Yesterday, NPR documented the widespread refusal by Republicans to speak to media. Many have prohibited media from attending their press conferences and rallies, proclaiming that a rally with 30,000 people is a private event. Why, it’s almost as if they have something to hide. We are in the Orwellian dystopia, thanks in part to a Republican led effort to reduce public education to rote memorization at the expense of creativity and rationality. I blame that neofascist Newt Gingrich for destroying the collegiality of Congress and the false Texan Tom Delay for skewing redistricting nationwide, but the real fault lies with all those who go along, substituting lies for truth. Roar on brother. Liberty is always threatened by the privileged.
I also read the book “Nineteen Eighty-four” in the general vicinity of its namesake (eponymous?) year, maybe a bit earlier in college in the 1970s. Haven’t cracked it since, barely remember all the details that you mention.
As with most books I read in my youth, I had no idea at the time how valuable a lesson was being gifted.
My father’s first language is German, he didn’t learn English until he came to this country in the early 1950s, and like Donald Trump he was a little challenged in the reading department. So he didn’t read books, as a rule, probably because of the difficulty. He did read newspapers every single morning, and he certainly didn’t have any trouble with spoken English and English vocabulary.
However, curiously, this book was on his desk at the time of his stroke. It was the only book on his desk, so clearly he had been planning to make his way through it.
Greg, I find it intriguing that this book, of all books, captivated you early on. It’s revealing.
And yes, it certainly classifies as Sci-fi.
“ What Orwell’s book is really about is the destruction of the spirit— “
“…. The Nazis did that. The Soviets did that. The fascists in America are trying to do it right now.”
And let’s not forget Chinese society, one of those countries where political thought police will show up at your door to try to convince you that Big Brother is the right way and the only way.
Noticed that the Russian military targets civilians, especially large concentrations of civilians like refugees in museums and train stations. To be a member of the Russian military is to be a member of Big Brother’s police force. Completely immoral (amoral), completely ruthless coldhearted and brutal like Putin and pals. The worst of the worst.
Trump is a Putin wannabe, but he doesn’t have the same pure ruthlessness and brutality.
Lest we become enamored with our delusions of “other” (other societies, other cultures), we also must remind ourselves, as Greg has done, that the thought police is alive and well right here at home.
For-profit capitalism is one of America’s greatest thought crimes. Russia sees it clearly, but we don’t, like fish don’t see the water they swim in. The concept that a small number of people must be billionaires, and that the rest of us work as slaves for the billionaires, is an insidious 1984-worthy myth. We need a new paradigm of an economy, where all corporations are honest corporations, where worker-owned businesses and cooperatives are the norm, where the workers are equal to each other, whether they provide direct labor or drive a desk. Death to boardrooms, executive suites and corporate jets‼️ Down with billionaires‼️
“What Orwell’s book is really about is the destruction of the spirit—“
Tyranny destroys the soul, as Greg says.
Think about animals in the wild. There are animals that ruthlessly attack and kill each other for power, for territory, for ownership of female animals and therefore breeding rights, all of it ultimately for survival.
Survival.
Dictators are fearful of their own survival, and their early history and early experiences in life often reflect this.
Once a person is initiated into love and light, they are motivated by morality. I know that the term “love and light” sounds sappy because of its 1960s and New Age connotations, but I include it deliberately.
Love is what motivates a person with morality. Light is the life flame which infuses each of you reading these words with knowledge and understanding. Before the oprichnik O’Brien corrupts Winston and Julia, they are “alive” in the sense of love infusing the heart center and light infusing the mind (knowledge center). After corruption, those centers have been closed. They are “dead,” to the spirit at least. They are now the walking dead.
Being moral is being alive.
Be grateful that you are “alive.” The last thing in the world we would want for ourselves is to return to the ignorant, intellectually dead, emotionally bankrupt world of the humans who are still stuck in survival mode. Be grateful that we are not billionaires and ideological hacks and deadbeat functionaries in the system. Think Neo breaking out of The Matrix. We are all Neo.
Lovely observations, true & undeniable. But let's not forget that life on Earth has been terrible to huge numbers forever and that progress is measured in centuries.
So many writers and journalists attempt to be impersonal in their writing. The science texts I had to read in my engineering program in college might be the worst of the breed. By using the passive voice, by sounding sterile and bland and neutral and dead, somehow a book or an article is supposed to convey something of value.
Yech. Double yech. 🤮
In my opinion, writing is supposed to imitate life. Writing is supposed to be alive. If a writer is trying to deaden their thoughts, whether on paper or on a computer screen, then that person is reducing their value.
The most alive and passionate story is your own personal story. Those experiences that have changed your life, blown your mind, and rocked your world, are the experiences to be writing about.
Although the causation of decline of the Roman Empire was multi-factorial, and more complicated than Edward Gibbon postulated, a number of contributing factors are ones we’re grappling with in our time. Climate change, pandemics, and government officials only interested in their own self interest were clearly part of the reason the Western Roman Empire was effectively ended in 476, even as some of its precepts persisted for centuries.
Romans probably thought their empire would last forever and couldn’t see the end coming by multiple paper cuts. My fear is that Americans are in the same place. Last night at CPAC, the attendees gave Trump enthusiastic applause (and 69% of the vote in the straw poll) when he said America is being destroyed from within. What is so concerning is that the people clapping and hooting and hollering fail to recognize they are supporting the destroyer-in-chief.
I'm not even sure when I read 1984 for the first time, but I do know that it was probably at a time that I was so self-absorbed that it failed to penetrate, so, probably my 20s, a century or so ago. I just re-read it last year and had to keep firmly in my mind that it had been published in 1949. I started thinking about reading it during the Trump years, but stopped myself because that felt too much like a cliché. It is a powerful book, especially for our current situation.
It is a novel about giving up, giving in, taking whatever scraps you are allowed to have. Trump supporters did that early on. I have had enough engagement with them through the years to know that, like Trump, they could never take responsibility for their own lives and were looking for an easy scapegoat. Trump led them right to it -- "radical leftist socialist Democrats," the "poors", the Blacks, the gays, the Mexicans, WOMEN -- basically anyone who didn't buy the canned bullshit he was selling. Some have fallen away, but there is still a core group that will never fall away. Before Trump, they probably used to be "regular Americans." After Trump, they became subjects of Big Brother.
Then there are the resistors. Those who DON'T accept the idea that everything needs to be done for them. Those who will resist tyranny in the US. They will resist the fascism that's apparently on the menu for the future. We are the people that are actually DOING what Trump supporters SAY they're doing. Trump is an expert in double-speak. He has taught his all too willing cult to become experts in it too. In this form, of course, it becomes a playground taunt: whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. It's breathtaking how many examples of "things the Left says about the Trumplicans," that a week or so later becomes, "things Trumplicans say about the Left." It's insidious, and many fall for it every time. Goebbels would be proud.
Nineteen Eighty-Four turned out to be not a warning, but a prediction. As exhausted as we all are at this point, it's only going to get worse as 2024 approaches. The 2024 election will be a bloodbath, no matter what happens. Trump is in a bind right now. The RNC say they will stop paying his legal bills when he announces his candidacy for '24, but he also thinks that the DOJ wouldn't indict him while he's a Presidential candidate. Oh, what to do? My answer is, and remains, "fuck you, die."
Down with Facebook! Down with Palantir! Fuck Putin and his global 5th column!
Mind Control
Underage sex tape, bribery, brain rape, death threats, starvation, sleep deprivation, eternal damnation
Subconscious invasion, uncomfortable confusion, microwave weaponry
Constant contradiction, reality is fiction, contrarian barbarian, toxic inhumanity, cold selfish greedy
Rejection of science, experts, truth, vampires long in the tooth
Mind control baby!
Mind control baby!
Witnessing the Putinization of our nation, controlled opposition, time we are wastin
Traumaganda, dissociation, indoctrination, radicalization, cult identity, give your last dime to me
Hypnosis, Neuro-linguistic Programming, half our news is Kremlin infused
Mind control baby!
Mind control baby!
Mind control baby!
Conspiracy theories, alternative facts, gaslighting
Lies, Armageddon, double binds
Religions, cults, pyramid schemes
Gimme your seed money
Mind control baby!
Mind control baby!
Mind control baby!
Mind control baby!
Mind control!
It says king on the bible for a reason
It's your soul the emperor is seizin
Money power control
Filling your void with paranoid delusions
Telling you what your brainfucked mind wants to hear
Wrong side of history, magic, mythology
But we're to blame you see
Can't believe your lying eyes
Don't know the definition of words you despise
Pissing away our rights to own the other side
Enslavement of women, killin moms, planting bombs
Crypto and it's gone
Gold bug both a con
Welcome to the hybrid war
Welcome to the hybrid war!
Telephonic - Mind Control - MP3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uEA3sBpIiKoSX0jBQ9p21hIPzLa9MDdw/view?usp=drivesdk
Whoa! "Sadists in Statehouses." That fits.
Yesterday, NPR documented the widespread refusal by Republicans to speak to media. Many have prohibited media from attending their press conferences and rallies, proclaiming that a rally with 30,000 people is a private event. Why, it’s almost as if they have something to hide. We are in the Orwellian dystopia, thanks in part to a Republican led effort to reduce public education to rote memorization at the expense of creativity and rationality. I blame that neofascist Newt Gingrich for destroying the collegiality of Congress and the false Texan Tom Delay for skewing redistricting nationwide, but the real fault lies with all those who go along, substituting lies for truth. Roar on brother. Liberty is always threatened by the privileged.
Intelligence is the most hated thing by fascists.
These are times that show us what we're made of.
Outstanding. Brilliant. *Again*
I also read the book “Nineteen Eighty-four” in the general vicinity of its namesake (eponymous?) year, maybe a bit earlier in college in the 1970s. Haven’t cracked it since, barely remember all the details that you mention.
As with most books I read in my youth, I had no idea at the time how valuable a lesson was being gifted.
My father’s first language is German, he didn’t learn English until he came to this country in the early 1950s, and like Donald Trump he was a little challenged in the reading department. So he didn’t read books, as a rule, probably because of the difficulty. He did read newspapers every single morning, and he certainly didn’t have any trouble with spoken English and English vocabulary.
However, curiously, this book was on his desk at the time of his stroke. It was the only book on his desk, so clearly he had been planning to make his way through it.
Greg, I find it intriguing that this book, of all books, captivated you early on. It’s revealing.
And yes, it certainly classifies as Sci-fi.
“ What Orwell’s book is really about is the destruction of the spirit— “
“…. The Nazis did that. The Soviets did that. The fascists in America are trying to do it right now.”
And let’s not forget Chinese society, one of those countries where political thought police will show up at your door to try to convince you that Big Brother is the right way and the only way.
Noticed that the Russian military targets civilians, especially large concentrations of civilians like refugees in museums and train stations. To be a member of the Russian military is to be a member of Big Brother’s police force. Completely immoral (amoral), completely ruthless coldhearted and brutal like Putin and pals. The worst of the worst.
Trump is a Putin wannabe, but he doesn’t have the same pure ruthlessness and brutality.
Lest we become enamored with our delusions of “other” (other societies, other cultures), we also must remind ourselves, as Greg has done, that the thought police is alive and well right here at home.
For-profit capitalism is one of America’s greatest thought crimes. Russia sees it clearly, but we don’t, like fish don’t see the water they swim in. The concept that a small number of people must be billionaires, and that the rest of us work as slaves for the billionaires, is an insidious 1984-worthy myth. We need a new paradigm of an economy, where all corporations are honest corporations, where worker-owned businesses and cooperatives are the norm, where the workers are equal to each other, whether they provide direct labor or drive a desk. Death to boardrooms, executive suites and corporate jets‼️ Down with billionaires‼️
“What Orwell’s book is really about is the destruction of the spirit—“
Tyranny destroys the soul, as Greg says.
Think about animals in the wild. There are animals that ruthlessly attack and kill each other for power, for territory, for ownership of female animals and therefore breeding rights, all of it ultimately for survival.
Survival.
Dictators are fearful of their own survival, and their early history and early experiences in life often reflect this.
Once a person is initiated into love and light, they are motivated by morality. I know that the term “love and light” sounds sappy because of its 1960s and New Age connotations, but I include it deliberately.
Love is what motivates a person with morality. Light is the life flame which infuses each of you reading these words with knowledge and understanding. Before the oprichnik O’Brien corrupts Winston and Julia, they are “alive” in the sense of love infusing the heart center and light infusing the mind (knowledge center). After corruption, those centers have been closed. They are “dead,” to the spirit at least. They are now the walking dead.
Being moral is being alive.
Be grateful that you are “alive.” The last thing in the world we would want for ourselves is to return to the ignorant, intellectually dead, emotionally bankrupt world of the humans who are still stuck in survival mode. Be grateful that we are not billionaires and ideological hacks and deadbeat functionaries in the system. Think Neo breaking out of The Matrix. We are all Neo.
Lovely observations, true & undeniable. But let's not forget that life on Earth has been terrible to huge numbers forever and that progress is measured in centuries.
Life is personal.
So many writers and journalists attempt to be impersonal in their writing. The science texts I had to read in my engineering program in college might be the worst of the breed. By using the passive voice, by sounding sterile and bland and neutral and dead, somehow a book or an article is supposed to convey something of value.
Yech. Double yech. 🤮
In my opinion, writing is supposed to imitate life. Writing is supposed to be alive. If a writer is trying to deaden their thoughts, whether on paper or on a computer screen, then that person is reducing their value.
The most alive and passionate story is your own personal story. Those experiences that have changed your life, blown your mind, and rocked your world, are the experiences to be writing about.
Life is personal. So write like it is.
Thank you, Greg. You’ve done it. A total delight.
Although the causation of decline of the Roman Empire was multi-factorial, and more complicated than Edward Gibbon postulated, a number of contributing factors are ones we’re grappling with in our time. Climate change, pandemics, and government officials only interested in their own self interest were clearly part of the reason the Western Roman Empire was effectively ended in 476, even as some of its precepts persisted for centuries.
Romans probably thought their empire would last forever and couldn’t see the end coming by multiple paper cuts. My fear is that Americans are in the same place. Last night at CPAC, the attendees gave Trump enthusiastic applause (and 69% of the vote in the straw poll) when he said America is being destroyed from within. What is so concerning is that the people clapping and hooting and hollering fail to recognize they are supporting the destroyer-in-chief.
The Five 8 is always so great, Greg! Keep up the brilliant work but DO UNPLUG and have a safe, sane and healthy hiatus! 🥂
I'm not even sure when I read 1984 for the first time, but I do know that it was probably at a time that I was so self-absorbed that it failed to penetrate, so, probably my 20s, a century or so ago. I just re-read it last year and had to keep firmly in my mind that it had been published in 1949. I started thinking about reading it during the Trump years, but stopped myself because that felt too much like a cliché. It is a powerful book, especially for our current situation.
It is a novel about giving up, giving in, taking whatever scraps you are allowed to have. Trump supporters did that early on. I have had enough engagement with them through the years to know that, like Trump, they could never take responsibility for their own lives and were looking for an easy scapegoat. Trump led them right to it -- "radical leftist socialist Democrats," the "poors", the Blacks, the gays, the Mexicans, WOMEN -- basically anyone who didn't buy the canned bullshit he was selling. Some have fallen away, but there is still a core group that will never fall away. Before Trump, they probably used to be "regular Americans." After Trump, they became subjects of Big Brother.
Then there are the resistors. Those who DON'T accept the idea that everything needs to be done for them. Those who will resist tyranny in the US. They will resist the fascism that's apparently on the menu for the future. We are the people that are actually DOING what Trump supporters SAY they're doing. Trump is an expert in double-speak. He has taught his all too willing cult to become experts in it too. In this form, of course, it becomes a playground taunt: whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. It's breathtaking how many examples of "things the Left says about the Trumplicans," that a week or so later becomes, "things Trumplicans say about the Left." It's insidious, and many fall for it every time. Goebbels would be proud.
Nineteen Eighty-Four turned out to be not a warning, but a prediction. As exhausted as we all are at this point, it's only going to get worse as 2024 approaches. The 2024 election will be a bloodbath, no matter what happens. Trump is in a bind right now. The RNC say they will stop paying his legal bills when he announces his candidacy for '24, but he also thinks that the DOJ wouldn't indict him while he's a Presidential candidate. Oh, what to do? My answer is, and remains, "fuck you, die."
Orwell wasn't just an artist; he was a prophet
Will the current waring conglomerates of atoms come together or continue to diverge?
Ending in firey destruction?
Can Nations continue to go their separate ways?
I supect the sword will only be retired when the last man holding it finds he is the last one of his species.
I saw Orwell not as a prophet but as a visionary.
(My semantics)
For 60 plus years i have failing defended Thomas Malthus as a visionary. While technocrats and economists attempted to make him irrelevant.
Today at 82. i re read my deceased friend,Charles Bowden. Definitely a man with eyes wide open.
A visionary who noted that the "future was past" and had "memories of the Future."
Greg, great scribbling.
It’s unimaginable to think we are here…it unraveled slow, then, it became fast.