and over again that there would be no federal funding of abortions (even signing an Executive Order to this effect) and that the new law would include a strong conscious clause so that no one would be forced to violate their religious convictions.   Now we know for certain that all of these promises were boldfaced lies.  The new law made millions of health insurance policies illegal, forcing people to adopt new policies with almost unlimited coverage and much higher costs.  Millions of people are now losing their health insurance and are forced to replace it with much more expensive coverage.  Health insurance costs were bound to increase substantially when the new restrictions on underwriting and the new unlimited coverage took effect.  If this isn’t doublethink, what is it?  By Orwell’s definition, was the president “conscious of the truth but telling carefully constructed lies?”  Will he now, “forget whatever is necessary to forget…?”  Will the American public do the same?

The president and his minions want to convince us all that this doublethink is in the best interest of our society.   This process doesn’t just apply to the new health care law.  Over the weekend the president went on the air with a new assault of doublethink.  He asserted that our economy is strong and vibrant, claiming that he’s “cut the deficit,” when in fact all he’s done is slow down the growth of the deficit.  He also said we’ve created over 7 million new jobs in the past 5 years, when in fact the worker participation rate has never been lower, and 65% of the new jobs created in the past several years have been part time.   Our economy is capable of creating twice that number of full-time jobs, and did exactly that during the Reagan recovery.  We are told that buying up $85 billion of our own bonds each month (effectively printing money), is good for the economy.  Anyone with any common sense knows that when this artificial puffing up of the economy comes to its inevitable end, there’s going to be economic chaos, not to mention the mountain of debt our children and grandchildren will inherit.  Never the less, the public seem to have bought in, because the stock market is at all- time highs, despite the terrible economic fundamentals that show no signs of improving. 

Things will undoubtedly get even worse as the full effects of Obamacare kick in.  Employers are cutting people back to part-time to avoid health insurance expenses and penalties.  Despite the 20,000+ pages of new regulations that have already been printed regarding Obamacare, we still don’t know all the consequences.  One of the more nefarious side effects is yet another assault on marriage.   The new law provides for income-based subsidies for low income people purchasing their health insurance from of the new State Exchanges (if they ever get the website working).   In a real life case, a couple in Michigan lost their health insurance because their employers had to drop their coverage which was no longer compliant, and could not afford the new, more expensive policy.   They are a married couple whose combined income is $60,000 but they DO NOT qualify for a subsidy. When the couple went to the Michigan Exchange, they were shocked to learn that even if they purchase a “bronze” policy with a $6000 deductible (for each person), their monthly premium would be $1000.   However, if that same couple were to divorce and live together, each earning $30,000 a year, they could each purchase a policy with a $1500 deductible and pay only $150 each per month, using the federal subsidy to offset the rest of the cost.

Lest I end on a sour note, let’s return to the first reading from All Souls Day, and pray for the ability to discern Truth while reminding ourselves that all this is temporary, and our ultimate destination is heaven:

“Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love:
because grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect.”  (Wisdom 3:9)