1984 doesn't describe Trump's America nearly so well as it does Trudeau's Canada

A place where the government controls the media and news reports are all favorable to the official government policy of the moment.

A place where idiotic, contradictory slogans that are meant to condition the masses into complacency and support of their own oppression are parroted by bureaucrats and 'right-thinking' citizens. You hear them everyday, like "Freedom is Slavery" "Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech," and "Diversity Is Strength."

A place where the government can insinuate itself into every aspect of a person's life, even to the point of persecuting and imprisoning them for expressing politically incorrect ideas.

That was the dystopian society of Orwell's 1984, which was meant as a warning of what can happen under a Marxist dictatorship. But I have bad news for the throngs of vacuous people who are rushing to see the movie version of 1984 today, who see it as a parallel for what's happening in the America of Donald Trump's presidency. They've got their countries and their Big Brothers mixed up.

America has a 1st Amendment that guarantees free speech. If Trump is a fascist dictator, it's an odd kind of dictatorship where the media is continually demonizing him and literally no one is afraid to speak out against him in the most extreme terms imaginable.

We discovered this week that it's not Trump who was monitoring anyone's private communications, but he was the one being monitored.

But in the Canada of Justin Trudeau, things are very different.

There is a government-owned media, the CBC, which overwhelmingly publishes obsequious praise of Canada's head of government, Justin Trudeau and his policies.

Canada has institutionalized its misnamed Human Rights Commissions, which in true Orwellian fashion exist not to give people rights, but to deprive them of free speech if they venture into what the government decides in 'hate speech.' Canadian government functionaries frequently denounce those it deems thought criminals.

With the endorsement of their government, Canadian Marxists have effectively taken over the public education system and are brainwashing children into repeating slogans like "diversity is our strength." Diversity is neither a strength nor a weakness. It is a facet of things that can either be beneficial, harmful, or contain elements of both. It comes from the same Latin root meaning disagreement and division, which are not, of themselves, elements that strengthen societies. They are only strengths if societies learn how to effectively manage them, and in that Canada has had at best mixed results.

In Orwell's 1984, Ignorance is Strength was one of the slogans that The Party used to mollify the masses. The ignorance of those who think that 1984 applies to 2017 in the United States while championing the Orwellian manipulation employed by Canada's government are proving the contempt Orwell expressed for the great masses of people in his novel was justified.