As the media and the masses battle, march, and generally freak out, there’s been an ongoing comparison of the current government to Nazi Germany, the USSR, and even Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I get that comparing everything to the Third Reich is a common practice on the Internet but as everyone is lamenting “woe is me!” or “woe is MY country!” please review these tiny but critical details:
Hitler came to power by rising through the government but he claimed the top spot on his own. He grabbed power.
The USSR appointed their Premier from the senior leaders of the Party. The average citizen had no say in the matter.
Big Brother was given the unilateral power of Oceania at the start of the superstate but when the story opens, the human is likely gone and become just a picture on a poster; it’s Ingsoc that has control over the Proles of the country, who really have no impact on who becomes members of the ruling Party.
This country elected Trump. Assuming that all investigations don’t reveal that something in the election process went awry and let’s be honest: we’ll never have a satisfactory answer to that. There are still people contesting what happened in Florida’s election 2000. We still don’t know who really shot JFK and even if we had an eye witness with a news reel that captured everything turn up tomorrow, we will still not believe it 100%. No one wants to believe the facts in these scenarios and we’ll always harbor some doubt. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Don’t ever forget that: this country elected Trump and that makes things very, very different from these real and fictional nations.