Animal Farm by George Orwell--A Textbook For These Times

Orwell, George: Animal Farm (New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1946)

Hopefully, most of you are already familiar with George Orwell's classic satirical novel, "Animal Farm".  Even more hopefully, many of you have either read or reread it within the last two weeks.  There will never be a more appropriate time to read and study this little masterpiece.  It is regularly read and studied in high school and college literature classes all over the world as well as many philosophy and political science classes.  The book is only 128 pages and can easily be read in one sitting by most readers.  Yet it contains lessons that will last you a lifetime.  As I recall, I read "Animal Farm" the first time in about 1968 or 1969 which was also a most appropriate time to read the book.  At that time, Richard Nixon was rising to his second ascendancy in American politics after his famous Checkers Speech  in which he stated that we "...won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore...".  What a shame that he never stuck to his word!  Nixon was elected to the Presidency in 1968 and went on to escalate the Viet Nam War to the point that we lost 58,220 of our finest young citizens.  Nixon also went on to perpetrate the Watergate Scandal and resign from office rather than face impeachment.  

George Orwell

Now as we discuss my most recent reading of the book "Animal Farm", the White House is being illegitimately occupied ( I use the military sense of the word "occupied".) by a career criminal, self admitted sex offender, and seriously mentally ill individual, TRAITOR Donald Trump.  TRAITOR Trump is totally out of control, exhibiting a serious megalomania and an unwillingness to accept advice or criticism.  In less than three weeks, this lunatic has the country on the verge of total disgrace in the minds of both our allies and our enemies.  Could there ever be a better time to read a satirical novel about the dangers of blindly following a leader with megalomania and no respect for his citizens?  There are moral, political, and ethical lessons to be learned from "Animal Farm" which can help every citizen of the USA to learn to stand up to tyranny, injustice, and criminality at the highest levels.  Looking back on the Nixon Administration, we can at least see that the country does have the backbone and moral strength to stand up to and put an end to the nefarious efforts of a would be tyrant.  

A few years after the original publication of "Animal Farm", George Orwell stated: 

"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly, or indirectly, against totalitarianism.  Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one artistic whole." George Orwell, "Animal Farm" pp. vii

Thank God for the work, the vision, and the political foresight of George Orwell.  "Animal Farm" tells a satirical story about a small English farm which is seized and operated by the animals as what appears to  be intended to be a cooperative, a communal effort, or a socialistic experiment.  Over the course of the novel, the pigs who are in charge of the management seize power and turn the farm into an obvious totalitarian state with absolute power in the hands of one Napoleon, a pig with a serious case of megalomania which he carries to the extreme and ruins the lives, hopes, and dreams of the other animals.  The book is a literary classic which has never fallen out of popularity in the three quarters of a century since it was written.  It is also a metaphorical "burning bush" for the citizens of America today.  There are marked similarities between Napoleon the pig and Donald Trump the TRAITOR who several sources tell us conspired with Vladimir Putin to hack the American election of 2016 and seize control of the White House.  

Do yourself and the country a favor and read "Animal Farm" as soon as you can get your hands on a copy.  If you have read it in the past, refresh your memory and reread it with a focus on comparing Napoleon the pig and Donald Trump The TRAITOR.  Then make a personal commitment to join the American Resistance and fight to save America from an illegitimate megalomaniac.