As paradoxical as saying so might be for some, far from competing with it, it co-exists, even meshes -- in a 'worst of both brave new worlds' kinda way -- with the 'Huxleyan' augury. For its part, the Fourth Estate is little more than a fifth column, on the one hand serving the interests of the neoliberal elites, and on the other, their neoconservative (though not always mutually exclusive by any means) counterparts. Broadly speaking the former serve to both underscore and realize Huxley's dire vision, the latter doing much the same for Orwell's.
To be sure, Huxley's original insights and Postman's conclusions in kind are still much in evidence. Nevertheless, since even 2005 -- from the pre- to the now post-Obama period -- we've witnessed a myriad array of unwelcome developments that have served to underline not just the modern reality of the respective visions of these much name-checked writers. They have in turn further paved the way for this co-existence and intermeshing to endure.
And though their perspectives derived from different 'corners' of the panopticon as it were, for their part Huxley and Orwell were a couple of folk who knew a thing or three about the misuse and abuse of political power, coercive social control, the influence and impact of the media, propaganda, perception management, groupthink, fake news, alternative facts -- along with the intersection between the two -- and further, what it would be like to live in a post-truth era. They differed perhaps only in how we'd allow -- or be forced to accept -- the outcomes as envisioned by each of them to prevail.
For our purposes, the following extract serves not just to illustrate their respective worldviews as contemplated by Postman. It brings into sharp-edged relief in this fraught epoch of unprecedented political 'hoopla and ballyhoo' a schizophrenic dilemma of existential scale. After juxtaposing Orwell's main fear of 'those who would ban books' with Huxley's fear there'd be no reason to do so because 'no-one would want to read one', Postman riffed further on the following. For him,
-- The Cesspool that is the Press-pool --
Let's unpack this insight for a bit. Beyond becoming merely a "trivial culture", we are now not simply increasingly susceptible to and 'preoccupied' by inane distractions and meaningless diversions, all the while eschewing intelligent, informed discourse in public discussion. We now prefer it seems what amounts to little more than 'duckspeak' and 'bellyfeel' from our elected representatives, their flacks, hacks and lackeys and their MSM mouthpieces -- a facile mix of meaningless weasel words, hollow cant, warmed-over catchphrases and rote talking points forming the essence of the political discourse.
Moreover, we actively seek out these distractions and become addicted to them, placing a whole new spin on the phrase 'the fix is in'! All the while we have been marginalizing -- and by default, rendering unimportant and irrelevant the Big Issues of the times -- then sabotaging any real shot we have at restoring integrity, purpose, and depth in public deliberation; at the very least said "distractions" suck up all the oxygen in the room.
Further, anytime anyone who goes against the grain of putative establishment truths or questions the shibboleths we've come to believe as reality or fact more often than not is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, the preferred weapon of mass disdain amongst the ignorant and ill-informed on the one hand and agenda-driven on the other. These targets of their critique -- the Assanges, the Snowdens et. al. -- are often relegated to the status of 'unpersons', with the unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, unauthorised leakers and those who dare to speak truth to power, including journalists avec integrity (thankfully there are still a few) being prime examples.
That a goodly slice of this has taken place with the explicit imprimatur of a notionally liberal president who amongst so many other things, promised to protect whistle-blowers -- the first POTUS it needs be noted to preside over two full terms with his nation at war on several fronts, some of which the Nobel Peace Prize recipient promised to shut down, others he initiated himself, and a few more he has more or less prepared the ground for -- is even more astonishing. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is straight out of the Orwell playbook!
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