Hail, Comrade Biden: Animal Farm and the Propaganda of 'Bidenomics'
All Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others. Considering how totally divorced from reality the Democrats’ “Bidenomics” propaganda is, I can’t help but recall the classic satirical novel “Animal Farm” and the fake statistics “proving” the increasing standard of living that the hungry, overworked animals are given in that story.
There are many examples of Biden and his admirers making deceptive or outright false statements. For instance, as of August 4, the average price for a gallon of gas has gone up 30 cents over one month. Yet on July 24, Biden’s Twitter account posted the following claim: “We did it by getting Americans into the workforce, fixing broken supply chains, and lowering the cost of living from the gas station to the pharmacy.” The price of gas has fluctuated during Biden‘s presidency, but even his “lows” have been significantly higher than the average price at the end of the Trump presidency.
Furthermore, despite what Biden and his faithful lackeys claim, inflation is not going down; the rate of inflation has simply slowed somewhat, but it’s still an increasing crisis.
Again, Biden tweeted on July 20, “13.2 million new jobs. The strongest economic recovery in the world. It’s no accident. It’s Bidenomics in action.” The Twitter Community Notes context graph on Biden’s tweet noted, however, “Nearly 10M jobs were from returning to work post-Covid. The U.S. has been lagging behind EU, China, and others. Inflation has been and is still high. Real wages are still low as is job participation.”
To tie this back to “Animal Farm.” As the pigs controlling Animal Farm become increasingly hard taskmasters, they offer parades and invented figures to the animals in lieu of actual food and rest. From Chapter IX of George Orwell’s classic:
Meanwhile life was hard. The winter was as cold as the last one had been, and food was even shorter. Once again all rations were reduced, except those of the pigs and the dogs. A too rigid equality in rations, Squealer explained, would have been contrary to the principles of Animalism. In any case he had no difficulty in proving to the other animals that they were NOT in reality short of food, whatever the appearances might be. For the time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a “readjustment,” never as a “reduction”), but in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvement was enormous.
Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones’s day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas. The animals believed every word of it. Truth to tell, Jones and all he stood for had almost faded out of their memories. They knew that life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not asleep. But doubtless it had been worse in the old days. They were glad to believe so.
It’s all propaganda, just like the Bidenomics talking points the media and Biden administration are parroting. Except, unlike the animals in Orwell’s book, we Americans don’t believe everything we’re told. And we shouldn’t.
Just as the Biden administration offers us fake claims and happy talk in lieu of actual economic prosperity, the animals were given fake figures in lieu of actual goods. Socialists offer imaginary benefits, while real benefits slip away.
From Chapter X of “Animal Farm”:
[The animals’] life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they laboured in the fields; in winter they were troubled by the cold, and in summer by the flies. Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones’s expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives: they had nothing to go upon except Squealer’s lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better. The animals found the problem insoluble; in any case, they had little time for speculating on such things now.
Now, in this case, there are two differences between the book and our situation; first, we can remember that the economy was better under Trump, and, second, we were better off before Biden (minus COVID-19 lockdowns), whereas the animals in the story were badly off both under their former human master and under the pigs’ control.
”Animal Farm,” of course, is an allegory for the evils of Communism in Russia. But many modern Democrats, including Biden, are pseudo-socialists — and they certainly borrow propaganda tactics from the socialist playbook.
Like the pigs in “Animal Farm,” the Biden administration and its allies are trying to convince Americans that the reality they are experiencing is not reality and that we should believe instead what they tell us to believe. Don’t believe your lying pocketbooks! But unlike the animals in “Animal Farm,” we must reject the propaganda. We know what reality is because we are living in it.
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