Two Minutes Hope

[Dänk 1010011010]

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The voice of Sarah Palin had become an actual goat's bleat, and for an
instant the face changed into that of a goat. Then the goat-face
melted into the figure of a Taliban militant who seemed to be
advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming
to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people
in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats.

But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody,
the hostile figure melted into the face of Chairman Obama, full of
power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the
screen. Nobody heard what Obama was saying. It was merely a few
words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din
of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence
by the fact of being spoken.

Then the face of Obama faded away again, and instead the three slogans
of the Party stood out in bold capitals:

HOPE
CHANGE
PROGRESS

But the face of Obama seemed to persist for several seconds on the
screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs
was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman
had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her.
With a tremulous murmur that sounded like 'My Savior!' she extended
her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands.
It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow,
rhythmical chant of 'O-BA-MA! ... O-BA-MA!' -- over and over again,
very slowly, with a long pause between the first syllable and the
second - a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the
background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the
throbbing of tom-toms.

For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a
refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion.
Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Chairman
Obama, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate
drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.

Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hope he
could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human
chanting of 'O-BA-MA! ... O-BA-MA!' always filled him with horror. Of
course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise.
To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone
else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.

-- 1984

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