Here is a link to the essay:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye
The dynamic that Orwell focused on is that as a society becomes more mired in bureaucracy and absurdities, the truly able people become less willing to participate in the ongoing farce that government and society becomes, which leads to many self-reinforcing and unpleasant outcomes.
In the U.S. today, we have the same mindless bureaucratic creep across all of society and the dawning realization among many that perhaps there is no real choice in any election, since the process that creates political candidates in the first place is incapable of creating any real diversity of perspective or philosophies. For example, if you heard a no-name description of the Bush II administration and Obama's administration so far, are you sure you could tell which was a Republican and which was a Democrat? (Remember, Bush gave us Medicare Part D.)
The point I am working up to (and which I heard in a recent interview) is that America today is spitting out the same type of people Britain was spitting out in the decades leading up to WWII: people who understand the nature of the system and how to work successfully within it, but who are utterly incapable of grasping the meaningless and ultimately ridiculous nature of what they are doing. The kind of person I am describing is sort of like an institutionally molded idiot-savant who can execute the trivial and tactical flawlessly, but who is conditioned not to ever be able to engage in any meaningful or effective strategic thinking or even be aware that such thinking exists.
In the case of the U.S., it is as if the assumptions underlying the "Dilbert" cartoon have become part of our social DNA without anyone every questioning the process that led to that outcome. It's like it started off as a joke, and everyone thought it was funny, but over time the joke became the reality and the fact that it was only supposed to be a ridiculous interpretation of reality has been completely forgotten. Things like the world of Dilbert begin to seem more like exposed pieces of cultural infrastructure rather than works of parody.
Here are a few bits from Orwell's piece:
It is fairly certain that the bulk of the English people were behind Chamberlain's foreign policy. More, it is fairly certain that the same struggle was going on in Chamberlain's mind as in the minds of ordinary people. His opponents professed to see in him a dark and wily schemer, plotting to sell England to Hitler, but it is far likelier that he was merely a stupid old man doing his best according to his very dim lights. It is difficult otherwise to explain the contradictions of his policy, his failure to grasp any of the courses that were open to him. Like the mass of the people, he did not want to pay the price either of peace or of war. And public opinion was behind him all the while, in policies that were completely incompatible with one another.
The nation is bound together by an invisible chain. At any normal time the ruling class will rob, mismanage, sabotage, lead us into the muck; but let popular opinion really make itself heard, let them get a tug from below that they cannot avoid feeling, and it is difficult for them not to respond....Even among the inner clique of politicians who brought us to our present pass, it is doubtful whether there were any conscious traitors. The corruption that happens in England is seldom of that kind. Nearly always it is more in the nature of self-deception, of the right hand not knowing what the left hand doeth. And being unconscious, it is limited. One sees this at its most obvious in the English press. Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash.
One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.
...After 1832 the old land-owning aristocracy steadily lost power, but instead of disappearing or becoming a fossil they simply intermarried with the merchants, manufacturers and financiers who had replaced them, and soon turned them into accurate copies of themselves. The wealthy shipowner or cotton-miller set up for himself an alibi as a country gentleman, while his sons learned the right mannerisms at public schools which had been designed for just that purpose. England was ruled by an aristocracy constantly recruited from parvenus. And considering what energy the self-made men possessed, and considering that they were buying their way into a class which at any rate had a tradition of public service, one might have expected that able rulers could be produced in some such way.
And yet somehow the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring, finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like Eden or Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for Baldwin, one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air. The mishandling of England's domestic problems during the nineteen-twenties had been bad enough, but British foreign policy between 1931 and 1939 is one of the wonders of the world. Why? What had happened? What was it that at every decisive moment made every British statesman do the wrong thing with so unerring an instinct?
Does any of that sound familiar?For long past there had been in England an entirely functionless class, living on money that was invested they hardly knew where, the ‘idle rich’, the people whose photographs you can look at in the Tatler and the Bystander, always supposing that you want to. The existence of these people was by any standard unjustifiable. They were simply parasites, less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog.
By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this. By 1930 millions were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them – into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.
For some reason, this perspective is helpful to me. With these ideas in mind I can watch politicians and other things on TV and at least have a framework for understanding what I am seeing.
