ashley elizabeth miller

Trump’s sycophantic soiree in Dallas this week takes one back to reading Orwell’s novel on life under an all-ruling oligarchy, 1984, in which Party members participate in Hate Week – an entire seven-day stretch dedicated to demeaning the “other side.”

While the GOP’s midterm convention in Texas did not last quite as long as Orwell’s imagined reality, the splashy made-for-TV show sure hit many of the same notes. Republican lawmakers, as well as officials close to the president’s administration, such as former press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was no doubt glad to be back in the conversation, derided Democrats in almost the same manner as Party members spewing hate against its enemies, including the Resistance – otherwise known as the Brotherhood – in the pages of 1984.

“The whole population of Oceania was in a frenzy of hatred,” Orwell wrote about the fictional event that occurred in Victory Square, what observers today – particularly those who live in London – might know as Trafalgar Square. In the book, Britain has been absorbed into Oceania, one of the three remaining geopolitical powers of the world. 

Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, Fox News shared a clip from outside the convention’s location at American Airlines Center in Texas’s third-most-populous city, Dallas, in which a brimming green street sign read: Victory Park. I mean, talk about a point of parallel: Victory Square… Victory Park?

In an event meant to stir up the same sort of derision toward the opposing political party as Hate Week in 1984, GOP bigwigs, such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain (a real piece of work), took time out of their splash in the spotlight to vilify Democrats with objectively hateful rhetoric.

“They hate Christians. They hate Jews. They hate capitalism. They hate the Constitution and they hate America,” Cruz said.

As for McClain, she harped on the wider Republican message going into the midterms: paint all Democrats as crazy communists. “On our side we got common sense,” she said. “Now on the other side we got communist crazy.”

One key point of difference between the two happenings – one which occurred before our eyes, on screens, and the other read in the pages of a book that is becoming more real by the day – is the ability to protest.

Luckily, in modern-day America, protest movements are still – for the time – allowed. In fact, down in Dallas this week, masses of protesting people took to the streets.

“This is why we’ve come together: to reject hate, to reject division, to reject political rhetoric that is formed in hate speech,” Kardal Coleman, chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said at a news conference about the event.

As political celebrities, men and women of our country, working in the highest halls of government, continue attacking their peers for their own personal amassment of (more) power — in spite of the evil it spreads in the minds of many — one can only hold Orwell’s prevailing message in 1984 in mind: think for yourself.