I must admit being rather stoked to discover this tribe of others who are seeing this parallel between Orwell's work and the direction the current cultural wind is blowing.
Lately '1984' has been coming to mind quite a bit..the war which never ends which keeps the good populus of 'Oceania' in slavery to 'Big Brother'...right now we're at war with 'Eurasia' (the middle east/ war on terror) and I'm sure in time it may shift to 'Eastasia' (China? North Korea?) as necessary to those in power to keep us distracted from the gradual erosion of our own rights.
In my own country (Australia) we have seen the introduction of 'newspeak' in terms of social security terminology : the Department of Social Security is now called 'Centrelink'; Unemployment Benefit is now called 'Job Search Allowance', people out of work now sign 'participation agreements' which condemn them to work for well below award wages, a 'lumpenproletariat' of virtual slave labour.
These shifts in language are no accident in my opinion but reflect an attempt to cause a cultural shift in thinking by the new right to maintain public acceptance of the dismantling of social servcies/structures former generations fought damn hard for.
What really frightens me is it appears to be working, people seem to be swallowing propoganda from various 'Ministries of Truth' hook, line and sinker.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who's spotted the disturbing similarities though.
Lately '1984' has been coming to mind quite a bit..the war which never ends which keeps the good populus of 'Oceania' in slavery to 'Big Brother'...right now we're at war with 'Eurasia' (the middle east/ war on terror) and I'm sure in time it may shift to 'Eastasia' (China? North Korea?) as necessary to those in power to keep us distracted from the gradual erosion of our own rights.
In my own country (Australia) we have seen the introduction of 'newspeak' in terms of social security terminology : the Department of Social Security is now called 'Centrelink'; Unemployment Benefit is now called 'Job Search Allowance', people out of work now sign 'participation agreements' which condemn them to work for well below award wages, a 'lumpenproletariat' of virtual slave labour.
These shifts in language are no accident in my opinion but reflect an attempt to cause a cultural shift in thinking by the new right to maintain public acceptance of the dismantling of social servcies/structures former generations fought damn hard for.
What really frightens me is it appears to be working, people seem to be swallowing propoganda from various 'Ministries of Truth' hook, line and sinker.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who's spotted the disturbing similarities though.
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Australia
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Re: newspeak, the war which never ends and other ramblings
Mon, April 18, 2005 - 7:50 AMGood Eye, Angelcrane, and G'Day, too...
Yes we are suffering from Newspeak too. Living in George W's America is just one big mindfuck.
I really like how they name programs the opposite of what they really do; like the No Child Left Behind Act which leaves massive numbers of children behind!
My favorite is GW's brilliant plan for reducing forest fires: cut the trees down!
www.wildcalifornia.org/public...ticle-9
It seems that all they have to do is "package" a do- nothing government program with a nice name and people just think that it does what it says!
I love you, Big Brother... -
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Re: newspeak, the war which never ends and other ramblings
Fri, April 29, 2005 - 3:33 AMyes - the old repress, reinvent or repackage the truth - here's more on the war that never ends...
International terror-attacks treble
By Susan Glasser Washington April 28, 2005
The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to United States Government figures, a sharp increase that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week. Overall, the number of what the US Government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the previous record of about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides. Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total - a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush Administration's assertion that the situation had stabilised after the US handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi Government last year. The State Department announced last week that it was breaking with tradition in withholding the statistics from its congressionally mandated annual report. Critics said the move was designed to shield the Government from questions about the success of its effort to combat terrorism, by eliminating what amounted to the only year-to-year benchmark of progress.... -
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Re: newspeak, the war which never ends and other ramblings
Sun, May 1, 2005 - 9:45 PMHi Y'all--
I'm so glad you're all coming around the tribe! Yes, it's a crazy time, especially for those of us who consider ourselves members of the Reality- Based Community. (If you haven't heard of this, you're gonna LOVE IT!!!)
The Reality-Based Community
(posted on warblogging.com)
The New York Times Magazine this past weekend featured an article by Ron Suskind about President Bush's faith. Not just Bush's religious faith. His faith in everything, his faith in himself, his faith in God, his faith in his "gut". His faith as policy.
"He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence", Bruce Bartlett, a Reagan advisor and former treasury official told Suskind.
Suskind continues pounding the theme in page after page, eventually defining Bush's antithesis through the words of a Bush aide speaking about Suskind's criticisms of the Bush Administration. Suskind writes:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
There is the faith-based community and the reality-based community. In the reality-based community we have such odd bedfellows as Patrick Buchanan, John Kerry and Jim Wallis (a Sojourner minister who has met with Bush on several occasions). As Matthew Yglesias notes, we may have finally found the unifying theme for the "anti-Bush coalition". Reality.
Gene Healy has suggested that we start printing and wearing "Reality-Based Community" t-shirts. It may not be a bad idea.
This past week, as the Times reports, an entire platoon of American soldiers refused to follow an order they felt would send them on a "suicide mission". They were ordered to drive a convoy full of jet fuel from southern to northern Iraq. They refused, calling the mission non-sensical and too dangerous.
The fact that they are not yet being court-martialed, and that the military denies they are currently under arrest, is evidence that they may have been right. They disobeyed a direct order in time of war and may get out with simple dishonorable discharges.
Welcome to reality, President Bush. Here in Reality Country we believe in considering the consequences of our actions. Here in Reality Country we believe in reason and logic. Here in Reality Country we construct plans for going about complex tasks (you know, like invasions of sovereign countries). Here in Reality Country we allow the evidence to speak before we defer to our "gut".
Posted by George Paine | Comments (99) | TrackBack (9)
From the "Democracy in America" Department as of 09:42 AM
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