1984 - Will we see it is upon us, before it is too late?

Achilles Diary on the Daily Kos Nails it:

I remember the first time I read "1984" and the creepy feeling that came over me at the scene of the Two Minutes Hate.  Mindless people, fearful of reprisals, hurling hatred because everyone else is doing it, unsure of who or why they are hating, but convinced that if they don't, something really, really bad will happen to them, because Big Brother Will Know.

At the time, like everyone else, I took this book to be about the Soviet Union, those oppressive Communists in the totalitarian lands behind the Iron Curtain.  It was a horrible vision, but one I believed could never come to America, a land where people have protections under the Constitution, and a belief in decency and the common good made us different, and better, than the Evil Empire.

Seven years of George W. Bush have changed my opinion on this.  

I couldn’t agree more, however we really saw the beginning of this in the Reagan era with the proliferation of  “newspeak” “Reaganspeak” beginning,  with phrases such as the “peace-keeper missile” and "freedom fighters" vs. "terrorists". And we all know how that last one turned out for us.