I've read George Orwell's 1984 twice throughout middle school and high school for English classes. Strangely enough, it's paying off.

After the inauguration, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that the event had the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period." If you've seen the photos, you would know that's not true. In a later interview, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway stated that Spicer gave "alternative facts" instead of saying the claims were false.

The phrase "alternative facts" seems like something out of 1984. In the book, the language of Oceana is "Newspeak," which consists of shortened words meant to reduce the freedom of thought. "Doublethink" was one important word that "means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them." Are we supposed to believe that the crowd was "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration" even though it was not?

The book 1984 was published in 1949 and is currently the #1 best-selling book on Amazon. The publicity director at Penguin USA, Craig Burke, stated that the book has reached a 9,500 percent increase in sales since the inauguration.

In addition, Trump's team has been trying to control what science and environment-related government agencies say on social media. As a result, many agencies have created "alt" twitter accounts to say what they really think. The list has grown beyond what is in the photo below.

If these agencies can't tell us what we need to know through their normal twitter accounts, it's hard to trust anything that is said by Trump's officials. I don't want to get used to hearing incorrect info referred to as "alternative facts" because they are not facts at all. People are still concerned about the "fake news" phenomenon and they have the right to be.

Get on the bandwagon and read 1984. You might enjoy the story or you might find it super relevant to your own life.