Revealing 1984 in 2025

“A man is judged by the company he keeps, and a company is judged by the men it keeps, and the people of Democratic nations are judged by the type and caliber of officers they elect.”

I have heard the first part before, I don’t think I have ever heard the 2nd part about the company being judged and as to the 3rd part, Ouch! It would seem we could be in a lot of trouble! If we look at our elected officials overall the judgment of the people could definitely be questioned… that is assuming we could find a truly democratic nation somewhere on this planet but I digress…

Getting back to William J. H. Boetcker. Let’s take a look at his list of “10 Cannots.”

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Hopefully at some point we will return to the list but for this post I want to address Cannots #1 and #8.

#1 You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift and #8 You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn..…

I want to expand these 2 “Cannots” beyond the personal but let’s start there. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know that if you continually spend more than you take in, ultimately you will end up in financial trouble. Most of us also know that if we don’t save some money for a rainy day, i.e. unexpected car repairs, a frig that quits, a leaky roof, a medical emergency, etc. financial disaster could be lurking right around the corner. 72% of Americans say they are NOT financially secure. As of December 2023 44% of Americans stated that they could NOT cover an unexpected expense of $1000. That might be the dictionary definition of living paycheck to paycheck.

And to make matters even worse, hanging from the ceiling over our heads like the Sword of Damocles is having enough money to retire. Of course it is hard to think about retirement somewhere down the road when you haven’t enough money right now to pay for your groceries, gasoline, or even your mortgage or rent. Many financial advisors suggest that we should be “saving” 10 to 15 percent of our earnings every week. Good luck doing that today! Difficult to do when 100% of your earnings barely, if at all, covers your everyday expenses. How many people today are “charging” necessities to their credit cards because they don’t have the cash? On a larger scale, I wonder if my grandkids will ever be able to buy a house.

On the other hand, governments seem to be rolling in cash. Just look at the trillions of dollars they spend. I have yet to see a crisis arise that they don’t have the money to “fix” it… except of course, a) they really don’t have the money and b) they never really fix it! Bizarre how you can spend trillions of dollars and make things worse in the end!

When we take off the rose coloured glasses and focus on true reality, we discover that governments are spending enormous amounts of money they do not have. How is that possible? Where do they get the money? Let’s use the USA as our example. Though simplistic the following is realistic enough to shed light on the problem.

Just like many people, governments borrow the money. How do they do that? Where does the money come from? Surprise!! Just like lots of us, they simply charge it to their “credit card.” In the case of the USA it is the “Federal Reserve credit card,” that PRIVATE (oh yes it is!) corporation/bank that controls the money supply in the USA. (Another day, another post to tackle that disaster.) For most of us, our credit card company establishes a limit (a ceiling) on how much we can charge to our card. Being far more responsible than we would be (that might be sarcasm), the U.S. government actually self-imposes a limit (a ceiling) on its spending. It is often referred to as the debt ceiling. Of course, there is just one problem with that. If you set the limit yourself… you can also raise the limit yourself and so far the U.S. government has never met a debt ceiling it wouldn’t raise. Anyone see how that could be a problem? And the ever accommodating Federal Reserve is just fine with that arrangement.

Of course, just like you, the government has to pay off its credit card debt…. RIGHT? … REALLY?… ACTUALLY NO… JUST KIDDING!!!… WHY NOT? The bottom line is, as will become crystal clear in a moment is simply, THEY CAN’T…. Unless an average American family of 4 has about $400,000 in loose cash laying around that they can “donate” to paying off the debt. Otherwise paying off that credit card isn’t going to happen because…

Just exactly how much does the U.S. government owe. I was waiting for you to ask that question. Before we answer that you do understand that “U.S. government” is simply an euphemism for all the citizens of the US! Correct? Now the answer is a bit difficult to determine because…

Maybe a couple of screenshots will help. Let’s visit usdebtclock.org

In the top left corner of the screenshot on the left you can see that the U.S. National Debt was $35,364,305,607,618 (yes that is trillions with a T!) The screenshot was taken on the morning of Sept. 11, 2024. In the screenshot on the right that number is $35,364,307,248,460 (trillions) a difference of $1,640,842, that is million with a “M.” What changed… about one minute of time!!! And that clock, like “Timex,” may take a licking but it keeps on ticking.

Over about a one minute period the U.S. debt went up over a million and a half dollars and a minute later and a minute later… just for “fun” multiply that $1,640,842 by 60 and then by 24 to give us a ballpark figure as to how much the debt increases in 1 day… the answer is $2,362,812,480… that is 2 Billion + with a “B.” To be fair, I didn’t “to the second” time the period between screenshots so the numbers are just a “guesstimate” but I think you get the point. In a word, that is unsustainable. And the ability to pay if off gets more difficult minute by minute.

Let’s put it another way. Let’s assume the population of the U.S. is 350 million. That means each and every one of those 350,000,000, from the oldest senior to the newest baby, owes $100,000+. Therefore as mentioned above, a family of 4 needs $400,00 to pay their share of the credit card debt. And what happens to your credit card balance when you can’t pay it in full. You get assessed interest charges. And what happens when you can’t afford to even pay the interest that is accruing. Yeah… the balance goes up exponentially, especially when year after year after year you keep spending more than you take it. Forget horror movies, just take a look at how fast the numbers change on the debt clock if you want to be frightened.

Here is an obvious question… Why is nothing being done to stop this insanity? Now for an opinion, aka my conspiracy theory, and how I see this all relating to Orwell’s 1984.

Every day that this situation gets worse, every day that more and more ordinary people become more and more dependent on the government, every day that more and more people actually NEED government assistance to merely survive, every one of those days is a win for Big Brother, i.e. the elites of this world who are doing all they can to establish the “prole” sector of humanity described in George Orwell’s 1984. If Big Brother wins, the middle class disintegrates and evaporates perhaps never to be seen or heard from again. People become completely dependent on government for everything, for financial matters, for their health care etc.

And when that happens, if that happens, hopefully it never happens, but if it did, how much freedom would you really have? How much control over you would Big Brother then possess? If you can’t cover an unexpected $1000 expense today, we could debate how “free” you really are even now? But magnify that to the “nth” degree and you will find slavery and servitude, not freedom, on the other side! Perhaps these examples are not perfect but for a somewhat realistic look at what this might look like, take a look at China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela etc. and imagine all of that but even worse.

Maybe I am all wet, maybe William J. H. Boetcker is completely wrong. Maybe the idea of personal and governmental responsible spending and saving/thrift is pure stupidity when we could just sit back and let “Big Brother” take care of us. To that end, Big Brother could set up a digital currency. Big Brother could monitor our bank account 24/7 on our behalf just to make sure nobody hacks it. I mean why else would Big Brother want to monitor our finances? In essence we could just give Big Brother complete power of attorney over us and never have to worry about anything anymore.

WE COULD DO THAT… and on January 1st every year in Times Square, in our homes or elsewhere we could welcome in 1984 over and over again.

Spoiler Alert: I must tell you, as depressing as it is, that Orwell’s 1984 did not end well for us “proles.” However, there was one major difference between the novel and today. The difference is this… in the beginning of the novel Big Brother had already won, Big Brother was in complete control ruling the world. That is not the case today. In countries around the world like Argentina, Italy, and Sweden I see hope. I see European farmers and Canadian truckers standing up to 2024’s would be Big Brothers. In my home country of Canada I see the province of Alberta leading the charge against those who would take away our freedoms. I see Australian New South Wales member of parliament John Ruddick standing up to Australian authoritarianism. I see new social media platforms like Rumble and Telegram arising and hopefully replacing the “kiss the government ass” platforms like Meta and Google and YouTube. I see podcasts like Joe Rogan and Dan Bongino growing exponentially in size every day. There are a new wave of investigative journalists rising up, as well as websites/platforms like Rumble and Telegram and hopefully Musk’s X, to challenge the gaslighting that goes on every morning, noon and night on main stream media networks and social media networks mentioned above.

I want to end this with a lengthy quote from 1984. Mr. O’Brien, an Inner Party member of Big Brother, has tricked the main character, Winston Smith, into revealing his “disloyalty” to Big Brother and O’Brien is now overseeing the “process” to “reintegrate” Winston so he will become useful once again. Sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton speaking about MAGA supporters when she said “at some time maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members.” Truly 1984 is rearing its head in 2024. Back to Mr. O’Brien… Knowing that when he is done with Winston, the fact that he tells Winston the following will not matter at all, Mr. O’Brien states:

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

The really pertinent question is… Do we understand this? Mr. O’Brien is out there all over the world. “He” is a Prime Minister or “President” of a country. “He” is embedded in government bureaucracies all over the world. “He” can be found in organizations world-wide like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum (WEF) , and the World Health Organization (WHO). You will find “him” in the “City of London” (not the big metropolis but the small part of big London where the Bank of England etc. is found) and “Wall Street.” He is in monstrously large hedge funds. You will find “him” in academia, from local schoolboards to Ivy League colleges. You will find ‘him” as well in main stream media, social media platforms and in big tech.

It may have been fiction in the late 1940’s when Orwell wrote 1984 but it is dangerously close to being reality in 2024!

Doug