“Big Brother is watching you.”

With the President’s emergency alert going out last week, I felt it was appropriate to look at the novel 1984.  As Orwell wrote this novel in the 1940s, during and after the World War II, he warned of thought police and screens that watch and communicate to people.  I had a strong response when I first received the message from our president and it was mixed.  I was glad there was a way to contact most of the citizens about impending danger to us, but at the same time it was strange to have impending danger on my mind and quite possible a danger that our government may have created.  I value my privacy and access to me so I still was uneasy with the ability of the government to disturb my day at their will.  More uneasily, I’m interested / worried about what is next if this has been allowed to be created.  I was also interested in how this was called a Presidential Alert, not FEMA or an organization that is meant to protect us.  Just some things to ponder.  Much like the protagonist of the novel, I worry about a totalitarian regime happening and no one doing anything to stop it or at the very least question these practices.

From a literary view, this novel serves as a warning and an example of what could happen.  Will it?  Has it?  That will be something that we will have to figure out and thanks to this piece of pop culture, we will be able to figure everything out or at the very least resist.