Letter: Orwell misapplied in recent op-ed

A recent Op-Ed attempted to use George Orwell’s book “1984 “ to criticize the Republican Party, its platform and its practices.

Yes, Orwell’s “1984” was a dire warning of totalitarianism.  Otherwise, the Op-Ed is off base.

Orwell wrote about the totalitarianism that comes out of a one-party fusion between politics and the state.  It specifically was a critique of Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and the emerging Soviet satellites post WWII, and also during the rise of fascism in Germany. The Bolsheviks rose to power in the aftermath of the 1917 Revolution in tsarist Russian. At that time there were multiple political parties vying for power: Mensheviks, the Kadets, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Constitutional Democrats, the Bolsheviks and others.

During and after the ensuing Civil War (1917-23), the Bolsheviks (although a minority party) gained power and eventually drove the other parties out of existence, including the exile and murder of their leaders and followers. The result was the so called Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which evolved into dictatorship within a dictatorship run by Josef Stalin.  Under Stalin, there was only one party that dictated conformity of thought and news (which Orwell referred to as the Ministry of Truth), literature and art (Soviet Realism) and the economy (Marist Leninism).

Does that sound even remotely like Wyoming and the GOP? There are currently four political parties in Wyoming: Republican, Democrat, Constitution, Libertarian. And there are also unaffiliated voters who don’t identify with any party platform, and are nearly equal in number to registered Democrats.  In the United States, there are over a dozen different political parties.

All parties have platforms and values. They have since our founding when the Whigs and Democrats differentiated themselves.  The GOP platform is transparently debated by Wyoming’s GOP committeemen and committeewomen, who are elected by all of us through a representative process just like the way we send elected representatives to Cheyenne and Washington.

The platform debate entertains a diversity of ideas. It is classic Norman Rockwell America in-progress. Once adopted, the party platform represents what the party stands for every two years. The platform does not tell people what to think.

The platform allows citizens to align with the party they best identify with, and behind which they can to drive legislation and candidates. And there is lots of diversity and choice across the multiple parties in Wyoming.

Wyoming and the GOP look nothing like George Orwell’s “1984” or what was described in the Op-Ed. The only thing that resembles “1984” is that Op-Ed, which sounds like it came out of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

(s) jim vetter

Cody