Not long ago I finished reading George Orwell’s two classics, Animal Farm and 1984, for the first time. I knew their basic plots but had never read them for myself. I’d like to get a discussion going about 1984 because that, in my opinion, was the more powerful of the two.
This was the first novel where I actually felt something. That was a very strange phenomena for me because it was wholly unexpected. I could feel Winston’s angst and frustration and it actually made me feel uneasy at times, I could actually imagine witnessing the narrative.
Totally unexpected by me was the ending: Nothing changed, there was no resolution — no victory.
I am going to leave this short and vague in hopes that it will encourage a dialogue. So what were your thoughts and feelings?
Sifting Reality 
I think the book struck a chord with you because we are living under a radical leftwing president that embraces statism, or at least a form of it.
But I can see certain issues coming from the extreme right, as well. The Patriot Act of 2001 – overwhelmingly supported by Republicans – is very scary. Look at United States v. Antoine Jones. This is a fella who was convicted of a drug-trafficking charge solely because police attached a GPS tracking unit to his vehicle without a warrant. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and his conviction was overturned because the Court said that the warrantless monitoring of suspects made possible by legislation like the Patriot Act directly puts “the suspects’ Constitutional rights in jeopardy.”
Of course the Patriot Act has given law -enforcement the tools to prevent terrorist attacks, but at what cost? We shouldn’t sacrifice our freedom. If government wants to listen to Habob Hajeeb’s cellular conversation, they can get a warrant. Period. This warrantless wiretape and tracking nonsense must stop.
But regardless, I definitely worry more about the left than the right. The right generally wants government the hell out of people’s business, but the left wants to get all up in it. Look at New York City and that fascist Bloomberg.
It is the only book I didn’t finish because it was very suffocating.
Unexpected ending? It isn’t. I made a pair of predictions and I a friend who finished the book confirmed them.
It is suffocating because we can found multiple paralelisms in reality, such as the euphemism of Patriot Act.
Any law can be abused. Why not the Patriot Act? Does abuse render the law itself inappropriate or Constitutionally unsound? I don’t think so.
I don’t think the Patriot Act was abused. That’s the difference.