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miércoles, 1 de febrero de 2017

Apocalyptic Orwellian Trump-ets

…the original facts and dates
no longer had the smallest significance.
George Orwell, 1984.


The megalomaniac and mega-anomalous, stubborn narcissist, shameless myth maniac, humbug, lout, rude and uncivil, crude, vulgar, rascal, crass, arrogant, grotesque and ridiculous, sexist, homophobic, racist, classist, chauvinist, retrograde and prejudiced, cheater, authoritarian and vile character that is today the President of the United States of America, Mr. Trump-ets, along with his gang of minions, leading by his advisor Kellyanne Conway the mainstream witch and followed by Sean Spicer, his annoying press secretary, this gang has managed to turn the mood in the media completely horrifying. 

For example, in his first meeting with the ladies and gentleman from the CIA, Donald (apocalyptic) Trump-ets presumptuously claimed: “I have a running a war with the media”. A couple of days later, in an interview with Chuck Todd from the NBV network, the Conway harpy underestimated the outrageous lies, that Sean Two-sizes-larger Spicer had said just the day before, as she reveled the trademark of her team’s scams: “Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. What it-you’re saying it’s a falsehood… Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that”.

And to wrap up, the very same Sean Spicer clarified that he never really meant to lie when he said that “Trump’s presidential inauguration had the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period” its just that “Sometimes we can disagree with facts”.
These three miscreants were enough to give the mediaphere an orwellian vibe, that lead us to a familiar sensation, a literary collective déjà vu.  Woah! Haven’t we seen this before? Or read this before?

1984, the novel by George Orwell (1903-1950), written nearly seventy years ago, has emerged from oblivion as a bestseller in the USA and in many European countries. Even though the book never mentions the phrase alternative facts it is very similar to the orwellian concept doublethink, “the power of maintaining two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both of them”.

Since November 8th, the tragic day of the 2016 elections, more than 47,000 copies of the novel have been sold, last year in the same amount of time only 11,000 were sold, so Penguin Books decided to print 75,000 more copies of this dystopic British novel. On Friday night, 1984 was leading the ranking of the Amazon bestsellers: the Signet Classics (Penguin) in first place, and in 4th place the Brawley Press edition.

At the ending of the novel, the wicked character O’Brien reveals the future to the novel’s main character, Winston Smith: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-for ever”. The Canadian poet Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) was most likely inspired by this quote when he wrote the lyrics to his son The Future: “Give me back the Berlin wall / give me Stalin and St Paul / I’ve seen the future, brother: / it is murder”. 

Just on Friday, Nikki Haley, the new USA ambassador to United Nations had her first press conference, accredited by the he most important international organ of the world, and it was then when she showed her true colors: “We have to support our allies and make sure our allies support us. For those that don't have our back, we're taking names, we will make points to respond to that accordingly”. How about that? This tough and threatening statement confirms most of the adjectives I used to describe Trump —whose last name was originally Drumpf, since his grandfather   immigrated from Germany in 1885 and did not become an American citizen until 1892, he was actually called Frederick Drumpf, but changed the phonetics of his last name to avoid the German-phobia that Americans had at the beginning of the century—.  

However, it’s also important to mention that when Trump-Drumpf gave Nikki Haley her job , he placed not only a woman at the UN, but a woman who was the daughter of immigrants: Mrs. Haley, who was governor of South Carolina, is actually named Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley and is the daughter of Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa, immigrats who arrived to the United States from India in 1969. So Mr. Trump? Make up your mind.

The orwellian apocalyptic Trump-ets that have been buzzing mostly on Twitter have had a huge impact in the media. Why? In large part for the very same reason why the bastard managed to get so much free coverage during his campaign: because he is an entertaining clown, because he leaves us wondering how far can he go?, what irreverence will he say now?. Trump really is a amusing character (and he might still be a human being after all) that offers a collection/variety of “alternative facts”. His rise in a bored society is thanks to his high rating not to his ideology.

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