George Orwell’s Animal Farm has been coming back to me in recent months. It is interesting how a book read years ago can leave little pieces of itself that never go away. The piece of Animal Farm that I have never forgotten is the sign.
But, first some background for those who don’t know the story or don’t remember.
After years of oppression by human farmers, the animals decide to rebel. They run the humans off and take over the farm to run themselves. The pigs, who lead the insurrection, carry on that leadership under the new animal-run regime. One of the first orders of business is to create a constitution of sorts. They call it the “Seven Commandments of Animalism.” Central to their philosophy is that all animals are created equal and all humans are bad. The commandments are condensed into a simple maxim, “Four Legs Good. Two Legs Bad.”
This was something that every animal on the farm knew as an undeniable truth. It was the call of the revolution that drove out those oppressive humans.
Four legs good, two legs bad. A crudely lettered sign bearing those words was soon hung up over the barn door.
As time went on, the pigs, in their leadership role, began to see things from a different perspective. They felt that in order for their farm to survive they would need to interact at some level with the human world. Eventually the pigs felt they needed to act more human, and so they started to wear clothes and began walking on two legs.
The story comes to its end as the other farm animals realize things at the farm seem much like the days of human control, except now they work even harder. Then one day they notice the forgotten sign. It reads, “Four Legs Good. Two Legs Better.”
Most didn’t seem to remember it that way, but there it was, just as clear as the day after the revolution.
Though Animal Farm was first published in 1945, it’s a good lesson plan for the presidential administration we are facing. Something tells me we may be having a lot of “four legs good, two legs better” moments. The reality we remember, and can even show proof of, seems to be twisting into realities we know to be not true, yet stated as fact. Bizarre doesn’t begin to explain phenomena as weird as this.
Strange though it may be – and even as interesting as it may be – I worry for the country I love. I worry that my heart won’t be able to absorb the all tears I feel are coming.
We are living a fiction that calls for us to move on as if nothing is wrong.
Our sense of decency and trust in 240 years of democracy propels us to believe we will get through. I want to believe that. But at the moment, there are just too many red flags flying for me to relax.
And more sprout up every day. They are becoming calls to action. Calls for outrage at the perverted view of what makes a country great.
Do I embrace this altered state of reality or do I confront it? After all, I do walk on two legs. You might say I have a stake in what is going on. But in the end, it is not about how many legs are better. It is about what you know to be true and not true. More to the point, how quietly you might be willing to accept what you know not to be true.
Perhaps it is best to deny the truth you know and stay quiet. After all, waves aren’t always a safe place to be if all you really want is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Be honest, though. When a thing is true, you know it. Maybe it is just the size of a crowd or what a person said last week and denies saying this week. Or maybe it is what you know when you see a picture of a child crying because their parents have been killed by the war they are fleeing and all they want is the same safety that we here in Concord are blessed with.
We can’t walk away from what we know to be true. Because if we do, all that will be left is to cower and hope they don’t come for us next.
(John Gfroerer of Concord owns a video production company based at the Capitol Center for the Arts.)