By Andrea Wilburg
In George Orwell's dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four, the concept that two plus two equals four had extraordinary symbolic weight. The State, as embodied in Big Brother, controlled everything that people could think or say.
Part of how the rebellious Winston Smith fought back against this totalitarianism was to remind himself that, no matter what the State said, two plus two does, in fact, equal four. To the all-powerful State, though, Smith's belief in objective math was a threatening form of insanity. The State therefore used a mixture of torture and cajoling to force Smith to embrace a State-sanctioned "sanity" that denied reality:
"You are a slow learner, Winston."
"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."
"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."
By the novel's end, with the State's torture having broken him, Smith readily conceded that, yes, if the State said that two plus two equals five, that would be the correct answer.
Judging by a comprehensive Twitter thread, we have reached the Orwellian world of Big Brother. This is a world in which those who represent power for the sake of power are working overtime to convince their fellow Americans to dismiss reality and concede that two plus two does not equal four but, instead, equals five: