After the torture bill (S 3930) passess the Senate today, America will, legally, be a police state in which the power to arrest and torture anyone will be fully in the hands of the President. This means that we will all be living under the equivalent of the single party government called INGSOC by George Orwell in his eerily prescient "1984."
Although Orwell was fundamentally correct in predicting the end state of totalitarian regimes, he overlooked the distinctively American contribution to this process. In America, we enslaved ourselves not through the naked brutality of a dominant cadre of authoritarians, but through the subtle wizardry of their media technicians, particularly the TV propaganda producers.
Americans value comfort, convenience, and entertainment. The staging of an authoritarian coup as a dramatic television wrestling match against evil Islamic terrorists was sufficient to presuade Americans to accept the torture of our enemies. When the final step was taken to expand the use of torture to anyone opposing the President, a majority were persuaded that a President who always addressed them politely on TV, standing in front of flags and lovely blue banners, could be trusted not to abuse his power.
Under American INGSOC, all important issues are reduced to TV theater. The President is a theatrical character. The Iraq war is a theatrical creation. The satisfying torture of evil terrorists happens on TV shows that most viewers cannot distinguish from reality. The genius of Karl Rove and the other enablers of American INGSOC was that TV theater could completely overwhelm what is quaintly termed "objective reality." They realized that the meaning of the text of a new law cannot stand up against a well-produced TV spot of a congressman thundering out that we will not coddle terrorists.
Today marks the greatest triumph of Karl Rove. He has used the tools of modern media to give to the President the power to imprison, torture, and kill at his discretion. Welcome to INGSOC.