Here in America, we pride ourselves on our values: Freedom, individuality, and personal expression, all crucial parts of what makes America so great. However, recently this has taken a bit of a turn. Looking at recent legislation paints a somewhat… grim picture. While many people will defend the wonderful government in the good old US of A, it’s certainly still worth examining some of the more… dystopian aspects of American policy.
Roe v. Wade was a defining court case back in 1973 and held strong for decades. Unfortunately, this court case was recently overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization back in 2022. Now, regardless of one’s opinion on abortion, this should be troubling. Roe v. Wade wasn’t upheld because abortion is some unalienable right, it was decided based on medical privacy.
“The Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment,… These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed ‘fundamental’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,’ –are included in this guarantee of personal privacy,” Justice Harry Blackmun, a former Supreme Court justice, said in the majority opinion of the court.
The decision appears not to be based on any kind of moral judgment, but now that the case has been overturned, this guarantee of medical privacy is gone. It isn’t hard to make connections from there. A lack of privacy sounds especially similar to a particular novel that came out in 1949: George Orwell’s 1984.
Additionally, the lack of women’s autonomy that many states cultivated immediately after the decision in Dobbs,can be seen with the numerous abortion bans passed in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas (Duh), and many others . In fact, a full 14 states have banned abortion. This decrease in women’s rights is shockingly close to another classic: The Handmaid’s Tale.
While restrictions on women’s liberty are nothing new to America, it is unusual for women to lose the rights they already have. This newly set precedent is terrifying. The further restrictions are, simply put, nasty.
To further play into the themes of 1984, who could forget the formerly popular, now heavily debated USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act (Yes, it is an acronym. It stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. (By paying close attention, you may be able to make out how hard they tried to make that acronym work.)
This funky, and potentially quite fresh, act effectively expanded the capacity of the federal government to “surveil” the general public to watch for potential terrorist plots. This would in theory make the country safer after the attacks on September 11th. It also made it far easier for the government to watch people who aren’t terrorists, but you know, sacrifices must sometimes be made.
The similarities between the wonderful government agencies who ensure our safety from potential terrorist threats and the thought police of the 1984s party are not necessarily one-to-one, but they are certainly present.
For a less government-related example of dystopian analogy in modern America, look no further than the religious book burnings that swept the nation recently. This is yet another double whammy of dystopian allegory. On the surface, this is a clear comparison to Fahrenheit 451, but if one were to look just a bit deeper, the suppression of information in the name of religious values is far closer to The dystopian society presented in The Handmaid’s Tale. This also closely mirrors the actual cause of the society in Fahrenheit 451, as this information suppression comes from the people, not from the government itself.
There are countless more examples I could list off, but at the end of the day, it matters not. There is after all one key detail that separates our current society from the dystopias described. In our current day, we are allowed to complain. We aren’t punished for speaking out against the unpleasant apects of the government, and we are allowed to move to other countries where the policies may be more favorable. As long as we have freedom of speech and freedom of the press, we can stay safe from the worst aspects of dystopia.
