Propoganda: Today and in George Orwell's 1984

AP English 12
Thought Control Essay:
We live in a world that George Orwell predicted in "1984." And that realization has caused sales of the 1949, dystopian novel to spike dramatically upward recently - a 9,000% increase at one point on Amazon.com. Comparisons between Orwell's novel about a tightly controlled totalitarian future ruled by the ubiquitous Big Brother and today are, in fact, quite apt. Here are a few of the most obvious ones. Tele-Screens, in the novel, nearly all public and private places have large TV screens that broadcast government propaganda, news and approved entertainment. But they are also two-way monitors that spy on citizens' private lives. Today websites like Facebook track our likes and dislikes, and governments and private individuals hack into our computers and find out what they want to know. Then there are the ever-present surveillance cameras that spy on the average person as they go about their daily routine. This causes people to change their behavior and mannerisms for fear of being made a suspect. The Endless War, in Orwell's book, there's a global war that has been going on seemingly forever, and as the book's hero, Winston Smith, realizes, the enemy keeps changing. One week they’re at war with Eastasia and buddies with Eurasia. The next week, it's just the opposite. There seems little to distinguish the two adversaries, and they are used primarily to keep the populace of Oceania, where Smith lives, in a constant state of fear, thereby making dissent unthinkable - or punishable. Today there is the so-called war on terror, with no end in sight, a generalized societal fear, suspension of certain civil liberties, and an ill-defined enemy who could be anywhere, and anything. This Concept of an endless war causes people to become irrational and therefore make ill-informed decisions. Newspeak, the fictional, stripped down English language, used to limit free thought. With examples in the modern age such as OMG (oh my god), RU (are you) serious, TTYL (talk to you later), and LOL (laugh out loud) Newspeak may be closer than we think. Memory hole, this is the machine used in the book to alter or disappear incriminating or embarrassing documents. Paper shredders had been invented, but were hardly used when Orwell wrote his book, and the concept of wiping out a hard drive was years in the future, but the memory hole foretold both technologies. The Anti-Sex League, this was an organization set up to take the pleasure out of sex, and to make sure that it was a mechanical function used for procreation only. Organizations that promote abstinence-only sex education, or want to ban artificial birth control, are the modern versions of this.
So what did this all mean? In 1984, Winston Smith, after an intense round of "behavior modification" (torture) learns to love Big Brother, and the harsh world he was born into. Jump forward to today, and it seems we've willingly given up all sorts of freedoms, and much of our right to privacy. Fears of terrorism have a lot to do with this, but dizzying advances in technology, and the ubiquity of social media, play a big part. There are those who say that if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of. But the fact is, when a government agency can monitor everyone's phone calls, we have all become suspects. This is one of the most frightening aspects of our modern society. The even more frightening thing is the fact that we have gone so far down the road, that there is probably no turning back. Unless you spend your life in a wilderness cabin, totally off the grid, there is simply no way the government won't have information about you stored away somewhere. What this means, unfortunately, is that we are all Winston Smith and Big Brother is the modern surveillance state.