“Napoleon is always right.”

You remember obedient Boxer saying that repeatedly in Orwell’s Animal Farm, right? And you remember how obedient Boxer ended, right? Of course you do. He was slaughtered and pressed into glue. A rather unfortunate ending for the obedient.

But he was obedient, obedient even unto death.

All animals were equal, remember? It’s just some animals were more equal than others. Seems to be a neglected unpleasantry of being sheeple in a world system where wolves exercise the control.

But Orwell’s warnings were just for his generation, of course. We would never–in our enlightened, progressive, secular, egalitarian, evolved cultus replete with elites–when we have Silicon Valley and Hollywood (the center of classical wisdom, don’t you know), and Portland and Seattle–when we can Tweet (well, some can … if they tow the line of “Napoleon is always right”) … we would never fall for it. A dated novel like Orwell’s Animal Farm having truth to speak to us? Impossible. Come on, man.

We could never fall into such totalitarianism. We could never wake to discover free speech is disappearing because of it being labeled ‘hate speech’ and, because sheeple want to be kind, above all. No, it could never happen. Napoleon is always right, remember? Just ask Boxer. Oh wait, Boxer is … well … nevermind.

That was just a time period when Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky and Mao and Hitler and Goebbels, et al were rather unkind to a few unfortunates. But their kind words did not sound lupine; they sounded so un-wolflike and good: unity, togetherness, equality, purity, peace.

“Napoleon is always right,” of course. We know better now. We have progressed. That’s a great lesson of history … that man learns and becomes more noble. Your news bears that out, right?

Chicago has become the new Eden, didn’t you hear? If you’ll just step over the bodies, it’s Eden, I tell you. And San Francisco, it is better still. You can not only see Alcatraz as a tourist attraction but you can do so while standing in human excrement and hypodermic needles in Chinatown. The tents of the homeless can often block the view of the bridge but, come on, man, be flexible. We are progressing.

Yeats was surely mad when he penned “The Second Coming“:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

There’s no way we are not getting better. There’s no way a sifting is underway. There’s no way it could be that. Napoleon is always right, didn’t you hear? Come on, man. Paul was surely just having a bad day when he wrote,

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:21-25 ESV).

It is impossible we are being sifted. Flat impossible, I say.

Hey, does anyone else smell the glue?