It's been hard to escape George Orwell over the past few months. Doublethink, 2+2=5, some pigs are more equal than others -- these things are fully in the open now, part of our everyday reality. So by all means, read the novels if you haven't (though how you got out of high school without doing so, I have no idea), but while you're at it consider taking a peek at his essays as well. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Facing Unpleasant Facts right now and let me tell you, it's great.
For one thing, he's very clear about exactly how to make a cup of tea. For another though, and more politically relevant, the essays are full of thoughts that, while ostensibly about the Spanish Civil War, or WWII, can easily be applied to 2017. A few samples:
One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.
- England Your England
...It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as "the truth" exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as "science." There is only "German science," "Jewish science" etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, "It never happened" - well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five - well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs - and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
- Looking Back on the Spanish War
