At the time of the writing of 1984 WWII had ended and socialism was the bad guy. Russia was grabbing as much land as possible while the US and Europe tried to work together to ensure the Marshal plan prevented another world war. Russia grabbed territory because it saw the Marshal plan as an attempt to grab all of Europe under capitalism. This the beginning of the cold war.
Socialism was seen as the most likely source to spawn a world like 1984...
Flash forward to today... Technology has affected everything, no matter what party is in charge they are going to use technology to watch their citizens if they were not kept in check.. That was the point of Orwell's book.
I am confused at the Irony of which you refer, because this is exactly what is transpiring. The checks and balances system of American government has eroded to the greatest fear of the founding fathers, political parties.
The rise of political parties has resulted in alliances where representitives are voting against their representitive interests. People are voting against their personal interests... All for the survival and dominance of their own political party.
The moment the government passed budgets and laws that rewarded only the rich among us there should have been a mass Exodus from the Republican party... There wasn't. When the government started raiding social security and destroying the whole point of mandatory tax and putting a majority of the retirement futures of all Americans... There are a hundred reasons that that political parties are bad in a representitive government but worst of all is when people trust the party to value their interest over the accumulation of power... Their trust is badly misplaced. Because there will always be someone willing to put aside their morals and lead that party down a dark path and they will do so telling themselves that once they are in complete control they will make things better... It never happens.
We have all drank the kool-aid... blue or red, it does not matter. We have become a bunch of pack animals siding with our clan and giving up our own interests to the pack mind. Because using our own brains and learning and studying history and logically thinking where the pack decisions are leading us are big decisions that we trust our leaders to make...
The point of our style of government is that we do not and should not trust our leaders. There should be eyes on everything they do... The irony of 1984 is that the watchers are looking the wrong way,.. they should be looking at the leaders.