When I first began hearing that emigres from Communist countries see America inching towards totalitarianism, I didn’t take it seriously. Totalitarianism was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the state controlled everyone through the infliction of pain and terror. Whatever our problems in America, we don’t have that, or anything close to it.It turns out that my definition of totalitarianism, formed during my Cold War youth, was too narrow. Orwell gave us one totalitarian model, based on the Soviet reality. Aldous Huxley gave us a rival version in his novel Brave New World. Huxley’s totalitarian state controlled the masses not through pain and terror, but by manipulating their pleasure and comfort. The people of Brave New World were happy to surrender their political liberties in exchange for guarantees of sex, drugs, and entertainment. This “pink police state” is the form of totalitarianism coming to the United States. “Totalitarianism” is a term coined by Mussolini to describe a society in which the state controls all aspects of life. He defined it like this: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Under authoritarianism, a single party or leader monopolizes all political power, but leaves it at that. Totalitarianism also monopolizes political power, but regards everything as political. And, as Orwell wrote, totalitarians not only want you to obey Big Brother, but to love him as well. Huxley gives us a society that is totally controlled through technology, and by convincing people to love their slavery. They have the drug soma to keep them blissed out, and all the sex and bodily comforts they desire. When John the Savage, a non-conformist who lives in the wild, confronts Mustapha Mond, one of the World Controllers, Mond has no intention of torturing him into submission, as Orwell’s O’Brien does to Winston Smith. Rather, Mond can’t understand why the Savage would refuse to live in a society that offers “Christianity without tears” — life in heaven without having to die.