After reading George Packer’s piece in the July 2019 issue of The Atlantic, I’m prepared to argue there’s a third book that should be added as a pillar: “Feet of Clay,” by Terry Pratchett.
I agree it’s a tenuous argument at best, despite Pratchett’s well-deserved reputation as a modern satirist.
Let’s start with Packer’s article, wherein he reviews Dorian Lynskey’s “The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984.”
Orwell’s lasting power comes, Lynskey argues, not form idiot interpretations of the novel but through its basic message: “The moral,” as Lynskey quotes Orwell, “to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”
Enter Sir Samuel Vimes. Descendant of “Stoneface” Vimes, who executed the last rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. No matter the king was mad. No matter he had a horse as privy councilor. No matter he tortured opponents, critics, and probably even loyalists who got up his nose. That he was king, and that Stoneface Vimes killed him means, as far as Dragon King of Arms, that Vimes is an unperson, and the unperson who is Cecil Wormsborough St. John “Nobby” Nobbs, as a descendant of the Earl of Ankh, ought to rise to the throne. Toe be, of course, a puppet of the snobbier remnants of Ankh-Morpork nobility who think they ought to be in charge but they don’t quite have the genealogy to pull it off.
And let’s not forget the golems, fighting for justice, but getting it, as it turns out, very wrong.
The schemers aim to use fakery and imagery to promote their puppet and become de facto rulers of the city, most powerful in the Discworld – putting the “right” people in place. And since Lord Vetinari, current ruler of Ankh-Morpork is a self-described “benevolent tyrant,” the people won’t really care who’s in charge, as long as the economy keeps purring along.
Back to Packer’s article:
As Lynskey points out, Orwell didn’t forsee ‘that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals, and without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.’
Or what the state, the party, the charismatics, say it should be.
And more, lest you think this is only aimed in one right-leaning direction:
Progressive doublethink – which has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kind – creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice – a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.
Want an example? Packer says:
Many people on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance – even its subject matter – is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value. This confusion of categories guides judgments all across the worlds of media, the arts, and education, from movie reviews to grant committees. Some people who register the assumption as doublethink might be privately troubles, but they don’t say so publicly. Then self-censorship turns into self-deception, until the recognition itself disappears – a lie you accept becomes a lie you forget. In this way, intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police.
This willing constriction of intellectual freedom will do lasting damage. It corrupts the ability to think clearly, and it undermines both culture and progress. Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. “Nothing is gained by teaching a parrot a new word,” Orwell wrote in 1946. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.
Sir Samuel Vimes, in Pratchett’s novel, knows both hatred and virtue. He sees them in himself, and hates both of them. He stands as the man in the middle who is still able to see clearly, doubts his convictions, doubts his doubts, and still manages to fix things, or at least make them as fixable as Ankh-Morpork will allow them to be fixed. No free elections under Lord Vetinari, but under Lord Vetinari it’s the bad guys who end up in prison. Or summarily executed. Because, you know, tyrant.
So in this way “Feet of Clay” isn’t dystopian. It’s a satire of the real, very imperfect world where we live, wherein there are people like Sir Samuel Vimes who know that two plus two can only equal four.
More on this as I continue to read this wonderful, and increasingly timeless, story.
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