Posted by parhad (207.193.169.129) on October 18, 2001 at 13:10:10:
It was a great Orwellian moment when 1984 was ushered in with great fanfare and reporters and pundits all laughed and said what Orwell predicted in his book by that title hadn't happened...not at all.
If you know Orwell, you know that this would HAVE to have been the response to the coming of that new year. That was the beauty of it.
How do you best regulate people? A policeman in every house or on every block is impracticable and expensive. And besides that tips people off, might make them wonder, might lead to rebellion... gives the people reason to grumble, as they did at Jackie's Convention...it's too damn obvious, too ugly and might cause tension and revolt. So she hid the cops the second night, but they came rushing out when called on and they didn't ask any questions, just started hitting with the sticks.
If you really want to do the thing right, you put the cop in each person's head...but you don't call it a cop, it becomes "that" person him and herself, speaking that way and "feeling" that way. Orwell knew what he was talking about, that the clear sign that 1984 had arrived would be the oft repeated statement, followed by a smirk, that it HADN'T arrived...when all along the only people who could be so blind as to think that way, were in 1984 and had been, and would be stuck there forever.
He first saw it coming, the day when the media would invent doublespeak and doublethink, when War would be called Peace and the other way around, as it has been since his day. The meaining of words provides the key. By manipulating what we think we know, and giving "better" definitions, definitions which soothe the soul and calm the troubled vacuous mind, you achieve the kind of blind, stupid and fawning "patriotism" that has people more determined than ever to throw away the very liberties that make life in America bearable.
Just as when in California the issue of being soft on crime was used as a pretext to oust a liberal State Supereme Court in order to seat justices more likely to vote favorably on the host of environmental and trade and product safety and banking regulation and credit protection and privacy issues then just waiting to be pushed down our throats...so too will these predictable, even desired attacks of reprisal be used as the pretext to further gut, and at the Federal level, any remaining obstacles the business interests have of smoothing their ways through regulation after regulation which will now be seen as a hindrance to "our safety" as those pesky clean air and water regulations were seen as risking "our jobs".
Who will dare oppose a government that has such an easy time of claiming to be protecting US all? Who will be willing to be accused of giving aid and "comfort" to the enemy by critizing the government, as we were called traitors during the Vietnam War.
There's a model for you to follow except they don't teach the War anywhere, bothers kids too much and it was like ancient. There was a war, an incident, in which our president lied to Congress and the people...lied in order to get the pretext he needed for a war officials now admit they knew they couldn't win, but what the hell...and not until 55,000 "dear" and "brave" and "loyal" boys and sons and fathers and husbands died for nothing, did they call it off, and only recently have they timidly addmitted that it was a mistake...though I'm not so sure that it was...for some people.
You have a recent example of how presidents do lie, and how little they care for 55,000...let alone a mere fraction of that...or how much they cared for the widows and orphans, the torn lives back home, the rioting and shooting of students and on and on. They didn't care then...what makes you all think they've seen the light and that you're now the dearest and nearest things in the world to them and all is being done for your protection and well being?
I'll tell you what makes you think that way...or better yet, read 1984 by George Orwell.