1984: The Sequel Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

In this new scenario
all of us
are Winston Smiths,
sequestered, quarantined, isolated,
masked, manipulated,
contact traced,
spied upon,
for our own good
and bad
by a variety
of Big Brothers,
some competent and respectful,
some downright menacing,
or, at best, inept,
derelict, and neglectful.

States touting freedom
and an American Way
more important than life itself,
not to mention
the torture of intubation,
are demonstrable
dead ends,
spiraling up in the infection graphs
where no man
has dared to go
before.

The President himself
pushes masklessness,
fake data, anti-science,
and thousands of screaming
yahoos
in close, enclosed, spaces.
For him, Disease is Health, Ignorance is Deliverance,
Testing is Contagion, Fantasy is Fact,
the CDC
is the enemy.

In the national family,
just as in our own,
some Big Brothers are protective
and instructive,
some destructive.

What we have,
fellow Americans,
is a cage match
of Big Brothers
battling for
what's left
of the American soul,
the American body,
the American economy,
the American Presidency
and Congress
and future.

Whether we,
the spectators
and captives,
will survive
to see who wins,
remains
to be seen.