George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon | Hacker News Reader

George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon

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While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet, with headphones always in (seashells). We don't need the TV walls, as our cellphone has taken that role, altogether with the hyperactive delivery of such content.

A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results--while that part wasn't really part of Montag's universe, the part that is is that we have given up to the "firemen" on our own freewill, because it fits our narrative or it's our safe space.

Nonetheless, I am very optimistic. I think for all the faults that the internet and mobiles and social networks and globalization has wrought us, the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago. When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle. I still feel that despite many of the shortcomings of the previous few decades and years and months, we can still arrive on net at a better place than we were yesterday.

Another classic anti-utopia becoming relevant today is 'Brave New World' by Huxley. See brilliant comparison with '1984' on comic [1] which summarizes Neil Postman's book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'.

[1]: http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-v...

I can't recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" enough, especially in the light of the most recent election processes the world is witnessing. Neil Postman's thesis is both timely and - unfortunately - eerie.

That's the thing: 1984 is North Korea, while Brave New World is the entire Western world. The latter was always scarier to me because someone will eventually rebel against a dictatorship of fear (it'll happen in NK someday), but no-one will ever defeat a dictatorship of mindless pleasure.

I think the West is both Brave New World (consumer society) and [partially] 1984 (mass surveillance by three-letter agencies).

This is an interesting comic, but I'd like to point out that becoming a society concerned with triviality is nothing new. Just look at the crap they were watching on TV in the 50s and 60s. And even if you go back in time to before TVs, there was plenty of crap that people occupied themselves with. It's just a lot easier now since so many of us no longer have to struggle just to survive every day.

Wishing for the entire population to be highly educated and interested in important matters is, I think, a fool's errand. You're never going to get that from people unless you start culling less-intelligent people, which obviously isn't a good idea for many reasons.

Which begs the question: Is modern's "occupied with crap" better, equal, or worse than the ancient "struggle to survive"?

While in the measurable numbers game, the world certainly has become a better place (less child deaths, more literacy, longer life expectancy etc.), the actual question to ask oneself is if those numbers indeed are good proxies for a "better" world or life.

Is living longer, assisted by mechanical and pharmaceutical products plus surgical procedures, really that great? In general, we now are working more hours then ever before in history, and hence have less time for being creative, having hobbies, or simply to behold one of "Goethe's moments," because we always are in a hurry. Are we really happier, and even if we were, is that maybe only due to every second adult over 40 or 50 using anti-depressants?

Actually measuring if we are indeed living in a "better world" or a "better life" is very hard to do objectively with the parameters we have, and I honestly doubt it is possible. In the end, I believe the answer probably is: In many cases, it depends more on what you make of the time you were given than in which year you were born.

I really don't think there's any way to easily answer this. So much depends on the particular person (and who you're comparing them to) and their particular circumstances, plus your own perspective and your own values which are subjective.

I do think you have factual errors here though. We are not "working more hours than ever before in history". That is blatantly wrong. Go back 100 years and look at what lower-class people put up with: there was no such thing as a "weekend" or a 40-hour work week; those are relatively new inventions. Factory workers in America in the early 20th century had truly horrible lives and working conditions, including horribly long hours (not to mention child labor). We have more free time now than ever, in general (unless you're comparing to some privileged rich person in the past), though it's probably not changed that much over the last 50 years since we standardized on 40-hour work weeks. There's definitely pockets of society that aren't doing that great, working 2 jobs, etc., but that's not unusual; there's always been people on the fringe like that. I really think you're comparing modern life to some kind of rose-tinted and false romantic vision of the past as portrayed in fiction.

Are we happier? Who knows. I think that for much of the population, there wasn't much time to worry about that in the past 100+ years ago, nor did they live all that long due to disease and poor health. Now we have more freedom to contemplate these things.

This doesn't mean we couldn't use more free time, plus a way of freeing ourselves from financial strain which I do believe causes a lot of that antidepressant use. How much of our activities are shaped by financial pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" (or to stay in "nice" neighborhoods)?

Indeed. In addition to your points, Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state). The government even associates itself with socialism.

That being said, it's not a stretch to imagine that it takes two successive and opposed politicians to set up and orwellian state. Trump would set up the surveillance state (as he threatens to do), and some future authoritative Democrat could outlaw freedom of speech.

Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state).

No, the surveillance state is certainly not a right-wing-specific thing, and in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi and other Soviet secret police agencies. Just to give you an idea:

  By 1995, some 174,000 inoffizielle Mitarbeiter
  (IMs) Stasi informants had been identified,
  almost 2.5% of East Germany's population between
  the ages of 18 and 60. 10,000 IMs were under 18
  years of age.

The last line is significant, since the book talks on children denouncing their own parents, who live afraid of them.

> in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi

You know when 1984 was written?

Yes; a couple of years after the Stasi was created, though it was called Kommissariat 5 back then, before the GDR was officially established and could have official agencies.

Thanks for the correction, I clearly interpreted it incorrectly.

> Trump would set up the surveillance state

I'm puzzled by this comment.

The US surveillance state was set up prior to Trump.

Is anyone still doubting the complete slurping of everything the TLAs (Three Letter Agencies) can get?

It wouldn't matter who the President was right now, this thing will march on.

Maybe it's convenient we get to lay some of the blame on DJ Trump. That's all.

Yeah, I don't see how anyone could argue that the surveillance state would be Trump's creation. We know that it has existed for a long time and it has only gotten stronger under Obama [1].

[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-tr...

More precisely, he aims to extend the powers of the TLAs to a very worrying degree.

> [1] “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

So it's not blame-laying, he's saying this stuff himself.

[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/trump-and-his-advisors...

At least he's honest.

Any other potential president would have had their hand forced or led the charge too.

>Trump would set up the surveillance state (as he threatens to do)

These kind of comments really underscore how little credibility the anti-Trump crowd has, given the context of the last 8 years.

Kind of a blanket statement. The anti-Trump crowd is rather large.

>A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results...

Seriously? The current state of affairs is nothing compared to the socialist/communist nightmares of the twentieth century. It's not even close.

At least communist states didn't destroy the world through overconsumption.

No, but their environmental record hasn't been great, either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea for one particularly spectacular example.

But they did engage in grand designs (like the Aral water diversion project, and more recently the three gorges dam project) and lax environmental concerns. So it's not clear to me that they were "better" however they were perhaps worse because ideology dictated what they did moreso than some other considerations.

Only because they were too inefficient - they didn't do anything very well beyond controlling the people. And, come to think of it, not even that.

Exactly. People are looking at a ~2 decade window like its a large sample size.

> When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle.

I am reminded of the Martin Luther King quote: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

That was probably a theological opinion, for what it's worth. People forget MLK was a pastor.

I disagree, he was paraphrasing early 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker

Another theologian for sure, but pretty squarely in the context of black rights in the US.

Some of King's best work was putting civil rights in a theological context. That's basically what Letters From A Birmingham Jail was about.

Despite the passive voice, I still think God and Christ were on King's mind when coining that. I'm sure if he were still alive, he'd agree.

He was probably wrong about that. It's more like a pendulum that swings in both directions.

Two other good books that explain the geopolitical history/algorithms:

Propaganda - by Edward Bernays

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html

> THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

> We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Tragedy & Hope - by Carroll Quigley

> The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

The Roger Water's album titled 'Amused to Death' is also a perfect predication of where we've ended up, particularly the title track on the album.

While the album is based off the Postman novel I think Waters deserves a lot of credit for expanding on the theme and conveying the idea in a remarkable piece of work.

Whenever fellow Pink Floyd fans ask me what my favorite Pink Floyd album is I always tell them Amused to Death. I understand it's not technically Pink Floyd but it is Roger Waters at the height of his Jedi Powers and Jeff Beck's performance is amazing.

As a Pink Floyd fan who finds Roger Waters egotistical annexation of the band name obnoxious, I would be annoyed at this response. Roger Waters was not the heart and soul of Pink Floyd, despite his claims, and his solo work has a fundamentally different character (that I do not especially enjoy). By all means recommend his stuff if you enjoy it, but if someone asks you your favorite Floyd album - name a damn Floyd album. It's like naming a Paul McCartney album as your favorite Beatles work (only worse, since Paul never flew off the handle claiming to BE the Beatles) - you're gonna piss people off.

Was just planning on picking up the book. Didn't even know about this album.. listening now! Thanks for sharing.

> the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago

Are you sure? Can you tell me why you think this? Domestic crime has increased. We're bombing seven countries. Civil rights have been diminished. Human rights have been diminished. The last administration went to far greater lengths to go after whistle blowers and journalists than any in history. Income inequality is at all time highs. More than ever struggle to afford a home or to pay off debt (student loans).

The biggest improvements seem to have been isolated to those in technology.

That's sort of backwards. Over the past 30 years, poverty has fallen massively, democracy has spread to more people, child mortality has fallen, literacy and education have risen [1], and rate of war deaths has fallen [2]. Maybe the direct death-and-suffering problems have now mostly been solved and that causes us to look to more intangible problems like human rights, freedom of speech and inequality. It's a common misconception that the world is getting worse but it's actually getting better.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/

Maybe the great lengths they went to against Manning and Snowden were because they released massively more data than anyone in history? People selling secrets to the soviets were dealt with just as harshly despite releasing far less information.

Not all those things are actually getting worse!

Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. Much of the world now allows same-sex marriage, which I think is an important civil rights advancement.

I take your points on war, the crackdown on whistleblowers, income inequality. But on the upside, we have tremendous advances in medicine (is that "just" technology?)

It's a mixed picture, not a universally gloomy one.

Google variations on "graphs to make you feel better about the future".

http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your...

20 years ago in the US was an anomaly. Remember "The Matrix" when Agent Smith said that 1999 was our society's peak? He was right, the movie makers just didn't realize how right they were at the time. Many things have indeed gone downhill since then, thanks to Bush.

For the stuff about war, what you're forgetting is all the stuff that came before: Vietnam, Korea, WWII, various other police actions, Beirut, etc. The 60s and 70s were a particularly turbulent time in recent American history. Do you see the National Guard out, shooting American protesters today? Nope. But they did exactly that in the 60s.

You're factually wrong about many things here. Civil/human rights were much worse in the past; just look at how hard it was for black people before the Civil Rights Act of the late 60s. You think today's incidents of cops shooting unarmed black people in the back is bad? It was a lot worse in the past, people just didn't care and no one had cameras to record it all. Rodney King was the first big instance of this being recorded by a bystander. Someone else mentioned gay marriage; 30+ years ago gay people had to hide in "the closet", many of them marrying heterosexually just to hide themselves. Crime is lower today than in the past, despite what some alarmists would have you believe. Go look up the actual stats. Crime in America has been on a downward trend for decades.

Income inequality is not at an all-time high. It's a lot worse than it should be, I agree, but go back to the Gilded Age and compare. It was worse back then. They didn't even have simple worker protections like 40-hour work weeks and OSHA to keep from getting maimed or killed on the job.

Yes, in many ways (but not all), things are definitely worse for Americans than in 1997, but overall things are a lot better than there were in the past before that. The 90s were simply an exceptional time, especially if you were a white American: the economy was booming, we were in a big lull between military adventures, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War was over, the Internet was becoming a household item (much like electricity or the telephone or the automobile became commonplace decades before, radically changing society). It was a great time to make money, buy a house, not worry about nuclear annihilation, etc. About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia.

I feel that if you honestly believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago this reflects either your youth or privilege more so than any objective truth. I'll just leave this here:

http://thebulletin.org/timeline

If you honestly don't believe the world is unambiguously better now than it was 20-30 years ago, you've been living under a continental plate the entire time. The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk. All the problems that seem so overwhelming now like the threat of nuclear war, growing confrontationalism between and within countries, or extreme nationalism were way worse before the 90s (unless, of course, you honestly believe that the United States is the only nation on the planet and you have a nostalgic predilection for the "good ol' days"). Not to mention that the majority of the world has finally recognized and united around solving the single greatest threat to our civilization, a threat that pretty much irreversibly changed our climate by the time we identified it and became completely unavoidable by the 1990s.

If all you're going to do is provide a link to an arbitrary countdown with scary words like "nuclear" and "catastrophe" as your evidence, might as well skip the sciency sounding fluff and just link one of Nostradamus's books. Until then, I'll fondly remember just how priveleged I was growing up in the Soviet Union and reconstruction-era Russia. /s

I must admit, I'm really confused by how impeachment works in the U.S.. Clinton was impeached for perjury and abuse of power because he took advantage of his position (and a political intern) and then lied about it.

Now we have a president who is not giving up his business interests while in office and who has already told some absolute whoppers, including the release of official press releases that were nothing but "alternative facts". Why tell such obvious falsehoods? We're all laughing (nervously) now because the lies seem to be harmless, self-serving vain ones. However, is Trump just a little insane, or is he actually finding out who is willing to say "We've always been at war with Eurasia" and who isn't?

This is probably a good time for people to be reading 1984.

I really wish people and the media stop over emphasizing about every gaffe and focus on real news stories. For instance, the "alternative facts" comment/incident is being talked about everywhere, from TV news channels to news parody shows to talk shows to social media etc. But, at the same time it seems like there is so much more important news that one would think deserves more attention like the executive orders, withdrawal from TPP, revival of oil pipelines, changes in healthcare spending etc. I even just saw news articles headlining on the guardian now about agencies being banned from sharing information on social media or to reporters and few journalists getting felony charges after covering the protests around the inauguration.

It almost makes me wonder if it would be a good idea if there was a website that covered the latest gaffe and the corresponding actual news worthy story that was lost out on optimal coverage because of it.

Edit: I couldn't find this before but here is an interesting article I read yesterday [0]. It's an opinion piece by Alexey Kovalev. - "I’ve reported on Putin – here are my tips for journalists dealing with Trump".

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/23/report...

In one respect, the gaffe is insignificant to current events. In another, it's vastly more important, because while small it erodes the underpinnings of the system by which we actually disseminate information.

It's like having to choose between being upset about the person that mugged you for $500 on the street, or the bank that surreptitiously added 0.05% APR or the loan you just got for your house. One feels more important in the moment, but the other has much farther reaching implications, not just to your pocketbook, but as to whether you can trust anything about that institution going forward.

If this is the beginning of a new trend for the Whitehouse where nothing presented can be trusted, and it continues through future presidencies, I can definitely tell you which I think will be more important in 20 years.

The cynical among us have been saying that nothing presented by the White house (and any other government institutions) can be trusted at face value for years. I guess now is the time where everyone becomes a cynic.

But is that such a bad thing?

They say access journalism is dead, but access journalism is just repeating stuff said by people with power. Making them accountable is a good thing.

Trump may have unintentionally restored investigative journalism...

A new trend?

You think Trump is inventing Whitehouse lies, right before our eyes? Politicians have a looooong history of lying, big lies that get peole killed ("Iraq WMDs are a slam dunk!") . Where have you been?

This is what people have been noticing during and since the election, you can't pin down Trump on anything because he is a controversy machine. He says something ridiculous and the media gives it attention and even begins to get some momentum on the story, but a week later, sometimes even days later, he does or says something that's even more ridiculous and now most people are concentrating on that new thing. Its hard to say if this is intentional or if his bombastic style is just something we're not used to in politics, but it seems to be effective in that the media is always chasing after the latest controversy.

For me it looked like the media had really nailed him on not releasing his tax forms, even going so far as to uncover damning ones from the 90s, but then the inside edition tapes came out and everyone focused on that instead.

Berlusconi used to do the same. They know the media cycle and play it to their advantage. It's a sort of "fire and motion" strategy where you keep enemies talking about the previous position while you're already gaining a new one. Anyone can play it, but your "suppressing fire" must be strong enough to distract effectively; that sort of bombastic bravado doesn't come naturally to "reality-based" personalities on the left who are constantly walking a tight rope between very different positions in their base.

The Youtube channel Charisma on Command has interesting videos explaining Trump's success.

https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand/search?query=...

It's completely intentional, and very effective. Mix big lies and small lies with truths and half truths. Lie about friends and enemies, and that's what the media will focus on. So much misinformation that nobody knows was what is truth.

Because "The standards you walk past, are the standards that you implicity accept/allow"...

Most of the worst dictators and tyrants in the world didn't start off at 'maximum mayhem'. They tend to start with lies, misinformation, subterfuge and misrepresentations, then they move up to things like false accusations, inquisitions, persecution and the like.

Every step just makes it easier to move closer to full blown deportations, incarcerations & executions etc.

A bit harder to stop them at the last step, when you have allowed the previous 99 steps to go unquestioned.

A few good governments too. Wilson, usually rated in the top 10 presidents, ran with "America First" and "He Kept Us Out" for his re-election. We joined the war only a month after his re-inauguration. In hindsight, that was likely for the best but it seems a misrepresentation.

This is why he got that far in the primaries and then eventually got elected. Every gaffe was reported on and some of it also not true which muddied the water to a point where people stopped listening when serious things came up.

All of this just for profit and tv ratings. There is also ego in there because who want's to be the last to break a story.

We see the same thing happening when a disaster occurs. For example the airport shooting. So much false information is reported just because they have to be the first/exclusive.

> Every gaffe was reported on and some of it also not true

What wasn't true? Honestly curious as I don't remember any truly spurious accusations against him.

> All of this just for profit and tv ratings. There is also ego in there because who want's to be the last to break a story.

Certainly, but that doesn't discount the validity of the reported incidents.

> We see the same thing happening when a disaster occurs. For example the airport shooting. So much false information is reported just because they have to be the first/exclusive.

Yes and no. I think a lot of that comes from reporting on a developing real-time situation where information is constantly revised. That's rarely the case with speeches or political coverage of this sort.

> Every gaffe was reported on and some of it also not true

Just about everything was true.

For instance, the "alternative facts" comment/incident is being talked about everywhere

That's exactly why they said it. Notice how it distracted everyone from talking about the marches? Trump knows how to change the media narrative.

The part I hate is that the media and everyone is eating up all these new sound bytes for things like "alternative facts" instead of just calling them what they are, lies, and moving on to more important things like focusing on the actual issues. To give it a fun name like that plays into the spectacle and is exactly what he wants.

There are two forces at work, Trump and the Republican party. The gaffes are all Trump, the sweeping executive orders mostly the party.

He never had much of a platform beyond "build the wall!", and is happy to roll with Republican dogma. The Republicans proved during the last administration that they're willing to bend the rules to breaking point to damage their opponents; they've decided they're willing to humor Trump so they can get him to do what they want.

If the president were a more established Republican like Ted Cruz, we'd still be seeing huge and destructive changes to health care, climate change policy, etc.

It's hard to know which is the bigger threat. Trump is a new style of threat in the way he arrogantly ignores the old polite conventions and even the law itself, lining his pockets in plain sight. Letting that pass unchallenged could result in a permanent autocracy, one "strong man" after another.

The Republican party is "just" pushing an extreme agenda, similar to what they did under Bush, which is more of a known threat (or not a threat at all if you agree with their platform). But they're also neglecting their duty to push back against Trump's abuse of the system. They should be fighting tooth and nail to force him to sell his businesses.

> It almost makes me wonder if it would be a good idea if there was a website that covered the latest gaffe and the corresponding actual news worthy story that was lost out on optimal coverage because of it.

There are publications that tend towards policy focus, and there are even more publications that are half policy-wonk half-commentariat but at least not trapped in the gossip column soundbite minutia.

If you look at circulation numbers, though... The Economist is about 1.5 million in the US. Time seems less news-digest these days and more commentary, but it's got double the circulation.

But both of those are, of course, below Sports Illustrated, People Magazine, Better Homes And Gardens, and Costco Connection in terms of regular readers.

One could surmise that the real issue is that there isn't a large audience that actually wants what you (and I) think we should be paying attention to. Most of us are used to having a set-it-and-forget-it approach to how government works, and don't really believe we should have to pay attention.

And on top of that, some large portion of the country resents the very idea that expertise, education, and focused thinking should represent any authority worth respecting more than their opinions. Why would anyone in that demographic care to read news and policy details at all? The only important thing is knowing that people who are in their ostensible tribe are in charge.

This isn't just to bag on people -- everybody has limited attention and if possible it's nice to not to have to give it to things unless you have to. It's to underscore the problem: in a market economy, publications that stay afloat are going to try to provide what people pay attention to and/or pay for. And that may not be the same thing as what "deserves" attention.

That actually sounds like a great idea! Or even better, two columns on the same site - on first one latest gaffe, on the second one proper news. You can't avoid having "popular" stories on the page, but if they compete with themselves and not with the important news, they can't push them to oblivion.

Yes, and that is exactly the way Trumpet wants it, bait and switch.

the horrifying stuff were his campaign promises, yeah? though, in fairness his campaign was also all about alternative facts.

> I'm really confused by how impeachment works in the U.S.

Impeachment requires a crime.

Lying isn't usually a crime, and as best I can tell hasn't been one any of the times Trump has done it (.. yet?). It also hasn't been a crime any of the times Obama has done it.

Failure to give up business interests is breaking precedent and confounding ethicists, but also doesn't seem to be illegal.

When we come up with something criminal (and especially if it rises to the level of "high crimes") we can hope Trump gets impeached. As yet, I don't see it, and certainly not in your examples.

We've probably all seen the emoluments clause raised as one way he may be breaking the law. I'm not a legal expert but I would assume, if it's true, that breaking the Constitution would be illegal?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_of_Nobility_Clause

"The Title of Nobility Clause is a provision in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, that ... restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states without the consent of the United States Congress."

I suspect we will hear a lot more about the "consent of Congress" in the next 6 months if this has any merit.

Except Congress already consented decades ago:

> The financial conflict statute prohibits federal employees from participating in matters where they could enrich themselves. It applies to everyone in the executive branch, from the lowliest file clerk up to the White House chief of staff – except for the president and vice president.

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/12/07/can-congress...

You could try to convince Congress to re-apply the rules, but that's a different discussion.

The courts have historically been unlikely to see a Constitutionally-required affirmative permission in the fact that an additional restriction is not applied by Congress.

The fact that Congress has specifically granted permission under the Emoluments Clause to Presidents, at the latter's request, while the conflict statute was in effect wouldbsuggest stronglynthat neither past Presidents, nor, more importantly, the Congress has viewed the non-application of the conflict statute to the President as a grant of permission under the Emoluments Clause that makes more specific grants unnecessary.

OTOH, absent coverage under the conflict statute or some other statute establishing judicial remedies, there may an argument that there is no such remedy for a Presidential violation of the clause, and that the only remedy is via impeachment. That's probably the biggest weakness in an Emoluments Clause lawsuit.

On the gripping hand, a court ruling to the effect that the only remedy is by impeachment may create additional political pressure on Congress, which would probably have value to those bringing the claim, perhaps moreso than a judicial remedy that, e.g., forced Trump to give up past gains and avoid future gains through divestment.

This is a different issue. Trump is correct that the conflict of interest laws don't apply to him. However the emoluments clause is something else, and most constitutional scholars say that it clearly does apply. This doesn't prohibit conflicts of interest; it prohibits federal employees and office holders from receiving gifts, titles or emoluments from foreign governments. Profits from business with foreign governments would certainly be covered by this, as would beneficial terms on loans and, arguably, things such as building permits. You'd struggle to find a single non-partisan expert who would say that he isn't violating this right now, and even plenty of Republican lawyers agree.

The trouble is that impeachment is the responsibility Congress, and it would be a brave Republican congressman who would vote to impeach a Republican president right now.

Sure, but the courts enforce the constitution, not congress.

I did a spot of research on the emoluments clause and found three instances where specific events were evaluated for breaching this clause:

1 - Theodore Roosevelt. Nobel Peace Prize. He accept both the cash award and the medal.

2 - Barack Obama. Nobel Peace Prize. He accepted only the medal.

... and most interestingly ...

3 - Ronald Reagan. Receipt of pension payments from the state of California as a former Governor and California pension plan participant.

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/198...

The way I read the analysis of Ronald Reagan's situation, any benefit from a domestic state, city, or county could potentially fall afoul of the emoluments clause. Think here of any local property tax rebate from a city to entice a Trump business to build a hotel or set up shop. Maybe even a tax rebate / waiver from prior business development agreement could fall afoul. Who knows how deep this particular rabbit hole could go.

I also was puzzling over Hobby Lobby the other day and I realized that Trump's situation vis-a-vie the emoluments clause could be parallel to Hobby Lobby versus the ACA. Hobby Lobby wanted out of the mandate for birth control and the Supreme Court sided with them because Hobby Lobby was a closely held corporation; close enough where the owners' religious beliefs could be infringed upon by ACA birth control mandates on the corporation they controlled.

I believe the Trump empire is a closely held corporation like Hobby Lobby. Per the Supreme Court a closely held corporation like Hobby Lobby has a personal connection unlike widely held corporation. Simply saying payments made to Trump's corporation is a sufficient separation from the person to avoid the emoluments clause may not be a strong argument for those arguing Trump's side.

Edit: IANAL, but rather a politics major.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is not a "foreign state".

Trump has had reams of lawyers on this one for a while.

If the Dems thought they could 'get him' on his ownership of whatever, they would have been pressing it already.

I think as it stands, he's on decent legal footing.

Which admittedly is a little ridiculous, you'd think the Prez. would not be above conflict of interest.

Aside from that, Trump says ridiculous things, but they are mostly in the vein of ridiculous populism. It makes him look ridiculous to most people, I don't know why he does it, that said, none of his policies so far are as gonzo as his ridiculous rhetoric.

Give it time. Maybe he'll cool down, or maybe he'll do something impeachable.

I predict: tons and tons of PR snafus, but nothing illegal.

> I predict: tons and tons of PR snafus, but nothing illegal.

I predict something illegal

> If the Dems thought they could 'get him' on his ownership of whatever, they would have been pressing it already.

Impeachment is sort of a legal process but it's really political, while Republicans control congress and he hasn't sunk with the base impeachment won't happen.

The Dems are just standing by for this lawsuit:

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/24/14358654/tr...

The interesting thing about this is that it's a bipartisan affair as far as party affiliations go: the two main guys behind it are the ethics people for Bush and Obama, respectively.

So, wasn't Hillary Clinton breaking the Constitution when she was accepting donations from Saudi Arabia at the Clinton Foundation while secretary of state?

Why is anyone still talking about Hillary Clinton?

Donald Trump is the man in office. Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with anything.

However Clinton may or may not violated the Constitution is absolutely irrelevant to the question of whether Trump is violating it now.

I would guess Hillary's situation would depend on the structure of the foundation. Likely she was not the one "accepting" it, and the ownership structure, such as it is, might not even include the Clintons. It might just have their name on it. This is all just speculation though.

I am willing to put money that this is being brought up so no one can set up another clinton foundation again. trumps press conference a while back he spent a considerable amount of time talking about his company and the legalities. he knew what he was talking about and they had spent some time working on it.(then he called cnn fake news). Now all this talk about nobility... This gets ruled on and he is totally inside the rules... but the real message is don't set up "Clinton Global Inititave" as it wound be outside the rules.

So does Hillary get to spend the foundation money on herself?

Failure to give up his business interests is an impeachable offense. He literally does not meet the requirements set forth in the Constitution.

He isn't being impeached because his party controls both houses.

> He literally does not meet the requirements set forth in the Constitution.

You need to be more specific. If you mean the emoluments clause, I think it's more accurate to say that it's hard to verify whether he meets "the requirements set forth in the Constitution." If you know of an instance of his business accepting a gift from a "king, prince or foreign state" since he's assumed office, then he's actually in violation.

> He isn't being impeached because his party controls both houses.

There is also that. Although I think a not insignificant fraction of that party would much prefer Pence, and if they were going to oust him doing it as far from the next election as possible would seem preferable.

> Failure to give up his business interests is an impeachable offense...[as] set forth in the Constitution

U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8. states:

"No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state." [1]

U.S. Const. art. II, § 1 cl., 7 states:

"The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them." [2]

There isn't a lot of case law surrounding these clauses [3] nor guidance from Congress. It could be an impeachable offense, though frankly that's true of anything. Impeachment is a political, not judicial, process.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_of_Nobility_Clause

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-is-the-emolumen...

"Failure to give up his business interests is an impeachable offense."

Nope. They've had lawyers on this for a while, and I think he's ok on it.

FYI - do you know how many Republican secretly wished that Trump were 'gone'? Probably most of them. He's a) a loose cannon and b) not actually a conservative on many issues.

I think he's legally in the clear on his ownership issues.

I think they are just taking their sweet time with it because he is well enough aligned with their agenda. The second a big enough scandal comes up, away we go.

"Failure to give up business interests is breaking precedent and confounding ethicists, but also doesn't seem to be illegal."

It is not "breaking precedent". George Washington kept his farm.

It's entirely unreasonable to expect a regular citizen to give up his business simply because he's elected to public office. Trump has taken many steps to ensure there's no conflict of interest.

He's taken the appearance of many steps.

Owning a farm is a little different to being involved in sprawling international ventures that leave you open to pressure from foreign powers.

Since he's gifting all profits from foreign ventures to the US Treasury, there is no "pressure".

>Trump has taken many steps to ensure there's no conflict of interest.

This an outright lie.

> Lying isn't usually a crime

It also isn't lying if the person saying it believes it to be true.

What is it then called when you could and should have easily verified your belief and even after pointing out that your belief is wrong, you refuse to admit that your belief was actually wrong, if not lying?

"No, sir. I did not lie in my CV. I _believe_ that this funny looking letter I received from my mother some time ago means that I have Ph.D from MIT"

> Failure to give up business interests is breaking precedent and confounding ethicists, but also doesn't seem to be illegal.

On the contrary, it's explicitly legal as nothing the President does is considered a conflict. It's like that because otherwise everything and anything could be a construed a conflict of interest. In the interests of not having a continual flood of lawsuits the top of the executive branch is considered to be exempt from conflict of interest laws that otherwise affect the rest of government.

Do people really want him to get impeached and convicted, with Pence being the successor? Seems like a terrible idea...

I've heard people say this on a number of occasions. Let me say why I'm not so worried about it. The thing that makes Trump different from almost any other politician I've seen is the control he has over his followers. They don't care if he lies or if any unpleasant fact about him comes to light. They're just transfixed by the guy. I don't believe that Pence or any other current politician has the same power or the same ability to do this. I imagine that, if Pence did have to assume office for some reason, he would just come off to Trump supporters as seeming like a typical politician. He wouldn't be able to drum up the same kind of enthusiasm.

From my (quite far-left) perspective, I would be very okay with that outcome. The Presidency's most unchecked power is in foreign policy, where Trump truly scares me. Pence as President would not change the balance of power in Congress, which is where most of the social and economic decisions (where I really have problems with Pence) would be made.

Putting on my non-partisan hat, though, I am nervous about the precedent of removing a president from office iff it is seen as a partisan move. The removal of Trump without widespread Republican support (as opposed to a small defecting faction) might be seen as precedent for a higher frequency of partisan impeachments - a danger to be weighed against (in my not-very-objective opinion) the dangers of a Trump presidency.

Going to take off the objective hat and talk as a liberal. The answer I give to this is for the US, the President is both the head of state and the head of government. As is clear from recent articles about Trump's manner in the white house, his team is very much making many of the small policy decisions while Trump gets to strut out as the figurehead.

So yes, Trump stepping down wouldn't mean much difference when it comes to his role as a head of government since his team seems to be handling that, but the head of state is still a very important role. Don't forget, he said,

"I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything[,]"

essentially describing sexual assault, emphasized by me. Not to mention his poor demeanor, his lack of likeability, his unpopularity, the fact he was a reality-TV star. Having such an individual represent the nation is an embarrassment and does not inspire confidence in the nation nor does it abroad. Understand, no international body would respect Trump if he weren't the President. He does not prop us up as a country, he receives respect because we prop him up, and even then, he still depreciates his image by trying to project and strengthen his fragile pride and by involving himself in frivolous engagements on Twitter.

So yes, having a different head of state would be beneficial for us, at least in our view. It would not make much of a difference in terms of actual policy, but it would give us with a better representative, which isn't a difficult bar to exceed.

EDIT: I almost forgot, despite the politics of it, I do personally feel that a conflict of interest as a President is detrimental to the role as the head of government. We have already seen for example his orders on DAPL, which he still owns some shares of, a direct conflict of interest. And worse, of course, there are his foreign investments, which is worse from a national security standpoint. Sorry, but a head of government should represent us, not their own personal financial interests. You don't even need all my feeling about Trump as a figurehead, although that is important, but his conflicts of interests are a significant issue with him as an elected official.

Pence has successfully kept it more or less between lanes for the ~17 years he's been a career politician. The guy might have snakes in his head but part of me would rather risk that than what is, to all appearances, an unhinged budding fascist surrounded by sycophants. YMMV.

While Pence may have worse policies than Trump on average, Trump has much worse downside risk because he is unpredictable. Today we have the worst of both: Pence already implementing his domestic policies plus the chance that Trump might nuke someone.

Yes

Pence is at least a sane conservative theocrat

Trump is a lying corrupt racist who is extremely unpredictable and may or may not blow up markets, start wars, abandon our allies, or deport millions of people

Absolutely. Without a second thought. My issue has nothing whatsoever to do with politics.

It doesn't, in any practical sense. It requires an extremely unpopular president, and a congress who dislikes him enough to vote him out.

Is lying about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a crime?

Is lying about WMDs and then destroying the lives of millions of human beings (also known as iraqis) a crime?

Trump has been in office for 4 days. Conflict of interest laws do not apply to US Presidents, so the business interest argument is moot. We don't impeach Presidents because a loud group of people dislikes the fact that they lost an election. We impeach Presidents when they commit crimes, which he has not done and hasn't even been in office long enough to do.

The emoluments clause of the constitution applies to all members of government.

Yeah I guess to you breaking the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the Constitution is nothing. And its funny you say that when that is exactly why they impeached Clinton.

They impeached Clinton for committing the crime of perjury, so your comparison makes no sense. With regard to the Foreign Emoluments Clause, Trump is donating all proceeds from stays in his hotels by foreign officials directly to the US Treasury. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but apparently he has been advised by those who are that this solution solves that particular legal issue.

I realize that this issue will never be solved in the minds of Clinton voters, but as long as it legally resolves the problem, opinions simply don't matter.

it is one hell of a stretch to claim that any foreigner making standard use of a business you own or have interests is somehow violating this law.

if anything it seems tailored made to keep non politicians from ever taking office without sacrificing a lot. funny how many politicians come in with little and leave with a lot more

"We impeach Presidents when they commit crimes, which he has not done and hasn't even been in office long enough to do."

Can you clarify how long one must be in public office to commit a crime?

>We don't impeach Presidents because a loud group of people dislikes the fact that they lost an election.

That's an incredibly disingenuous statement.

Conflict of interest laws do not apply to US Presidents

That is Trump-level spin. Wow.

The President is exempt from conflict of interest laws.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/208:

(a) Except as permitted by subsection (b) hereof, whoever, being an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government... has a financial interest—Shall be subject to the penalties set forth in section 216 of this title.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/202:

(c) Except as otherwise provided in such sections, the terms “officer” and “employee” in sections 203, 205, 207 through 209, and 218 of this title shall not include the President, the Vice President, a Member of Congress, or a Federal judge.

> We don't impeach Presidents because a loud group of people dislikes the fact that they lost an election.

As a matter of fact, that's exactly why they impeached Clinton. Face it: America impeaches Presidents for being not-Republican, and empowers Presidents for being Republican. It's a one-party state.

Nope. Clinton was impeached because he committed perjury.

I think that will be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Not you.

The Supreme Court does not try impeachment cases. That would be the Senate, and it requires a 2/3 vote, after Congress first adopts articles of impeachment with a majority vote. It is unlikely that either would happen.

> Clinton was impeached for perjury and abuse of power

Interestingly, Clinton was impeached for breaking his own law, the Violence Against Women Act, which he created to win reelection. (The rape shield part of the law is what created the ground rules for how he was questioned in court, and what he was allowed to say and not say in his defense.)

This law also created a series of social programs that Trump defunded today via an executive order.

Impeachment is about politics and power.

For whatever reasons (and I still don't fully understand it, no, check that, I don't understand it at all), the Clintons were an absolute hate-magnet for the Right. Clinton's sexual relations -- essentially no different from what any of the GOP opposition leaders turned out to be engaged with, if not far less serious (Dennis Hastert's long-time homosexual exploitation of minor boys under his care, for example) -- turned out to be the hook that the GOP could finally snag him with.

In the case of Trump, I suspect there's a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes jockeying and assessment of power. Questions over who the party (or any possible coalition or new political force) wants to see him replaced by -- Pence might well be no better, potentially worse. The question of how deeply tainted Trump's entire cabinet (and more) may be.

The GOP has been fractured for years, and only barely holds itself together. The prospects of real violent rebellion or reaction to a deposal of Trump may also be staying hands.

> For whatever reasons (and I still don't fully understand it, no, check that, I don't understand it at all), the Clintons were an absolute hate-magnet for the Right

It's funny you mention that, since by all metrics Clinton was about the most conservative democrat to gain office recently. A shame we've steadily moved away from middle-of-the-road since then.

The whole point of lying is to blur the lines between truth and lies so people believe nothing.

HyperNormalisation2016

Going to share that thing until I'm blue in the mouth. That documentary mentions that Surkov[0] uses this tactic, confusing the public about what is true and untrue.

I have to say, whether people on the right believe this or not, this has been at least subconsciously adapted as one of their tactics. When there is no truth or lie, then whatever you want is true, which makes you ripe for manipulation by the powers that be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov

Adam Curtis bingo!

https://twitter.com/chrisapplegate/status/787751065315840000...

The process requires a majority of the House, and then it goes to a trial that requires two thirds of the Senate for conviction. Considering the Republicans have a majority in both, I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Exactly. Clinton's impeachment passed the House majority hurdle but never got the 2/3rds majority of the Senate required for the conviction.

Agreed on the Republican majority. I suspect the best the US can hope for is a Republican bloodbath in the 2018 midterms to deliver House and Senate back to Democrat control. I don't believe the chances of that are high though.

Once everyone loses their healthcare they might change their minds

Well, the legislators won't be losing their healthcare :)

If you mean the voters, my understanding is it's a fairly high hurdle from a structural standpoint -- there are far more democrats up for reelection than republicans.

"This is probably a good time for people to be reading 1984."

This is ridiculous.

The hate for Trump has caused people to go into utterly misguided tizzies, and it's pathetic.

I loathe Trump - but he's not a totalitarian.

He has given no indication of encroaching on civil liberties, there's no indication he wants to socialize large parts of the economy, or expand control by government, or even expand surveillance programs.

He's boorish, loud-mouthed and says crude things - but his policy actions are not that drastic.

'Enforce immigration laws' - fairly reasonable.

'Build pipelines' - outside of environmental concerns - absolutely normal.

'Re-negotiate trade deals' - not sure if I agree but not crazy.

'Get NATO allies to pay their share' - not crazy.

A 'mild' social conservative totalitarian might roll back laws on gay marriage, abortion etc. - but Trump hasn't mentioned it at all.

He has been forceful on trying to get American jobs back, and he'll likely overhaul the tax code, likely with some tax breaks.

He hasn't been nearly as aggressive in terms of foreign policy as Clinton.

He's indicated that he wants to get along with Russia. Is this such a bad thing? Clinton/Obama tried it earlier as well.

I think he presents himself in a manner unfit for someone who's in public office, but in the end, his actual actions are not particularly outlandish - and nowhere near totalitarian.

Obama would have socialized the entire healthcare system if he had the choice, and vastly expanded the welfare system, and would likely have introduced far more controlling legislation if allowed - and we do know he oversaw a fairly robust expansion of the surveillance state.

So Obama happens to be a 'nice guy' and 'not boorish' - does that make him any more or less totalitarian.

People need to grow up.

Trump is kind of a blow-hard, not a Nazi.

> He has given no indication of encroaching on civil liberties

You mean, except for that part where he mentioned that he wants to strengthen the [non-existent] libel laws, so that "press can't get away with lies about me"?

Or his early remarks on Muslims? Surveillance etc?

> A 'mild' social conservative totalitarian might roll back laws on gay marriage, abortion etc. - but Trump hasn't mentioned it at all.

Now we're firmly in the "alternative facts" territory. Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dngW-FKKuo Or when he said that Japanese interment camps were a tough choice, but "that's how you win wars"?

Wait...why do you loathe him? You seem reasonable in everything else you say. Trump is basically Nelson Rockefeller with the difference that he never got denounced as the liberal he is outside the pages of the National Review.

I'd say we're probably closer to 25th amendment territory than impeachment. It isn't clear (to the extent the law requires) that Trump has high crimes or treason, and whether he will or not is immaterial until he does. It does appear very clear that he is not fit to discharge his duties, however. What is going to happen the first time there is a crisis like a shooting or a hurricane. The next time the south gets wiped out by a cat 5 they are going to be BEGGING for Brownie to come do a hell of a job.

it's actually phrased "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" in the Constitution, so the President could be impeached for a misdemeanor.

Theoretically

> "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Practically it's all about politics

The other impeachment was of Andrew Johnson who barely avoided conviction by one vote was also by radical republicans and also about politics. Although in their case they were radically pro civil rights for former slaves so I'm a lot more sympathetic. Still the law they passed to try to explicitly trip up Johnson (banning him from dismissing Lincoln's secretary of defense) was arguably unconstitutional.

The reason Trump may not be impeached is because his party controls both houses of congress and they are afraid of the base. If his popularity craters finding a reason to impeach won't be that hard. The emoluments clause makes for an easy one (no proof of corruption needed just benefit, ultimatley congress is the judge). For other formal charges it may be my bias and low opinion but I have no doubt that if congressional investigations occur something about pre-election russian ties, corruption, or abuse of power will be found.

He was voted in by the people, through a legitimate democratic process. Democracy works. Freedom of speech works. 1984 didn't get it right. It's not the government that needs to be feared. It isn't the big evil corporarions. It's the people. The mob.

4chan ran a more effective propaganda/misinformation campaign than any dark shadowy corporate entity. Our insitutions are less than stellar, but at least they are run by adults. Americans are run by bedtime stories and mass hysteria generated by their own delusions, the manifestation of which now occupies our highest office.

1984 was a warning against communism, but China has a brighter future than we do. Nobody wrote a science fiction novel taught in high schools warning us against democracy in the age of decentralized peer to peer media. Government surveillance isn't ruining lives, but a poorly worded tweet can.

1984 was a warning against totalitarianism of any kind, communism, fascism, nazism.

>He was voted in by the people, through a legitimate democratic process.

Every part of this is wrong. The people voted for Clinton by a plurality of 3 million votes. The Electoral College is a device for permanent Southern hegemony and, consequently, Republican supremacy -- there's nothing legitimate about it.

Hitler was also democratically elected, democracy can fail.

Clinton was impeached because Congress was Republican and was trying like heck to pin something, anything, on him. It started with Whitewater and went wherever they could push it after that. Remember, this is when the government shutdowns started.

Trump is a Republican, so the current Republican Congress isn't going to be too picky.

Why tell such obvious falsehoods? - because it gives the media something to report on and like a child with ADD the media goes CRAZY for one lie, then CRAZY for the next, meanwhile DJT does 10 other "crazy" things and it's hard to even keep up. Why tell so many such obvious falsehoods? Because it distracts from other stuff he wants to get done. Just like how he made a big deal about the judge in his trump university case. Making a big deal about the judge distracted everyone from what he actually did with trump university!

Sounds like by that measure we should have impeached every President we've had so far. They all at some point probably told lies.

Also just because Clinton was impeached doesn't mean he was removed from office. Those are different things.

Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice, not abuse of power.

Impeachment is done by the congress. We currently have a republican congress as we did in '98 when Clinton was impeached. However, this time there's a republican president, so it's much less likely.

There is no apolitical mechanism to impeach. And the Republican congress, for all they can't stand the man in private, knows they rise and fall with Trump. So essentially he can get away with murder right now.

The body politic is slow to react but swift and harsh once engaged. It is literally the first week on the job for this guy, and while it is not showing a lot of promise it takes a couple of months before people really get settled in.

That said, if it looks like he is going to put the nation at grave risk by his actions, and grave risk is something a bit more serious than being the butt of a lot of jokes, then there are a wide variety of tools built into our institutions to address that.

I think you answered the question, he was impeached for perjury. Trump hasn't committed perjury yet. I think the best case to make against him is that he is violating the Emoluments clause, but that's not really lying because we already know he won't really divest himself of his businesses and investments.

To answer your possible subtext on Clinton's impeachment, the answer is yes, that impeachment was political.

If there's another book that people need to read, its "Strange Defeat" by Marc Bloch, as its a commentary/oral history on the fall of France to the Nazis and Vichy regime. The comparisons are eerily similar to what many of us are seeing now.

Now is a good time as any.

If only now you become worried about politicians lying, boy do I have bad news for you.

I think we're past impeachment, and need to get people on the streets. The women's march was a good start, but it needs to be followed up every weekend.

What we really need is a general strike. We have to shut down the economy to force him out.

One has to be careful not to get carried away by those little mistakes, lies and glitches as it may be just a bait to distract general public from the bigger picture and his agenda.

> "alternative facts"

I think people are taking this and running at breakneck speed without stopping to look at what they actually mean by this.

After watching the first few press conferences and Kelly Anne's interviews where she said that, it seems clear to me they weren't trying to say there were more people physically at the inauguration in their "alternative facts" but what they are referring to specifically is the viewership.

It's very possible they are correct in saying this and I guess their point is "well the media isn't reporting on these facts so we are going to present them ourselves".

Direct quote from Sean Spicer:

> This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in-person and around the globe

If "in-person" doesn't mean "physically at the inauguration" what does it mean then? It is not ambiguous.

Spicer made an unsubstantiated claim, and has since been defensively walking it back to the equally unsubstantiated second part of "around the globe."

"The media" is a very broad category, so I am not going to universally defend or attack them. But the Trump administration has simply been making things up and, as of yet, has not backed up any of these statements with evidence.

The media is a bit more hit or miss. It is true that some media outlets seem determined to make fun of Trump no matter what he does. That doesn't give Trump a free pass to make up shit. Obama had to deal with the same crap.

> * they are referring to...the viewership*

Charitably, Conway might have meant that Trump's inauguration may have been the largest if TV viewers are counted. Unfortunately, that's not what she said. You can't be both unambiguous and wrong, repeatedly, in any human game (EDIT: and win).

> After watching the first few press conferences and Kelly Anne's interviews where she said that, it seems clear to me they weren't trying to say there were more people physically at the inauguration in their "alternative facts" but what they are referring to specifically is the viewership.

In the original claim, Spicer explicitly claimed Trump's audience was the greatest both in-person and by remote media (and stated I. a way which clearly implied this was beyond debate and supported by incontrovertible evidence), and, in any case, the only metrics I've seen anyone bring out for the revised claim (for which, incidentally, the Administration provided no evidence) also are indicative of it being false (but not absolutely conclusive on that pointz as published metrics aren't available for all media channels, particularly many non-YouTube online channels.)

At best Spicer both seriously misspoke and referenced separate standards when he meant to reference an aggregate and, even so, presented rank hopeful speculation as certain fact.

But even that stretches plausibility considerably.

See I don't even know why people care. Everyone latched on that phrase and keep belaboring it. Wonder how many hours were spent totally talking about how many people at the inauguration. Why not talk about other stuff, cabinet picks, TPP, aid cancellation, Federal hiring freeze except such and such, etc.

This is like the media equivalent of bike shedding. Other stuff is complicated so they latched on to that phrase...

No, it's still false when you count viewership. This has been covered by countless news organizations. You are making a mistake by imagining that these people are operating in good faith.

Has anyone actually done an unbiased comparison? I've seen the picture but there are plenty of possible explanations for that.

And people seem to be reading far to much into it in any case.

https://youtu.be/pa9YUDNHobE

but only the media can be right cause DRUMPF

Think of something highly dangerous and highly improbable any POTUS could do and it most likely it will happen with this guy.

>Already screeching for impeachment when he's been in office for two days

And this is why you lost the election.

To be fair, alternative facts wasn't meant as sinister as you may have been led to believe. What was meant was "additional" facts.

Don't piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining. We all saw the same video. Her intent was quite clear and was backed during the same interview with a naked threat.

Orwell's work beside 1984 is better (in the sense of more complex/relevant to our time, not as entertaining.) In particular, his writing on the Spanish Civil War has seemed relevant today:

"I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys."

1984 is largely about the surveillance state and oppression, with a bit at the end about Orwell's views on truth; for those who say 1984 was a worse predictor of the future than Fahrenheit 451, I say the idea of the destruction of truth was more important than the methods anyway.

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/Spanish_War/english/esw_1

> I say the idea of the destruction of truth was more important than the methods anyway

I agree. I'm appalled that Trump feels free to lie about something as falsifiable as the weather (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/us/politics/president-tru...). And it does make me worry about totalitarianism.

But in American culture, the use of "alternative facts" is hardly an invention of the government. Postmodernism made deep inroads into the thinking of average people. "What's true for you" or "true for me" became a common idea in religious conversations. And it extends into our debates about things like gender.

When everyone is allowed to have their own facts, we can quarrel, but we can't debate, because we have no common assumptions. And if we can settle anything by debate, coercion is the only option.

It's an intellectual environment ripe for authoritarianism. But not created by it.

To what are you referring when you say "postmodernism"? Which postmodernists have you read?

Kind of ironic given Bush and Obama were the ones to expand the surveillance state, Hillary demonised the shit out of Russia to try create an enemy/scapegoat, and here Trump is, only a few days in power, not having done anything particularly bad.

Also, I should add - for Democrats out there who keep trying to compare Trump to Hitler, say he's fascist, etc... That weak rhetoric is what gave you guys your worst election result in what, 80 years? The more you cry foul over nothing, the less people will actually believe it. Just an outsider's opinion after an entertaining and somewhat perplexing election.

I'm down-voting you, here's why:

This is a headline and an article about "alternative facts", relating them to a book about comprehensive "alternative fact" propaganda. Not about any of things that you listed.

You didn't add any meaningful information to the discussion, but have added divisive and heavily argued opinions, in a way that only furthers their divisiveness.

This is not a comment on your opinions. This is a comment about whether expressing those specific opinions on this specific news item and in that specific manner was constructive or destructive to this community; I'm saying it's destructive.

I don't see the phrase "alternative facts" (or even the word "facts", for that matter) in either the headline or the article. Nineteen Eighty-Four is very much about surveillance and totalitarianism (which is why, here in the UK, it seems even more prescient right now) so, while I disagree with Mikeb's political stance, I think your dismissal of their comment as not contributing to the discussion is unfair.

This is a perfect example of why downvoting shouldn't exist. None of the things you think you saw in the OPs comment are there. He is expressing an opinion that is widely held, here is a good essay on the habit of anti-Trump people of crying wolf:

   http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

Trump's spat over crowd sizes is stupid, but reflects someone terminally thin-skinned rather than a cunning well thought out attempt at mind control.

Meanwhile, those of us who have read it will remember that 1984 dwells on hard-left totalitarianism and its habit of doing things like censorship, the desire for unitary thinking, interfering with disagreement by controlling the language and so on.

Your comment doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said, but does try to lower the visibility of his views (suppressing speech) and does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking).

Trump is many things but hard-left is not one of them. Stupid phrasing today by his press guy aside, Trump's path to victory was built on a repudiation of 1984 style tactics:

• Language control: political correctness, where words and phrases are redefined or suppressed through taboo

• The 5-minutes hate: the establishment against Russia

• Loyalty to the party: in our world the closest equivalent to a vast unaccountable power structure would be called "Washington" or "the elite".

The parallels aren't perfect by any means; Trump loves surveillance just like Democrats do.

I'm down-voting you, here's why:

Context is a thing, and you even make use of it in your comment. You have set up a false scenario where (according to you) we are only allowed discuss what is explicit in headline, yet "alternative facts" isn't even in the headline.

If you seriously believe that comment sections should not discuss the context around its subject, you are wasting your time here because there is an entire internet you there for you to police.

Why is voting disabled on the parent comment? Is it just me who has that or is it disabled for everyone?

Yes, it's very interesting to see them apply even more of the same logic that failed miserably last year. Also in other countries with the same tendencies, they still don't seem to get that crying about how terribly racist and fascist these people are doesn't actually reach the intended audience.

Maybe we can blame echo chambers for this...

I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler. As if Hitler was the only and the baddest of them all.

There were also: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Pinochet, Ceausescu...

Just in the 20th century there were hundreds of what we call 'dictators'. So it's a relatively common phenomenon.

Some of the common traits that they shared: they got shit done, they were egomaniacs, extravagant, sometimes talked crazy and were obsessed with lies, deception and then spies and enemies.

Killing (or creating the conditions for the death of) lots of people wasn't necessarily in their plans, it was just a necessary means to a glorious end.

> I also find it funny that people compare him to Hitler.

I've seen him compared to Kim Jong-Un, Mussolini, Putin, the Roman Emporer Caligula, King Louis XVI of France, Emporer Maximilian I of Mexico, and to the leadership of the Communist Party of China generally, as well, among others. Your post seems to be premised on the idea that Trump has been compare exclusively to Hitler, and not or other authoritarians, which is not the case.

The worst result in 80 years is winning the popular vote with a margin of about 3 million?

In an electoral system that doesn't take the popular vote into consideration? Yes. Democrats are now pretending that they lost "by chance", but their campaign (like the Republicans') is engineered and fine-tuned/optimized to get the swing states, not to optimize by how much they will win in traditionally blue states.

The worst election result is losing the house, senate, and presidency all at once. Look at who has power, not the votes.

No, the worst result was losing the presidency, house, senate, and 3+ Supreme Court seats to Donald Trump.

When your opponent is Donald Trump: Yes.

Oh you want to go with popular votes? Then Bernie Sanders should have been your candidate by a big margin but was prevented by the DNC's superdelegate system.

Congratulations for winning a game that wasn't being played.

If you think Trump did nothing bad then you missed the last 24 hour news cycle. Hillary is a little old lady who ran for president a long time ago so I'm not sure why you brought her up. And also an outsider here, but I've seen Republicans call Obama a lot worse things then Hitler. So apparently weak rhetoric works well on the right.

Did calling Obama "Hussein" have a positive result on their popularity? I don't think so. Maybe there's a pattern.

Can you give an example? Being compared to Hitler is pretty high on my list so I'm interested.

And how did that thetoric worked for right if Obama won?

Its right to question which direction the country is headed, but i have to wonder what damage is being done to the nation's psyche with all the apocolyptic imagery. What's it like to feel in constant crisis. It makes people scared all the time and drives divisiveness. Its as dangerous as anything the prez may have planned.

It's a tricky question. On the one hand, you can try to calm yourself and avoid living in constant paranoia which could be a net gain. On the other hand, you can risk the water slowly coming to a boil all around you without your noticing. I've tried to remain as calm as possible throughout all of this, but I can't get the image of the frog on the hotplate out of my mind. I seem to recall that people who lived through the rise of Nazi Germany described things in that way. No one really realized how insane things were getting until it was too late.

> What's it like to feel in constant crisis.

Look no further than the forty-year period of constant crisis that was the Cold War.

Literally millions of people will die during our lifetime because of climate change.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/

And Trump did not cause that.

Also highly relevant is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

Came here to say this.

I think what we're seeing is a mixture of the two social and political situations: some from column a and some from column b. Turns out they were both right in large measure. In fact, Huxley and Orwell were contemporary and corresponded on the matter -> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world....

Highly relevant is Marshall McLuhan. 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 didn't anticipate what the internet would do to us at all in any way.

Thanks. Huxley is much more relevant than Orwell, today. 1984 is a masterpiece but describes a stalinian totalitarism, which probably belongs to the past. Today, the threat is more diffuse and hides in mass entertainment, consumerism, etc. The danger we face is the lose of our ability to think (not because of thinking would become forbidden, but because it would become unnecessary)

Both were influenced by _We_ by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

An incredible book if I may add. Zamyatin was one of few dystopian writers to actually be involved in the going-ons in the Russian revolution at the time.

I'd like to recommend Huxley's "Island". It isn't as relevant or famous, but it's a great book. If 1984 and BNW are "how dystopias could work", this one is "how utopias could work".

It also had a (possibly smaller) resurgence after the Snowden revelations.[1] I only wish that Orwell's masterpiece was better understood and appreciated.

In addition, I should point out that the book's title is "Nineteen Eighty-Four", not "1984".

[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/1984-rockets-amazon...

> In addition, I should point out that the book's title is "Nineteen Eighty-Four", not "1984".

So it is....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Requ...

Just hope it doesn't get deleted from your Kindles again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

More people need to read Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" (1935) which I didn't take so seriously when I first read it in high school.

From NYT Book Review: Reading the Classic Novel That Predicted Trump https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/books/review/classic-nove...

That book is #1 for classic american literature on Amazon right now.

1984 is out of copyright in Australia and many other countries so you can grab it from project gutenberg for free

The Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) PDF is available on archive.org: https://ia800201.us.archive.org/8/items/NINETEENEIGHTY-FOUR1...

The original 1948 audiobook is also available: https://archive.org/details/NINETEENEIGHTY-FOUR1984ByGeorgeO...

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=1984

Don't seem to be able to find anything?

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

This is amazing. The womens marches over the weekend and these seem to be an indicator of a very sudden awakening.

And a falling asleep as soon as a better clown takes control. Trump is marginally worse in content but infinitely worse in presentation. I mean ffs Obama care was a heritage foundation proposal and that's his shining achievement, it would be like Lincoln abolishing slavery by buying all the slaves and then making them work to pay off their freedom.

I think you're seeing two pieces of outrage over Trump. The first is the predictable liberal outrage: he's proposing policy that conflicts with what liberals want.

Then there's the anger and fear from what appears to be fascist, authorities tendencies in Trump. That's one reason why a President Pence doesn't scare me (and apparently others who are calling for Trump's impeachment). Sure Pence won't work for liberal interests, but at the same time I don't believe he'll be actively working to gut non-partisan areas such as a free press, due process, a free and fair voting process, etc.

According to [1], it's similar to a Republican bill from the 1990s, but was not a Heritage Foundation proposal.

> More hard-line senators such as Phil Gramm, R-Texas, House Republicans and the Heritage Foundation saw the Chafee bill as an unacceptable compromise.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2013/nov/15/...

Why would a march be more significant than the votes of 62 million people?

I agree that an awakening is overdue given that for instance, America’s child poverty levels are worse than in any developed country anywhere, including Greece and only Slovakia, Chile, Mexico and Turkey have worse infant mortality rates. Median adult wealth is 27th out of 27 high-income countries; internet speed and access is 16th out of 34 countries and for people living below the poverty line - US is 36th out of 162 countries, behind Morocco and Albania.

However the US does score a first in its prison population. It comes #1 out of 224 countries. Only China comes close.

people living below the poverty line - US is 36th out of 162 countries, behind Morocco and Albania

You do realize how ridiculous that stat looks right?

Are you arguing the poor are worse off in the US than in Morocco?

And let me guess, the poverty stat is excluding income transfers?

I swear to god politics has gotten even nuttier in the US than it has been. And it was nutty before! Facts don't matter, crushing your opponent matters. Truth be damned!

*Speaking as an American.

Identity politics hides issues like this more than anything. A poor black person in a ghetto and a poor white one in a trailer park should be the same voting block but they've been polarized by both sides trying to lock down their demographics.

You're bringing up the popular vote? You know Clinton won that, by 3 million votes?

Will this awakening by introspective at all? Because punishing wrongthink seems to be endemic with third wave feminists and modern "progressive" groups.

I thought the exact same thing myself when I saw this news. It made me think of this: https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social-justice-bullies-the-aut...

Third wave feminism has absolutely nothing do to with equality, it's all about getting people to attack the people to the side rather than look above.

Did you not hear the hyperbole coming from the celebrity cheerleaders at those marches? Ashley Judd sounded like a loon, going on about Hitler and ECT.

Not to mention the whole idea of the march is based on identity politics.

Isn't it a bit too late to read 1984? I'd say it is too late get into cyberpunk too, because most if not all of those "warnings" came and passed largely unnoticed. It is quite pitiful "waking up to the corporate state" just because "not-our-candidate" won, while living in one for past 2-3 decades.

The 1954 movie version is on YouTube.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajWC_J-jgLc

Wait, so the "#1 bestselling" of something can just mean for that day? They might as well call it a trending list at that point.

1984 and Brave New World are my all time double plus good books. We've been gradually sliding towards those worlds over the last number of decades, regardless of Trump. If nothing comes of this election but stronger protections around all sorts of freedoms then I'll be happy for it even if just by way of grassroots demand from the general public through awareness and engagement.

I really do hope this election increases citizen participation in the public sphere.

Instead I can recommend Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, or to understand presently overwhelmed United States: Cervantes' Don Quixote. Both much less stale and dry in their prose, but incredibly more insightful.

Do we really need Trump news on HN. I've left Reddit because of the political insanity there, I'm hoping it doesn't come here too.

This book is available for free download through archive.org

https://archive.org/details/Orwell1984preywo

The recursive irony is strong, could only be increased if the "Customers Also Bought" included The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, E. Goldstein, Brotherhood Press 1949.

I agree with Isaac Asimov (review: http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm)

Very interesting

Nice! Maybe people will stop comparing the current state of things to 1984, when they actually read it...

I think 1984 painted a scary, but important fictional picture of what life behind the iron curtain was like, several similar books attempted to deal with the issues of 20th century life in similar fashion, but I think it should be recognized that much of this is no longer as applicable to the discussion we should be having -- the post modern situation has become way more subtle in its presence, despite the loud and brash way it's presented.

An interesting book I read recently about a relatable topic is home the book Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev, about early 2000s Russia and the oil boom years, the role of the media, young money, memetic content created by the media and the way all of that affects population, it's scary and some of it kind of can be seen reflecting back on today's western society as well.

I just wish (and was secretly hoping for) that media and oppositional politics recognized the role they played in this fiasco and tried to change their behaviour up to try and change it. I seem to be wrong, sadly.

We're jumping from one nice sounding headline to the next one (like this one!) and we're ignoring much of the actual discussion we should be having, because this is more convenient. It kind of hurts to a large majority being aware of the issues and then just pressing on, choosing to ignore it, because it's more convenient to share a dumb meme about numbers, complain about alternative facts or to watch SNL.

I wouldn't say that this is the end of the leading role of western civilisation in the world (I am not smart enough to make such statements), but it really seems to me that we are opening up our weaknesses to foreign powers that will try hard to exploit them and it's a pretty damaging process.

/rant

And if you like this book, you will probably like Netflix series, Black Mirror

Fun fact: Mark Zuckerberg is born in 1984 : )

Maybe the Americans are just over-dramatic

More than Orwell's 1984, I think that people should start reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis - a very old concept which unfortunately keeps repeating itself.

Buy one and give it to someone else.

I think what the careful reader of 1984 will realize is that the book is perfectly good at explaining not just Trump but most other politicians.

... ironically(?), at this moment, a post on the USA previously having 4 billion chestnut trees is #4 while this is #1.

Doublethink is pervasive in a lot of modern thought. Hopefully this trend will make people evaluate it a bit more.

Here you can Download it for FREE and search through the full-version of the book http://ambardemo.rdseventeen.com/?query=1984&doSearch=true

I would actually argue that what we have today is worse than 1984. If you read the book, the protagonists have economic security/stability, even if in a totalitarian government. We have both nightmare spying AND economic insecurity.

Becoming more relevant by the day.

"In a time of deciet, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

The strangest tangent from reading this article.

> George only has the new administration to thank

But George has been under the Earth for the longest time hasn't he? He couldn't be thankful for anything any more. Off to Wikipedia I go, yup since 1950 from tuberculosis.

But a section on the article mentions the his homophobia, and so I read that because I find it surprising that it's mentioned when it was the norm at the time and seems like some kind of revisionism.

That then leads to a segue on phrasing Orwell used in 1984 to describe the "nancy left" or "pansies", and the presence in the Chestnut Tree (at the end of the book) gay men.

Then another segue to David Bowie and his last album which contains "Girl Loves Me" as it references the Chestnut Tree and contains polari... and this morning on BBC 6 Music I had heard a long forgotten Morrissey track that was on an album called Bona Drag, and when I put the album on over breakfast I listened to the opening track "Piccadilly Palare" and some of the same strange phrases were present as in the Bowie track, and now I also recognise them from having read 1984 (except Orwell was using the slang phrases pejoratively).

A further segue as I remembered that Lucky Lisp from the same album has references also to polari, and on the Orwell wikipedia page there was a mention of the Chestnut Tree scene again, and how Orwell included a lisp for the "Nancy" characteristics which he identifies in detail and with "some disgust".

And this leads to the most fascinating Wiki discovery of the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_lisp . The tested hypothesis being that sexual orientation of men can be determined from how gay men phonate their s's distinctively to the degree that measurements of guesses were accurate beyond a rate that could be chance.

The rabbit hole goes deep when one strays onto Wikipedia.

This is double-plus-plus-plus ungood, as either Trump or Big Brother might say.

Seriously, I have pointed out before that Trump seems to have actually learnt the rules of Newspeak with terrifying effectiveness.

I can't help but perceive this as being a result of people thinking Trump is somehow kickstarting our Orwellian future/present, when he's probably the highest profile person to point out how government before him has been working on this plan of ultimate control for a very long time. The biggest examples being:

1) that he pointed out there were no weapons of mass destruction and--false flag or not--our government used that to manipulate our perceptions to perpetrate an atrocity.

2) the supposed Russian cyber attack; he's one of the few that spoke out against the lack of evidence and that the US Intelligence report was propaganda. That document was so obviously propaganda--I read the whole thing and there wasn't even one word such as "system log" regarding what was redacted. For my purposes, it doesn't matter that he spoke out against it solely because it served him to do so.

So not that Trump won't continue more of the same control tactics or do more, but as we all know as programmers when we break things, only to rebuild them better: things almost always gotta get worse before they get better. I'm under no delusion that Trump in it/himself will be good for us, but if it finally unveils the lies and false flag politics/acts that have been far more harmful to society, I'm all for it.

The problem has been we have politicians that knowingly manipulate us and have another "face" behind the scenes. There is clearly some Machiavellian things going on behind the scenes. In addition, I don't blame headlining politicians. Clearly US Intelligence has a stronghold over them--either directly or indirectly through manipulating their perception just as ours.

Our country has clearly been on a decide path of the following 2-fold strategy:

1) project strength no matter what 2) convince us it's for higher ideals to maintain the perception of being the "good guy"

That's all it boils down to. It's looking like the US Government has killed about 1 million people in the middle east since 9/11. The numbers I've heard for Vietnam were 3.5 million. We're talking people that are basically defending their land here. And against the biggest military force the world has ever seen. In other words, in comparison, these victims were all civilians. The "Dominos" never fell, and ISIS is a small fraction of muslim people in the middle east. It's also very clear that ISIS is a result of our actions. What they are up to is retribution, not an attack on american ideals. We are talking highly religious people who see everything through a religious lens, so of course the way they are going to communicate their mission is that of a religion one--but at the core of it is anger and hatred that we invaded them, destroyed their land, dominated them and tried to control them. How would we feel if an invading force from across the world made our home a warzone--we wouldn't be like "well, it's for higher ideals, we'll just let this slide." Yea right. America seems incapable of putting ourselves in the shoes of others.

As if human lives and suffering isn't enough (well, it obviously isn't if it is far away), we are now paying the debt from both Bush administrations for years to come. Numbers I read stated that 72% of our national debt is from the 2 Bush presidents. We are currently paying $250 billion per year for those wars. By 2020 the numbers suggest it will be $500 billion per year. The numbers also stated that's 6% in 2015 and 12% in 2020 of where the taxpayer money will be going to. Over however many years to pay that back, that's enough money to have revamped our education system, invested in R&D and lived up to the potential we once had. Techcrunch just last week said the government is only investing $86 billion in tech investments. Imagine if that was $500 billion year after year.

Now all that said, I agree that the perception republicans and Trump portray of america being in shambles is far from accurate. What I think is accurate is that we aren't living up to our potential and we don't have the economic acceleration we had before. People can feel that. That's a problem. What's also a problem is that the numbers for unemployment which are good and other positive figures seem to primarily reflect improvements for the lower class. It is a major problem if the middle class isn't benefiting similarly. These are the people most invested into the system, paying the most taxes into it, and things have gotten harder for them.

So in conclusion, conspiracies aside (of which many are likely true), we have sacrificed much to project strength. I don't believe in believing what I can't see for myself, but I clearly see that projecting strength is the core of our philosophy. I believe it's an incomplete (as well as aging) viewpoint. For one, it's where all civilizations go to die as they overextend themselves through military and far-reaching interests (history teaches us that--do we have to be the next Roman empire?). But secondly, perhaps its just enough to be able to defend yourself when push comes to shove. We have the buttons to press, which few others have--do we really need to be a military presence everywhere, especially now in this digitally connected world which devalues actual physical presence?

So it's my conclusion that we have created more harm than good; we have created enemies. We can hide behind ideals, and frame others as the bad guys--but, for example, how much militarism has Russia really shown since WW2? And compare that to how much we have shown. I deal with Russian developers all the time--they seem to be participating in a form of capitalism not too different than ours. It's almost as if we need a bad guy to make us look like the good guy. Is Russia a staple of our perception control? I think so. From what I've researched, Gorbachev wanted to do a major dis-armament deal and the Reagan administration turned them down. Why? For one, we don't want to disarm, but 2, Reagan had too much riding on his Star Wars plan, and 3, that would make Russia look like the good guy. Did you hear Obama's last address about a month ago--he said "Come on, Putin was the head of the KGB...", implying he was such an evil foe. So what, are they not entitled to have an intelligence group too? George HW Bush was the head of the CIA. How is being the head of the KGB somehow meant to imply he's evil. Consistency is why. Consistency of message. Clearly, the US Government needs to keep justifying their lie/thread that Russia is so evil. It's the same as in every day life: if you acknowledge a mistake, you actually acknowledge the chain of mistakes that lead up to it. America simply isn't ready to acknowledge our past mistakes. Other countries have called for us to apologize for Vietnam. Is apologizing for something so big easy to do, not to mention costly? So going down this path of righting our wrongs would bring up a bunch of dirty laundry. So we have to continue our lies. The powers that be--besides seeing the world completely differently--would never backtrack and exhibit what they perceive as weakness. I however think it could be a moment of strength for humanity.

The irony is that spending all that money on education, infrastructure, science and technology would have been a much better way to project strength by setting an example to follow.

CONTINUED...:

At the end of the day, the hardest part is that we are talking a country here, and many/most of our leaders believe the perception imposed on them. I don't believe in some grand conspiracy. I believe in people susceptible to taking on information they don't know for themselves as truth. So the result is we have ultimately good people--hopefully--in congress that literally believe we are helping the world by policing it. And because the layer cake is so deep, of course there are people in the midst who have much to gain by current perceptions, and as a result find it easier to justify our violence, destruction and militarism. It's a bad concoction. And on top of it, there likely are some truly selfish people with nothing but self-interest in mind. My hunch is that the scare about communism after World War 2 has a lot to do with the fact that wealthy Rockefeller barron types were absolutely terrified of communism and what it would do to their wealth that they got politicians on their side to scare the nation about communism. Now in the age of public corporations, that's less likely the case--and with billionaires devoting their money to the greater good--but back in the day it was a different world. Communism isn't good, but what I see in history is countries trying to find themselves as the suffering bottom portion of the population tried to fairly get a piece of the pie. We might have stumbled through communism/socialism in many places, but in almost all, the result has been a hybrid. Perhaps we have "American Ideals" and American FORCE to thank, but it's my viewpoint that for civilization to mature any farther we can't continue with the "gun against your head" liberty America has enforced that perhaps made it all possible. And that's if it made it possible--maybe it wasn't necessary throughout the 60s, 70s, etc.

Lastly, without a doubt civilization has improved greatly over the past several hundred years, perhaps the most this past century. And the fact that we were able to do that as our population exploded this last century (I think it went from a billion in 1900 to approaching 10 billion now), is an even more amazing thing. So things are getting better. In the states, things like the civil rights movements were successful; I can now talk on forums like this positively about communism/socialism without being persecuted like in the 50s and 60s. We have minds more open than ever and venues to express the thoughts that come out of them. I'm not pessimistic. I just think we could and should be moving a lot faster.

On a side note, that's basically what Trump is pointing out, even if it requires denigrating any progress made since the Bush administration and the Wall Street near-collapse. So I think for the first time a better different future is in reach. We can almost grab it, but with the government--the same Government Hillary would keep alive--we could stagnate unnecessarily for a very long time. That's not to say Trump will just become complicit--let's just hope not.

I think a lot of us technologists see the obvious future: DE-CENTRALIZATION! Decentralize money, decentralize government (give more tax money to localized smaller governments that can actually do something; crypto-governments maybe one day?), and create an environment where we can "vote with our feet" and money. For example, I think if all the states got more money and we cut our military and federal budget by a lot, that would kickstart a lot of competition for the states. Europe seems to be doing better than us--and I'm willing to bet it has a lot to do with the fact that it's comprised of a lot of competing smaller countries. In addition, this is all identical to the promise of decentralized cryptocurrency goals and the sharing economy. That's clearly the future. Well maybe not clearly what's gonna happen, but clearly the future that would serve us best.

On another side note, part of that challenge is acknowledging that the Republicans are right on one thing: big government is not the way. That's one of the hardest things to reconcile with the fact that democrats and liberals clearly are pitching a more compassionate message. I don't see us escaping this endless stalemate without liberating ourselves from the prism/prison of 2 party perception and the religion of government in general. That is, the religion of somehow the government is gonna be what saves us and makes our lives better. That's where the less government aspect Republicans tote is so important.

We need something big and different to happen for us to have any hope of getting past this any time soon. It likely won't be Trump, but will it be the aftermath? And if so, ARE WE PREPARED TO WELCOME THE IDEA THAT SOMETIMES THINGS MUST GET WORSE BEFORE THEY GET BETTER?? That's a pill most aren't willing to follow, but also such doubling down on touch decisions, the difference between our successful projects/startups and those that join the 99.99999% that fail.

Let's take advantage of the next time those in power try to manipulate us with such things as bogus reports on Russian cyber attacks. Those are blessings in disguise. Silver linings in the clouds. The less credibility they have, the more power new viewpoints can have. Very few--if only the US Government--can state something as fact without evidence and get the entire media repeating their claims as if facts. That's dangerous.

The revolution begins now--as ironic as it is that it's been kickstarted by a megalomaniac that will do and say anything if it serves his self-interest. We don't need to let that get in our way. Let's use what we need from it and keep our eyes on the prize.

Transparency and decentralization is the war cry! That's the war cry of economic advancement.

The war cry of stability and humanity is: no more invasions (of other countries and, secondly, privacy). Iraq may very well be the last "Iraq"--the next battles very well may be fought at home to protect us from a truly Orwellian future.

I was very happy with what I finally put to words, so I mediumed it too: https://medium.com/@faceyspacey/in-response-to-george-orwell...

Amazon Best Sellers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/

Is it because of Putin or Trump?

If Trump then it should be the Atlas Shrugged instead.

You're doing it wrong. You should get Brave New World instead.

Orwell was an optimist.

People should also read Down and Out in Paris and London - a fantastic book about being a poor vagabond in England and France.

It's ironic that the CIA rakes in on that, since they have the publishing right for several of Orson Welles books

Orson Welles and George Orwell are different people, despite the latter's last name also being a common subsequence of the two names.

I don't see a blog post about a best selling book, I just see a load of Amazon affiliate links everywhere.

Someone was clearly using the arithmetic from 1984 in the inauguration attendance figures. 2+2=5, indeed.

That's strange, I just bought the book off Amazon yesterday. Coincidences, coincidences.

"The worst kind dystopia story is one that's easy to believe"

It's a good book. Especially the book-in-a-book part with the manifesto.

I bought it for a friend this year on Amazon, she still hasn't read it

Who would imagine Donald Trump would cause a surge in reading...

Pretty amazing a public domain book is still selling so well.

You should also read "Propaganda" by Edward Berneys.

It's properly called Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Customers also bought: Anthem by Ayn Rand. Irony.

Trumps protectionism is right out of the Ayn Rand villains handbook.

This is simply untrue. Ayn Rand doesn't speak about international free trade in Atlas Shrugged, as the rest of the developed world in her story turns into People's States. She did support international free trade, but not "free trade" of TPP and TTIP.

What remains to be seen is whether the domestic trade policies of Trump will be in alignment with what Ron Paul and other Ayn Rand devotees propose. He promised deregulation, so it might happen [1].

tl;dr: Trump might be moving the world towards a Galt's Gulch analogue without being an Ayn Rand devotee.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/23/trump-tells-business-leaders-...

It's not an instruction manual...

The most amazing thing to me is that the 0bama administration was very good at Orwellian manipulation, yet it was rarely remarked upon.

I mean, the guy got a Nobel Peace Prize, then proceeded with eight years of undeclared war on many different countries. "Droning" became a verb...

Please don't use HN for partisan battle. It's not what this site is for, you're way off topic here (even more than others in the thread), and dropping a lit match like '0bama' on a petrol-soaked battlefield amounts to trolling whether you meant it that way or not.

It was remarked on, just using different terms that weren't in use back in 1948 and generally not by the media who were complicit in the manipulation (and frequently the target of it).

The whole phenomenon of political correctness and the flattening of unrelated things into hate words e.g. how dislike of Islam (not a race) is now routinely called "racism" is all very reminiscent of how Big Brother set about restricting the space of what citizens could think by changing the language. Of course the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has largely been discredited now, but the basic tendencies still exist. And lots of people have been expressing frustration with a PC culture for years, Trump simply realised that giving lip service to the concept of being anti-PC was far less effective than actually being anti-PC.

The way the administration manipulated the media through controlling access to press conferences, and then eventually abolishing media Q&A entirely, was remarked on at the time. But it was a subtle move that most people were not consciously aware of, they just felt at a subconscious level that the telescreens were more overtly propagandistic than in the past.

I don't think you can call getting the Nobel manipulation by the Obama administration. They didn't arrange that I believe.

Obama seemed a little embarrassed by the prize, although he handled it in a graceful way. It would have been a bigger blunder for him to reject the prize. I certainly don't think that anyone can call him a hypocrite for receiving the Nobel Peace prize though. If anything, it reflects badly on the Nobel committee.

"0bama"

Is this a typo or some snarky attack? That seems distasteful.

zero-bama?

It's a dog-whistle term. Politically neutral persons think it is a typo, but it is recognised by the anonymous poster's fellow associates, and marks the poster as someone they should upvote, endorse and agree with.

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