Burke: Some sage advice from George Orwell and Yogi Berra

By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist

Two of my favorite “sages” are George Orwell and Yogi Berra; Berra, because his oddball logic always got to a universal truth; and Orwell, because he identified some awful realities of modern society while vehemently fighting against totalitarianism and for democracy.

So when Yogi said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else,” he might sound goofy; but looking ahead to this new year: if you don’t understand where we are going in the next election — deciding the very existence of American democracy — it ain’t goofy in the least to think you might wind up “somewhere else,” like under the jackboots of the Christian nationalists or a wanna-be dictator, if you don’t focus on candidates who support democracy and don’t call the Jan. 6 insurrectionists “hostages.”

Now Orwell was serious; dark; dystopian even. So when he warned, in the book “1984,” “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever,” he could have been warning about the essence of a Trump “dictatorship.”

It’s hard for me to look ahead to 2024 without keeping these guys in mind. And because next November’s stakes are so high the election is going to be the focus of an awful lot of (awful) attention for the next eleven months.

Way back when, I used to consider myself nominally clever (I could follow the back-of-the-package-recipe on a Barilla pasta box and turn out a decent-tasting lasagna and I could navigate the New York City subway system); but I’m not sure even then could I follow all the “stuff” being thrown at us today.

Which makes this crystal-ball-column capturable in a single (scary) phrase: Complete and Utter Chaos.

Because chaos is what we’re going to get, because chaos is what we got now as we try to decipher what’s true and what isn’t in a MAGA-world of lies, lies, and more lies. Consider the lies they’re telling already:

• The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was an FBI plot led by antifa (a lie that a quarter of the U.S. population says it believes!);

• The Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stollen” from Trump. (It’s swallowed whole by 32 percent of Americans. Still!);

• Mail-in voting is rife with fraud;

• Joe Biden promotes illegal immigration so illegals can vote in the 2024 general election to steal it from Trump and the Republicans;

• Trump has total immunity from prosecution for anything and everything he’s ever done while in the White House, and if elected president in November, murder and assassination could be on the table;

• Burning books is good;

• Democrats abort babies after they’re born;

• Climate change is a “green scam”;

• Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” (81 percent of Republicans believe this);

• Gas is $8 a gallon. (National average is $3.08 a gallon)

• Trump’s tax cuts didn’t greatly add to the deficit;

• The U.S. military is unfit to fight because it is “woke;”

• Biden is personally directing Trump’s prosecution in New York; Florida; and in Washington, D.C.;

• We need to “drill, drill, drill” for more oil (even though we’re the No. 1 oil producer in the world);

• Trump did nothing wrong taking government documents (some categorized as highly classified), hiding them in the bathrooms and ballroom at Mar-a-Largo, and then lying about it;

• Biden is the most corrupt president in U.S. history;

• Hunter Biden should be prosecuted and Joe Biden impeached (even though there’s no evidence either did anything wrong);

• Although every economic indicator is positive and markets are breaking records Republicans claim the economy sucks;

• Democrats are pedophiles running a cabal devoted to abducting, trafficking, torturing, abusing, and drinking children’s blood;

• Ginni Thomas did nothing wrong regarding Jan. 6, and her Supreme Court justice husband, Clarance, did nothing wrong in not reporting hundreds of thousands in gifts from Republican big-money donors;

• Trump’s claim, “We had no terrorist attacks at all during my four years,” and “I had no wars. I’m the only president in 72 years, I didn’t have any wars.”

• Liz Cheney destroyed and deleted evidence from the January 6th Committee, when it had actually been turned over to Trump’s lawyers); and

• Trump requested 10,000 troops before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

All lies. Total and complete lies.

Now the Biden team is apparently heeding Orwell’s advice, “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious;” while Trump is implementing Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels dictum, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

So we’re going to be hearing lots of truth from Biden and more lies from MAGA-world.

But I digress, so let’s look at my predictions:

• Trump never becomes president.

• Democrats will take majorities in the House and Senate.

• Trump pays E. Jean Carroll millions and the state of New York even more for fraud.

• Trump’s documents trial will be delayed but he’ll be convicted for conspiring to obstruct the 2020 election results.

• Bidenomics continues to improve the economy.

• A viable solution to the Israeli-Hamas war will evade us, the war will continue.

• Ukraine holds on in its defense against Putin’s war, awaiting Democrats’ takeover of Congress.

I’m giving today’s last word to Dr. Seuss, “Only you can control your future.”

So it’s your choice in November: Democracy (Biden) or dictatorship (Trump)

Which future do you choose?