"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing....We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." -- from the novel "1984" by George Orwell (6/25/1903 - 1/21/1950). It's one of the key passages in the novel, and one of our favorites.
In his landmark work, Orwell imagined a future from what he saw unfolding contemporaneously that would crush freedom and democracy. Today in America, we have a narcissistic demagogue, a mentally disturbed vindictive con man who will stop at nothing to seize power, and who has a devoted cult to aid him with his apocalyptic task. Think of the forced birthers, twisted "evil-angelicals," and their glee at the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Malignant Loser's Supreme Court appointees, or his reliance on "alternative facts," or his latter day Stormtroopers who assaulted the Capitol wearing their Proud Boy and Oath Keeper garb and who pose a domestic terrorist threat going forward. "Power is not a means; it is an end." They are Orwell's imagination come true unless we stop them first.
(photo: Ullstein Bild / Getty)
