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Cook: 1984? Or a brave new world?

Wine bottles are displayed at Imbibe Chattanooga, a wine-focused liquor store, on Wednesday, May 25, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Wine bottles are displayed at Imbibe Chattanooga, a wine-focused liquor store, on Wednesday, May 25, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.

By David Cook January 29, 2017 4 min read

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Freedom, with special sauce, lettuce and cheeseOR1984? Or a brave new world?

High gravity beers are seen on a chalkboard sold alongside a beer from Hutton & Smith with a lower alcohol content at Imbibe liquor store on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn. On Jan. 1, a new state law increases the alcohol by volume cap for beer from 6.2% to 10.1% which will allow grocery stores and breweries to sell high-gravity beers which could previously only be sold at liquor stores.

Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 10/13/16. David Smith, store manager of Food City 738 in Soddy-Daisy, speaks about the area he has designated to display wine if sales are approved while walking through his grocery store on October, 13, 2016.

FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2015 file photo, marijuana grows at a medical marijuana cultivation center in Albion, Ill. In a report released Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017 by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the federal advisory panel took a comprehensive look at what’s known about the benefits and harms of marijuana and is calling for a national effort to learn more about the drug. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)

DPD Lt. Jamie Johnson holds up several large marijuana plants outside of the Dalton Police Services Center as they were being processed as evidence.

In this Feb. 20, 2015, photo, Alaska Cannabis Club CEO Charlo Greene smokes a joint at the medical marijuana dispensary in Anchorage, Alaska. On Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015, Alaska will become the third state in the nation to legalize marijuana. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

David Cook

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Sales of George Orwell’s classic “1984” spiked last week after the White House spoke of “alternative facts,” echoing Orwell’s prediction of a totalitarian repression of truth through “newspeak.”

It’s a good exercise: the overlap of dystopian fiction with real-world events.

In 1931, Aldous Huxley wrote “Brave New World” with a startling premise: centuries in the London future, a repressive government has subdued its citizens not through threat or violence but through pleasure.

The drug is called soma. It’s a real gem, a honeypot of hallucinations and antidepressant, with none of the hangover. But the cartels don’t make and sell it. The government does, gladly dispensing it across the land.

So instead of protesting and challenging, the citizenry is sedated. It’s easy oppression. Why fight your citizens when you can dope them up instead?