Is America a "Soft" Orwellian State?

In a previous post about the OWS protests I mentioned that I sometimes wonder if we are living in a "soft" Orwellian state. I've been thinking about his issue a bit recently - probably less than I should have been all along but I have many distractions. I enjoyed the feedback I received last spring from my series of posts on education and I think I'll conduct another set of posts devoted to the titular question: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

I should set out some parameters about what I think constitutes an Orwellian state and what might differentiate a 'Hard" and "Soft" Orwellian state. The adjective Orwellian invokes novelist George Orwell and his vision of a tyrannical distopian society ruled by the state. The best examples of such a state come from his novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Orwell's other writings, especially his writing about British colonialism and the Spanish Civil War also lend a great deal of perspective on his worldview. Wikipedia is a good place to turn for a more detailed description of an Orwellian state:

The adjective Orwellian refers to these behaviours of The Party, especially when the Party is the State:

• Invasion of personal privacy, either directly physically or indirectly by surveillance.
• State control of its citizens' daily life, as in a "Big Brother" society.
• The adoration of state leaders and their Party.
• The encouragement of "doublethink", whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent, e.g. giving up liberty for freedom. Similar terms used, are "doublespeak", and "newspeak"
• The revision of history in the favour of the State's interpretation of it.
• A (generally) dystopian future.
• The use of euphemism to describe an agency, program or other concept, especially when the name denotes the opposite of what is actually occurring. E.g. a department that wages war is called the "Ministry of Peace" or "Ministry of Defence".

 The "Hard" Orwellian state would feature all of these characteristics universally. More difficult to conceptualize is the "Soft" Orwellian state. I can see a few options:

1. A state which features some but not all of these characteristics.
2. A state which features all of these characteristics but does so imperfectly - they haven't achieved complete control, revision, etc.
3. A society which features all of these characteristics but in which the state is not the agent of oppression.

Arguably the third option is not actually an Orwellian state at all because every example Orwell writes about is a government which oppresses its people. This third option may be worth sussing out as I go forward with my posts. It may also be easy for me to prove that some very limited aspect of each feature does indeed exist. Looking at the above criteria, almost any state could be considered a Soft Orwellian state. That is not my goal and I don't want to end up congratulate myself for leaping only the lowest analytic hurdles. I encourage my readers to question my thought process and post challenges in the comments.

My plan for organizing my thoughts it to take the above features and post on them one at a time. The first post will be about Invasion of Privacy; the second about the state's control over daily life; the third about adoration of leaders, the fourth about doublethink, the fifth about revisionism, the sixth about euphemism, and my final post in the series will revisit the question: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

I will leave you with the following message from the Department of Homeland Security: If you see something, say something.

Rough treatment of the Occupy protesters.

Sometimes I wonder if we are living in a "soft" Orwellian state. I'll be writing more on those thoughts soon. Until then, here are some videos of how our nation treats those who oppose Wall St. Even Veterans of the war in Iraq aren't granted their right to free speech without paying a terrible cost.

Warning, language is not safe for work.

The move to crush the protests is on. Atlanta just evicted hundreds from Woodruff park and arrested around 50 protesters. Police forces nationwide are trying to deny any living space to the protesters in the hope that they will fade away this winter.