1984 in 2025

This is an excerpt from The RooneyReport, an email newsletter from Brian Rooney, a longtime television journalist.

Forty-one years have passed since the year 1984 of George Orwell’s imagined dystopian future in his 1949 novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”  As the old saying goes, “Fiction is the lie that tells truth.”

  * * * 

    “We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 percent over the past year.”
— 1984
      “Prices are going down, not going up. I see that we had a couple of states where gasoline was at $1.98 a gallon. Nobody thought they’d see that for years maybe. And as you know, the cost of eggs has come down like 93%, 94% since we took office, and they’re pretty much normally priced now.”
— Donald Trump

 * * *

The Ministry of Truth
        — 1984

Truth Social
 — Donald Trump

* * *

The “Disputed Territories”
— 1984
  “We need Greenland for national security.” 
— Donald Trump

* * * 
“Ignorance is Strength”
— 1984
  “I love the uneducated.”
— Donald Trump

 * * *
“The Memory Hole,” disposal system for inconvenient information. 
— 1984
  Trump administration removes from government websites and libraries references to race, gender, sexual orientation and diversity, equity initiatives.

 * * *
The Thought Police
— 1984
  The US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it will screen the social media of immigrants and visa holders for evidence of antisemitic and anti-administration activity.

* * *
 “Goodsex,” Any form of sex considered acceptable by the Party; specifically, married heterosexual sex for the exclusive purpose of providing new children for the Party. All other forms of sex are considered sexcrime.
— 1984
“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
— Donald Trump

* * * 
“All their ferocity was turned outward, against enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals.”
— 1984
  “They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country.”
 — Donald Trump

* * * 
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”
— 1984
A third of Americans believe Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him.

 * * *
“Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
— 1984 
“Ultimately, I'm always right."
— Donald Trump