George Orewell’s classic book, 1984, is about an omniscient government, led by Big Brother, that employs thought police to stomp out any one that does not toe the party line. In the novel, the government controls the narrative. It rewrites history as it sees fit and changes the meaning of words as needed. The idea that the western world is in decline and we are headed to this dystopian future is a popular idea across the political spectrum. Particularly among the right wing. The exact opposite is happening. Everyday that passes, we are becoming more free. First, a little history is required about Matt Drudge.
Matt Drudge
I go to the Drudge Report everyday. Even people who hate Matt Drudge go to his website. Why? Because he sets the tone of the news cycle with his headlines and the stories he links too. The other day he linked to a speech he gave to the National Press Club on June 2, 1998. The speech he gave was prophetic. It is also an interesting story about how he started. His father thought Matt was stuck in a rut. So he flew to Hollywood and winded up buying him a computer. Two months later, Matt began posting news stories to the internet.
I moved on to scoops from the sound stages I had heard — Jerry Seinfeld asking for a million dollars an episode — to scoop after scoop of political things I had heard from some friends back here.
I collected a few e-mail addresses of interest. People had suggested I start a mailing list, so I collected the e-mails and set up a list called The Drudge Report. One reader turned into five, then turned into 100. And faster than you could say “I never had sex with that woman,” it was 1,000, 5,000, 100,000 people! The ensuing website practically launched itself!
He made the correct conclusion:
What’s going on here? Well, clearly there is a hunger for unedited information, absent corporate considerations. As the first guy who has made a name for himself on the Internet, I’ve been invited to more and more high-toned gatherings such as this, the last being a conference on Internet & Society and some word I couldn’t pronounce, up at Harvard a week ago. And I mention this not just to blow my own horn, but to make a point. Exalted minds — the panelists’ and the audience’s average IQ exceeds the Dow Jones — didn’t appear to have a clue what this Internet’s going to do; what we’re going to make of it, what we’re going to — what this is all going to turn into. But I have glimpses. And sometimes deep in the middle of the night I tell them to Bill Paley.
He than accurately states what the next 20 years would be:
We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be. The difference between the Internet, television and radio, magazines, newspapers is the two-way communication. The Net gives as much voice to a 13-year-old computer geek like me as to a CEO or speaker of the House. We all become equal. And you would be amazed what the ordinary guy knows.
Drudge became famous when he broke the Monica Lewinsky story. MSM was sitting on the story trying to keep it quite.
It certainly changed on the night of January 17th, when Newsweek spiked, at the 11th hour, a well-researched, responsibly documented piece about the President of the United States and an obscure White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. After checking with multiple sources, I ran a story about the killing of the story. According to the Los Angeles Times, people familiar with the matter said Clinton was informed Saturday night or Sunday morning The Drudge Report had posted that Lewinsky was about to erupt. For four days I had the story exclusively, and I took a lot of heat. Everyone was afraid of it until the water broke…over at The Washington Post that Wednesday, and then everyone jumped on it.
We get the usual haters and cry babies:
Now they love it too much, and I’m still taking the heat. “He’s one man out of control,” a caller warned on talk radio in Los Angeles. “There is such a built-in level of irresponsibility in everything he does,” cried First Amendment protector Floyd Abrams in a page one Wall Street Journal piece. “The notion of a Matt Drudge cyber gossip sitting next to William Safire on Meet the Press would have been unthinkable,” smacked Watergate’s Carl Bernstein in an op-ed.
The oligarchs of the media were visibly upset by this moment. They realized this was the beginning of the end for them. In their minds, stories must be carefully vetted before public consumption. Drudge than makes his most important statement of the speech:
The Internet is going to save the news business. I — I envision a — a future where there’ll be 300 million reporters, where anyone from anywhere can report for any reason. It’s freedom of — freedom of participation, absolutely realized.
This is exactly what happened. Anyone can pull out there phone and start recording. Any government bureaucrat that dares cross the line will wind up on YouTube. He closes with this:
I was walking the streets of Washington — the streets I grew up in — last night. Found myself in front of the Washington Post building again, looking up, this time not longingly. This time I laughed.
Let the future begin.
I go to CNN and other MSM sites once in a while. I find them amusing. Just like Drudge laughed back in 1998, I also laugh at MSM sites. Just low level conversation. The words “political hack” come to mind. They are all predicable. CNN is running a headline story now called “Dollar stores are everywhere. That’s a problem for poor Americans.” Imagine that! A store that sells cheap goods to lower class people! The outrage! The injustice!
The rest of the headlines are about Trump and how he is a this-ist and that-ist. Predicable. Boring. Below are the main points why freedom is the future.
Decentralization of Information
On February 19, 1942, FDR issued executive order 9066. Japanese, Italians and Germans living in the USA, citizens and non citizens, were relocated and incarcerated in concentration camps. Do you think such an event could take place in the USA again? I do not. By the time government officials got to the third house to drag people away, there would be a YouTube video exposing them. Can you imagine Drudge’s headline for this?
There are three things bureaucracies hate:
1- Being told what to do by other bureaucracies.
2- Funding cuts.
3- Bad publicity.
This would fall under point 3.
The gatekeepers of information have lost control of the narrative thanks to the internet. The doors have been blown off the hinges. You can start a website or podcast and write or talk about whatever you want. You do not need to go to a publisher or the FCC to get permission or be vetted. The Silicon valley giants have banned Alex Jones and others from their platforms. But trolls still post his show everyday on YouTube.
As I said before, internet censorship is not going to happen.
Government bureaucracies have been hand cuffed. A civil servant gets a job, does his 20 years and gets out. Bureaucrats are risk adverse. They do not want to risk their pension by winding up on a YouTube video that goes viral. The decentralization of information has been a death blow to states.
The Loss of Faith in Bureaucracies
Hegel praised bureaucracy as the “objective class”. He said they put the public good above its own. Max Weber said bureaucracies are the embodiment of “goal orientated rationality”. There is not a person left who believes this. In fact, just the opposite. Everyone hates going to the DMV. “Red tape” has a bad connotation. Even calling some one a bureaucrat is considered an insult. The welfare and warfare state are visible failures. People still clamor for both on some level. This contradiction exist in the minds of the voting public. What do you think is going to happen when the US government checks begin to bounce? What do you think is going to happen when the government demands more and more and they offer less and less? Complete loss of faith.
Conscription
Conscription has been brought to an end. Armed forces have become all voluntary. The Carter administration attempted to register young men as a preliminary toward possible conscription in a future emergency. It was met with resistance and abandoned. All future endeavors have failed.
Gun Laws
People who own guns for self protection on some level understand that police bureaucrats are not going to protect them. They are minutes away when seconds count. The ability to own guns was always symbolic. In a practical sense, owning guns has nothing to with resisting government oppression. It was always more of a deterrent. If the feds come to your house to take your guns and you resist, there are only two possibilities:
1- you are leaving in cuffs
2- you are leaving in a body bag.
The best thing to do is pull out your phone and start recording. Bad publicity!
Putting all that aside, gun laws everywhere are obsolete. They were made obsolete by 3D printers. Cody Wilson already fought this battle and won under the first and second amendment. People have the right to post gun designs for 3D printers online. The prints for gun designs have been copied everywhere and to millions of computer probably. As time goes on, 3D printers will get cheaper and cheaper. The reason people are not printing guns up in mass is because its cheaper and easier to buy guns legally and illegally at the moment.
The Idea of Decline In Western History
Arthur Herman wrote the book, “The Idea of Decline in Western History.” He traces the idea of decline and what he calls “cultural pessimism.” This idea of decline predates the sixties counterculture by at least a hundred years.
The material life of people in the western world has improved dramatically. The amount of wars have been declining. Life expediency is up. Crime rates and murder rates have been on a steep decline over the past few decades. Amazingly, the public mood clashes sharply with this underlying reality. Especially from right wing people. We are not becoming less free. Orwell’s book 1984 will stay a fiction novel.