Trying to make the most of lockdown, I decided to revive my interest in Perry Mason novels which I used to read with avid interest in my youth. However, I was gravely disappointed when I found that they no longer held my interest. This made me think as to why? It could not be because of passage of time because some of my most favourite books are from that or even older era.

Forever curious, and after some reflection, I concluded that the books that age well have some common attributes – they are always meaningful and reveal some fundamental truths. They don’t have to be exclusively religious or philosophical as different kinds of fiction by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Agatha Christie and PG Wodehouse also fit into this genre.

This conclusion was reinforced when I found myself thinking about the truisms graphically illustrated by George Orwell in his book Animal Farm. While Orwell wrote the book as a political satire on Stalin’s Soviet Russia, the validity of its allegory is almost universal and timeless, easily translating to the present-day political landscape.

Let us explore the validity of this premise in terms of American politics by first reminding ourselves of the Animal Farm story.

Summary of Animal Farm

The story deals with a rebellion by the oppressed animals of a farm who expel their human master and take over the running of the farm. Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, take over the leadership of the farm. Snowball, an idealist, teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon, a manipulative authoritarian, rears some young puppies to become his attack dogs.

In due course Napoleons uses his attack dogs to chase Snowball away and declares himself the supreme commander. Overtime Napoleons morphs into the character of the farm’s human master and starts exploiting the animals for his personal benefit and that of his coterie.

After the rebellion, the animals had adopted Seven Commandments to define the principles on which the farm was to be run. However, after Snowball’s expulsion they realised that the commandments were being changed to their disadvantage, and the benefit of the leaders. Any challenge to the changes in the commandments is ruthlessly dealt with either by propaganda or threat of brute force.

The book ends with the oppressed animals looking into a window where Napoleon is having a party attended by local human farmers with little to distinguish between animals and humans.

Animal Farm and American Politics

To validate the universal truths laid out in book let us look at some of its main characters and explore if any parallels exist.

1. Old Major (Pig) & the Seven Commandments

Old Major was a wise old boar who inspired the rebellion and helped draw up the Seven Commandments by which the animals were to live by,

American Allegory
Old Major can be seen to represent the American founding fathers and the Seven Commandments the American constitution. Like the early history of Animal Farm, Americans prospered by declaring their unwavering allegiance to the constitution.

However, as in Animal Farm, vested interests are continually attacking the American constitution and its institutions. This is being pursued in defiance of the constitution and its democratic legislative process. Power of the mob and judiciary are being invoked to undercut the democratic process to achieve partisan outcomes. If successful, the American constitution might end up looking suspiciously like the revised commandments of the Animal Farm. Also, like the Animal Farm, this would be achieved by stealth and not with the consent of the citizens.

2. Napoleon and Snowball (Pigs)

These two main protagonists in the story can read and write. As leaders of the farm they represent two differing ideologies. Napoleon is a typical politician with an authoritarian streak while Snowball is a bit of a dreamer and an idealist.

American Allegory
These pigs represent the two main American political parties constantly vying for power and trying to run each other out of town every four years. Today’s Democratic party has degenerated into an extremely liberal and progressive entity bent upon transforming America, whereas Republicans are desperately trying to hold on to what they believe to be quintessential American values like culture, traditions, and constitution.

Both parties, when in power, use all levers of power to accumulate more authority and wealth for themselves. This results in corruption becoming almost institutionalised amongst politicians of all hues.

The truth of this statement is easily validated by looking at the immense amount of money being spent in Washington by national and international lobbying groups, making Washington DC one of the richest districts in America. The politicians supposedly serving the people become incredibly wealthy, well beyond what would be achievable on a politicians normal income.

Milking the system for personal gain is so rampant in Washington that it raises no eyebrows. It is accepted as a fact of life!

3. Squealer – Pig

Squealer is the chief of propaganda and second in command under Napoleon’s rule. He is a persuasive speaker and responsible for sweet talking animals into accepting Napoleon’s edicts however false, harsh, or unreasonable.

American Allegory
This is the traditional and online social media which has become the propaganda tool for its ideological and business interest bedfellows. They have stopped being honest brokers of news and have become highly partisan, brazenly censoring or restricting stories incompatible with their preferred narrative and feeding and promoting false ones. All actions typical of classical propaganda techniques!

Corruption of media as a propaganda tool for the rich and powerful has resulted in the total abdication of its fundamental role of protecting the freedoms, rooting out corruption and tirelessly working in the national interest.

4. The Dogs

These are attack dogs nurtured by Napoleon to terrorize and coerce other animals. In return, the dogs receive special privileges and often sit close to the pigs. They don’t rule but are provided a life of leisure and luxury in return for their unstinting support of the leadership.

American Allegory
The dogs symbolise violent mobs, government bureaucracy, intelligence agencies, tech monopolies, scientists and academicians, entertainment industry etc. Do all these groups support one ideology over another? Not necessarily. They are opportunists and support any ideology which allows them to gain power, wealth, and influence by any means, fair or foul.

These unelected people don’t rule directly but have a mutual understanding with the politicians for exploiting the system for personal gains. The politicians depend on them for achieving power and pay them handsomely with legislative cover or financial incentives to rob the system blind. A kind of brotherhood of thieves!

It is for this reason you will rarely find any Government employee being fired for mismanagement or incompetence. No bureaucrat will be fired for lack of preparation or mismanagement of Covid-19 response (they had decades to prepare for this pandemic). The heads of intelligence agencies were allowed to explain away their failure to prevent 9/11. No teacher or tenured professor for poor performance of their students; No Hollywood celebrity will be held accountable for not speaking up against the excesses of the sex offender Weinstein for almost 30 years as long as he was in power; No business leader or politician (read Bill Gates & Bill Clinton) will be held accountable for hobnobbing with Jeffery Epstein who was a known sex offender for 15 long years.

And for their loyalty all these groups, like Napoleon’s attack dogs, will fight ferociously to maintain the status quo and hold on to their juicy bone.

5. The Sheep

The Sheep are the blind supporters of the leadership. They constantly drown out any criticism of the status quo by bleating “four legs good, two legs bad“

American Allegory
The saying goes that we do not have ideas, but ideas have us. There are always sheep like people on both sides of the aisle, who will mindlessly mouth any slogan, support any cause without being fully aware of why? They do it either because they are trying to be a part of a trend, movement, peer pressure or a habit. These are people who mechanically vote as a group for the same party sometimes for generations.

Media rarely interviews these people individually for the fear of undermining their preferred narrative. It is these people who Stalin called “useful idiots” who have always been used by politicians as fodder for all their illegitimate attempts at power grab.

6. Benjamin (Donkey)

Benjamin is one of the oldest and wisest animals on the farm with a sceptical and cynical temperament. He believes that “Life will go on as it has always gone on – that is, badly.”

American Allegory
Benjamin represents people who have the wisdom to see the propaganda and the wrongs being perpetrated in society but are too stoic and cynical to do anything about it. This is a large chunk of population who with their indifference leave the gates wide open for malevolent leaders like Hitler, Stalin or Mao to ascend to power.  These examples prove Benjamin wrong by illustrating that “Life will NOT go on as it has always gone on – through inaction it will get worse, a whole lot worse.”

7. Boxer (Horse)

Boxer is a very strong, extremely hard working, loyal, well meaning and kind horse who is fully dedicated to give his heart and soul for the success of the farm and its animals.  He firmly believes that “Napoleon is always right“.  When Boxer is injured, Napoleon repays his loyalty by selling him to a knackers yard for slaughter, and uses the proceeds of the sale for buying whisky for himself.

American Allegory
Boxer represents the hard working and greatly oppressed workers, and tax payers, who are forever being tricked by the ruling classes to work harder and make more sacrifices for the greater good.

Animal Farm Sequel

It is too tempting to resist imagining a scenario where Snowball returns as an outsider and constitutional originalist to wrest power from Napoleon by the overwhelming support from the farm animals.

How would the corrupt politicians and establishment react to the disruption of their privileged existence? I suspect they will join forces and hit back hard to get rid of the outsider. It might go something like this,

• Napoleon –  power crazy and out of power, he would use all the wiles at his disposal to seduce, browbeat and scare the animals into believing the world would come to an end if Snowball were to continue as a leader. He will promise everything free to animals without explaining how it will be financed.

He will shamelessly promise to solve all the worlds problems including racism, unemployment, crime, coronavirus, climate change etc. with the full confidence that with the help of Squealer’s propaganda he will be able to distract and confuse the animals enough to make them forget his past corruption and failures.  He certainly would blame Snowball of being a traitor and on the payroll of humans (aka a Russian puppet).  After all words cost nothing!

• Squealer – the media propogandist, would go into overdrive, on behalf of Napoleon, to discredit and bring down Snowball. All the world’s problems would be blamed on Snowball including the crop failure, low production of milk, small size of eggs, blowing up of the windmill, systemic racism, white supremacy, male toxicity, coronavirus, and climate change …. (fill in the blanks at will).
• The Dogs – driven by their greed they would unleash all the power at their command to undermine and evict Snowball again.

Could this really happen?

If the precepts of Animal Farm were true than not only will it happen but it MUST happen not only in America but also all over the world? Aren’t the motivations of greed and dominance common to all humanity?  A very wise man said exactly this in his book Plato’s Republic over 2000 years ago!

For the last four years we have heard about the evils of Donald Trump in great details. In fact, as soon as he announced his bid for the presidency, he became the world’s biggest liar, racist, homophobic, misogynist, racist, and to top it all a Russian puppet.

Let us assume that all that Trump is accused of is true, but what standard is he being judged against? Shouldn’t we be putting his rival Joe Biden through similar punishing scrutiny? Shouldn’t the media be asking these questions of him?

• Why is Biden not campaigning actively to explain his policy positions? Is it frailty or fear of Covid-19? Would we expect a wartime leader to stay hidden in the bunker?
• Why isn’t Biden, like Trump, giving access to hostile interviewers to test his fitness for office? Why is he limiting his exposure to friendly interviewers with softball questions? Is it to hide something from the electorate?
• Why hasn’t Biden been grilled about the Washington Post story about his complicity in cashing in on his influence as Vice President as exposed by the rich trove of damning material discovered in Hunter Biden’s laptop? (New York Post). There was no hesitation in grilling Trump for less serious allegation all of which proved to be wrong by Muller Report!
• Is there a pattern in allegations against Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton always being dismissed as Russian disinformation while Republican presidents from Reagan, Bush and now Trump are always, and stridently,  accused of being Russian puppets without it ever being proved? Could reality be exactly the opposite?
• Why is Biden refusing to answer the question about court packing? What is he hiding? (NBC News)
• Why did Biden blatantly lie about banning fracking in the second presidential debate? (Newsweek)  Is it an attempt to mislead a gullible public?  What else might he be lying about?

If Joe Biden is not scrutinised to the same level as Donald Trump than we must conclude that he has something to hide. Isn’t transparency the hallmark of democracy?  Is the American electorate willing to risk the death of their democracy in the darkness of ignorance about what the media and Biden might be hiding from them?

We should remember that it is not a binary choice between good and evil, but between unappealing and malevolent.  Between a politically incorrect, bombastic and at times misguided Trump and a dangerously frail and compromised Biden who might inadvertently be a puppet of the extreme wing of his party, media, Washington establishment, vested interests, and perhaps foreign governments.

Let us hope the American electorate choose wisely. Whatever their choice it will certainly have long term consequences not only for America but also the rest of the world!