P A G E 13
N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , JAN/FEBRUARY 2004
CRONIN
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ORWELL REDUX & REVISED
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BY MICHAEL McCUSKER
“The capacity o f the human mind fo r swallowing
nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive
action has never yet been plum bed.”
-ROBERTA HEINLEIN
“If you want a picture o f the future, imagine a boot
stamping a human face — forever."
-GEORGE ORWELL
GOD IS WATCHING YOUI
The apparition appeared suddenly in front of Winston
Smith at his computer in the Ministry of Truth. As often as he
had been confronted with the specter, he cringed inwardly as
the brief flash of light disappeared. Holographic bursts appeared
everywhere in the city like dust devils at any time day or night,
inside or outside, office or home. Each time a sudden swirl of
bright silver and gold lights from which boomed a sepulchral
voice warning of eternal celestial surveillance.
Everyone in Evangelica, which was shorthand for the
Holy Evangelical Empire, was watched all of the time, or at
least thought they were, which was much the same thing.
Every personal computer was hooked to an empirical web that
was capable of monitoring everyone without human observation.
Television was the main spy, however. More to the point, the
masses who were terrified of the Grand Inquisitor’s thought
police were pacified by media control. The omnipresent screen
looked back at its viewers who maintained perpetually pious
expressions lest they be suspected of mental impurity or heresy.
Winston Smith lived in a world in the ever recurring
present. The past was evil; the future belonged to God. Life
was immediately now, everlasting, occupied in service to God’s
Holy Order, the high priests who ruled Evangelica. There were
contradictions of course, corporeal aging for one, but only a very
few were close enough to the heart of the Order’s administration
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to realize it and at that point doublethink was a necessary reflex,
the mental agility to make oneself believe that the most blatant
lie was not only absolute truth but had always been true Double
think averted heresy and subsequent liquidation.
Winston was an auxiliary member of the priestly Holy
Order that ruled, a lay functionary equivalent to a Catholic altar
boy. The Ministry of Truth in which he held a minor post control
led every bit of information disseminated within Evangelica and
was responsible for external propaganda as well. (The use of the
word ministry was itself recaptured from its former bureaucratic
misuse and reapplied for the same purpose.)There were millions
like Winston, antlike creatures who carried out the will of the
Order, not allowed to think or feel for themselves, subjects of
an iron theocracy that tolerated no question of its authority or
power.
If Winston had a window in his airless cubicle in the
Ministry of Truth he would have seen the large city massed
below, dilapidated hovels that surrounded for miles around
each of the four huge ministries of Evangelica as were the
gothic cathedrals in medieval times. (The other three ministries
were Peace, Love and Joy, successively headquarters for the
military, thought police — the God Squad — and social adminis
tration.) The streets swarmed, with police particularly evident,
though as usual priestly limos carried important clerics about
their sacred duties. Buried deeply within the giant cathedral of
the Ministry of Truth, Winston was shielded during working hours
from the incessant shrieks of sirens as the Grand Inquisitor’s
God Squads swept down upon heretics, blasphemers and
traitors, raided homes and suspected meeting places of
outlawed sects.
Winston's pious drudgery was interrupted several times
each day by a loud fanfare of trumpets followed by excited
voices shouting from video screens positioned on every wall of
the huge room in which he performed his nugatory duties. The
announcements always proclaimed the hosts of God had smitten
the Axis of Evil a mighty blow Video visions of gleaming
missiles shot from shining white jet bombers filled the screens
The evil strongholds appeared to be nondescript shanties from
which erupted fleeing darkskinned persons, many of whom fell
or were vaporized in explosions. (Winston's nagging uncertainty
was that these might actually be indigenous minorities ghetto
ized and obliterated.) Following that triumphant declaration of
vanquishing evil once again, a voice might say the wine ration
at daily compulsory worship services, the only sanctioned
alcohol use, would be cut by a third simultaneous with requisite
higher surcharges for its consumption from employee wages
A tremendous hossana of trumpets and voices would end the
newsflash Winston knew that by the next day the media would
proclaim that wine rationing had actually been increased without
mentioning the higher tax He might himself be given the assign
ment to revise the numbers
Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth was to slightly alter
selected portions of Holy Scripture, in particular to ensure past
prophecies be brought into line with contemporary reality, itself
subject to perception and change His job was reality control At
all times the Order was to be perceived as the rock of absolute
truth and clearly the absolute could never be incompatible with
the present truth. The concept of divinely inspired gospel had
been altered to fit evangolitical needs, which made it critical to
proffer each scriptural revision as though it were truth evermore
until replaced by another temporarily operable truth The real
unchanging truth adhered to as gospel by the reigning theocrats
was that whoever controls the past dominates the future, and
control of the present necessarily manipulates the past
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Knowledge of history was confined to what appears
in the Bible, though it had been so tampered with Winston was
unaware both of its original gospels and that they had been
altered despite the fact he made a dozen or more small changes
every day.
History was portrayed as perpetual religious war
between good and evil, waged against the Great Satans or
Pagans who occupied the other two-thirds of Earth. Everything
since the Crucifixion was rendered into ecclesiastical dogma.
History thus made sacred was also made to conform to the
current iron rule of the High Priests. An example of this was
that the Old Testament was revised to not only justify the emer
gence of the ruling theocracy but to purge it of any connection
to Judaism. Jews were instead reviled as a Satanic cult that
murdered Jesus, son of God, affixing his sacred body to a
cross like a common criminal. Latter day Jews continued to
be persecuted for the ancient murder and for the fact that
complete extermination had never yet been successful. Though
any reference to the Holocaust of the Second World War of
the 20th century had long been erased — following a period of
denial — Adolf Hitler’s idea of a final Jewish solution had been
resurrected. Success was limited because Jews not caught in
the first pogroms went underground to live disguised lives within
the mainstream while secretly reviving an oral tradition of teach
ing the Torah and Judaic culture.
Terra tres parta est, Winston thought, enlarging upon
Caesar. At least he thought the world was divided into three
parts.The other two parts were referred to as only Great Satans
and Pagans.His part, Evangelica (the Holy Evangelical Empire),
was eternally at war with either or both simultaneously, although
he was never certain as a result of ever changing revisions by
the Ministry of Truth. He manipulated information enough to
have formed a hazy recollection of which antichrist Evangelica
was at war against, and when, but his own part in the processing
CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
N O R TH COAST
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