In that wonderful book “1984” by the insightful even prophetic Mr George Orwell, and in that dystopian world he created called Oceania, where Big Brother's gaze looms large and the Ministry of Truth spins reality like a master weaver, I thought that I would plant into the story the slogan "Build Back Better".
In my embedding of this slogan into the story it becomes a twisted mantra that conceals a sinister truth. Welcome, comrades, to the theatre of the absurd, where words are weapons and truth is a casualty of the perpetual war against reason.
Here the word "Build" means to construct a labyrinth of debt and dependency, where every brick laid is another bill to be paid until you find yourself drowning in a sea of obligations. This is a world where you are "billed", the currency of servitude. Billed over and over until what you used to own flows like a river into the coffers of the state, draining the lifeblood of the citizens with each passing transaction.
Here we exchanged the word "Back", for "Lack". Lack, is the ever-present spectre of deprivation, haunting the fringes of society like a ghostly reminder of the cost of existence. It's the state you find yourself in when you've been billed into oblivion, when every penny earned is snatched away by the insatiable maw of taxation and the relentless march of the cost of living.
And then there's the word “Better” which is exchanged for “Debtor”. He is the puppet master pulling the strings of economic enslavement, who wields the power of indebtedness like a cudgel to keep the masses in line. To be a debtor in this nightmarish realm is to live a life where everything is owed to the state, where every breath taken is a debt to be repaid with interest.
As Winston Smith trudges through the bleak landscape of Airstrip One, his mind buzzing with the contradictions of Newspeak and the doublethink of the Party, he can't help but wonder: in a world where "Build Back Better" means the exact opposite, where every action leads to further entrapment, is there any hope left for freedom and autonomy? Or are we doomed to live out our days in a Kafkaesque nightmare of perpetual indebtedness, forever beholden to the whims of our bureaucratic overlords?
What is the "Better" they have in mind, and better for who? #DirectDemocracy #GeorgeOrwell
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