Finally, someone else makes the Goldstein-Trump comparison. I’ve been making that comparison for years, but haven’t heard it elsewhere.

There’re few things more obnoxious than people calling the Trump administration “Orwellian.” As if 1984 were about a flamboyant businessman and television personality who becomes president and says wild shit, only to be immediately denounced for it by 85%+ of institutional media, academia, and entertainment.

Maybe Trump could be a villain in a dystopian novel, but it would have to be a new kind of story. The major dystopian novels all center around nameless, faceless ideologically controlled bureaucracies, not flamboyant personalities like Trump. Big Brother is not a personality, but is rather a mascot, a logo for the state.

If the Left wants to rewrite 1984, they should really do a sequel in which Goldstein overthrows the Party as the leader of a populist revolt. Goldstein can then be revealed as a self-serving demagogue who institutes a race-based caste system, creating a society even worse than the one that preceded it, leaving everyone longing for the days of stable Party control.

I’m not saying that’s at all our present reality. Just that if the Left wants to write Trump into 1984, that’s the only way to do it in a remotely convincing way.