GEORGE ORWELL’S book, 1984 was published in 1949, just a few years after the end of the second world war. I can recall reading it when I was in my teens or my twenties, I suppose, and thinking that it wouldn’t be possible to brainwash a large swath of this country into “Newspeak” as Orwell described in his novel. But when I turned to my cell phone last week shortly after waking up and saw that the stock markets were down once again because of uncertainty about the new administration’s policies, I began to wonder.

As I prepared for the day, I supposed the bad market news would be spun to mean something such as “worse is better.” I was recalling news stories from the previous day during which the president, responding to a direct question about the possibility of a recession, said a “transition period” was likely because he was doing something very big. A transition period?

On that day last week, the market fell broadly, the biggest drop since 2022. No one can be completely sure why people and institutions sell or buy their holdings on a particular day, but there was much talk about the administration’s trade wars with Mexico, Canada and China, along with the uncertainty of their impact.

The next day the market fell again, and the president’s spokespeople carried on with the theme. It was a detoxification moment for the country, and — don’t worry — after a period of rehabilitation we’d all be better off. And then the president imposed more tariff on Canadian products. His loyalists parroted his thought, and the spreading elixir seemed far more ridiculous than hopeful.

How would the people in their late fifties or early sixties, thinking about their nest eggs for retirement, greet the news? Would they welcome this downturn? Would they be languidly pleased with this sudden, self-induced “transition”? Do they feel reassured that, yes, we’ve all been hooked on some economic drug that has fried our brains and failed our livelihoods? Would they happily agree they’d be better off once they adjust to the new way of doing things?

The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, legendary for its conservative editorials, called the trade war that the administration has initiated the “dumbest” in history. A few days later, the same editorial board followed up by saying, “We said from the beginning that this North American trade war is the dumbest in history, and we were being kind.”1

It isn’t unique in history that influential people become enamored of an ideology. Ideas, when coupled with power, can become dangerous for people who disagree, unless the ideas include freedom of dissent and expression as did the notions of the founders of the United States. For less tolerant leaders, dissent threatens ideology, and power is marshaled to suppress it.

In his science fiction epic, The Three-Body Problem, writer Cixin Liu begins with a description of the “madness years” when the Cultural Revolution punished Chinese scientists whose research pointed to different conclusions than the leaders prescribed. 2 Readers may similarly recall Galileo as a poignant example; his scientific discoveries, particularly his support for the heliocentric model of the solar system, led to condemnation for heresy in 1633. 3 Most school children today know who had the right answer on that one.

It’s too early to suggest that dissent alone will be met by the administration with torture, imprisonment or death. But arrest is definitely possible, and there is evidence that disliked dissent can result in harsh punishment. In a post on Friday, Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder asserts that the administration’s arrest of a student in the name of “antisemitism” is possibly itself antisemitism. 4

Vigilance is important, and attention to language helps open sleepy eyes. In his work “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell wrote:

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportation, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

George Saunders, the writer and teacher who wrote Booker Award winner, Lincoln in the Bardo, referenced Orwell in a recent, slyly worded Substack post on what to look for. He wrote:

Orwell, Saunders and Snyder sound important alarms. Beware retribution, intolerance, and punishment hiding beneath euphemistic and outright dishonest phrasing.