One of the creepiest and most prescient books ever written is Orwell’s 1984. Published in 1949, it imagines a world in which a totalitarian government monitors every move of every person.
The regime also invents a language called Newspeak, which redefines words until ideas can’t be expressed at all, because the words for them have been removed or made to mean something they never did.
Plenty of the novel has seeped into everyday speech, from “Big Brother” and “Thought Police” to “2+2=5.”
When I first read it in the 1970s, what captivated me was the idea that the Party wanted power for power’s sake, not the trappings that come with it. Back then, Orwell’s world seemed a long way off. In the 2020s, much of his vision has arrived.
Drive through several Wyoming communities and Flock cameras log your vehicle the whole way.
On I-25, Colorado’s speeding cameras mail out citations with no human involved. Our phones, refrigerators, televisions and cars track us too, and insurers price our premiums off our driving data.
But the scariest prediction in 1984 was the redefinition of language, so that arguing with someone becomes impossible. It would be less frightening if it weren’t happening before our eyes.
When a word can mean anything, it means nothing, and a debate built on that word goes nowhere. Both sides can claim the label, and neither has to defend what the label used to require.
Take the word “conservative.” In Wyoming, it seems every politician has to be one to get elected.
Yet the word now stretches to cover a wide array of political positions.
Merriam-Webster, my dictionary of choice, defines political conservatism as “a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing the importance of established hierarchies and institutions (such as religion, the family, and class structure), and preferring gradual development to abrupt change.”
In the old meaning, then, conservatives are slow to change.
They stress the way things have always worked, rather than sweeping change without regard to consequences. A real conservative asks what a fence is for before tearing it down.
Now look at “anarchy,” which the same dictionary defines in one sense as “a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.”
An anarchist is “one who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power.”
So I scratch my head when the people who want to tear down local government through sweeping tax changes call themselves “conservatives” instead of “anarchists.”
I am not calling anyone a bomb thrower.
I am using the dictionary’s own definitions and inviting them to explain why the label doesn’t fit.
Worse, ask whether the would-be anarchists have thought through the consequences and you get called a “closet Democrat” or a “tax-and-spend liberal.”
Or you get the word that’s supposed to end the argument. “RINO.”
Anything to divert attention from the real concern.
Have the proponents explained the consequences of cutting property taxes 50 percent to anyone? What services will be cut? Who will be fired?
In Wyoming, dollars mean people. If the cuts happen, which librarians, snowplow drivers, nurses or teachers get fired?
And if the answer is “backfill,” someone has to be taxed for it. Nobody in the public debate has said who.
Property owners are entitled to want relief, and reasonable people can disagree about how much government Wyoming needs. That is a fair argument.
But a fair argument survives questions. Asking where the money comes from is not disloyalty to the cause. It is the minimum a voter should expect before signing on.
The proponents say counties and cities have savings and can spend them down.
That punishes the governments that spent prudently and built sinking funds so today’s taxpayers wouldn’t bear the full cost of maintaining public buildings.
It spends the savings of prior generations to cover a tax cut now.
When the roof needs replacing, the fund is gone and there is no revenue to pay for it, so taxpayers pay the current bills and the repairs the fund used to cover.
Those taxpayers get hit twice for the same building.
We’re being asked to jump off a cliff into anarchy in the name of conservatism, for a measure whose consequences no one has quantified.
Wyoming has no personal income tax, and local governments that lose property tax revenue will turn to the Legislature for help.
The Legislature has only so many places to find the money, and the list is short.
So before you vote to give yourself a small tax cut, know that you may be voting for a state income tax.
Nothing else will be left.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
