Bret Stephens of the Wall Street journal thought he was
going back to a future that has expired, only to discover that the flux
capacitor, which sets the date to where his DeLorean is supposed to go, had
malfunctioned. Instead of going to the year 1948 as intended, he ended up in
the year 1961 where he met not the Winston Smith he was looking for but the
Harrison Bergeron he was not looking for.
And this was the man who took Bret Stephens on a journey 120
years into the future where “everybody was finally equal” in the year 2081. He
tells this story in a piece he wrote under the title: “Kurt Vonnegut's State of
the Union ” and the subtitle: “Updating a story
about government-mandated absolute equality.” The story was published in the
Wall Street Journal on January 28, 2014.
And guess what happened after that, my friend. Stephens
kicked Bergeron out of the time machine, and tried to get back alone to his own
time. However, he missed the target by 5 years there too, and ended up in the
year 2019 instead of 2014. What's more, time differential was not the only
malfunction that the flux capacitor had suffered as Stephens soon discovered.
He realized that he ended up not on his native Planet Earth, but its twin
planet that is located in a parallel universe.
And like the people who achieved absolute equality in the
year 2081, he met a breed of people calling themselves Americans who “were
finally on their way toward real equality,” says Stephens. And he tells of the
many things that these people did to come this close to their ultimate goal. It
was mostly due to government actions, he explains; they were initiatives that
the Liberal faction had managed to impose on everyone despite stiff opposition
from the Conservatives who failed to stop them.
But this tale is not without intrigue, as there was
backstabbing like you would find in every good story. Here is how Stephens
tells this part of the tale: “Though most Conservatives were resistant to the
Equality Movement, some found the new political environment congenial to their
anti-elitist aims.” And this is what distressed Stephens no end because he
always thought that the Conservatives were moral people. In fact, he felt so
badly that he hopped into the time machine and got back to his native planet
where he ended up in the year 1948.
He looked all over England for someone called George Orwell,
and found him as he was putting the finishing touches to a novel he titled:
“Nineteen Eighty-Four.” After introducing himself as a fan of his who came from
the future, Bret Stephens congratulated Orwell for the novel, informing him
that his predictions came true.
The only thing, he went on to say, is that the predictions
will not happen in 1984 but 30 years later in 2014. They will happen because
the great capitalist nation of America will prove to the world how much more
advanced politically, socially and morally it is than the Socialists who will
remain frozen in the dark age of what they call respect for the privacy of
their citizens.
And this is where George Orwell explodes in a fit of rage:
You mean to tell me it will not be the Socialists who create
Big Brother but the Conservatives of your time?
Yes. Isn't that what you meant to say in your novel?
No, no, no. But wait here; don't move.
Orwell goes into the adjacent room and comes back
accompanied by a man and a woman:
Do you know who these two are?
I recognize Elizabeth Warren.