It’s been hard to know how to speak. We are being surveilled, 1984-like; social media is the only place we get our news, and, unmediated, that contains its own risks and falsehoods. Our governments are voids, violence rules supreme, we are watching with our own eyes the worst horrors imaginable (if we dare look at social media, the only place it is reported.)
And because not all of us are looking, and the ‘mainstream’ media— gagged and run by those only interested in purporting that everything is fine (sport is going ahead and look - a cat!)— is, obscenely, not reporting it, those of us watching what has been happening for nine months - not only the violence but the protesting, uprising, smears and gags and unlawfulness, feel, and are made to feel, insane.
It’s hard to write about, or ‘post’ about, the feeling is not having the ability to articulate something so complicated, we don’t ‘understand’, ‘know enough’, we should shut up and look at cats. And if we want to speak up, we pay for it, so we’d better be clear what we’re saying. Democracy, and fairness, and basic human rights feel like things of the past, it’s doublethink and newspeak and WAR IS PEACE and FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH and big brother is always watching.
I remember back last year, I think it was around December, having a conversation with Matt. He was taking it all slightly better than me, or hiding his unsettlement better. He told me about this quote, back around the Iraq war, by Karl Rove. Or Ham Rove, as I knew him, from Stephen Colbert.
Ham Rove:
"People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
The floor swam beneath my feet. I was still living in the 'reality-based community', while the rest of the world had moved on. Even Matt, who I’d been living with all this time, knew justice and truth were long gone.
'I don't think I'm ready to accept this new dystopian reality!' I said, wiping my eyes. 'I’m not ready for 1984!'
It seemed M had been living there a long time. I asked when he had moved there, and why hadn't I noticed, and was it weird to be living with someone still in a different reality, and he said it started for him as a child, when at school he was blamed for things he was the victim for, and got a clear picture of the puppets pulling the strings. He stopped seeing fairness as given, that ‘reality’ only existed for certain people.
It’s not that he thinks it’s right, or doesn’t fight back or stand up. He is just not as surprised that we have arrived here.
‘Peace’.