Thursday, February 19, 2015

1984 REVISITED






I urge anyone with time for books to read or reread George Orwell’s 1984.   The similarities to our government is astounding.   It is obvious to the observer that science fiction writing has predicted advances in real science; and we might say George Orwell has predicted our present.

The story, of course, is the extreme of an individual’s manipulation by a government; but the underlying picture of our government’s manipulation of facts and reality is strikingly familiar.

(Note: the movie sucks)

EXCERPTS FROM 1984 FOR CONSIDERATION:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

“The enemy of the moment represents absolute evil.”



“If all others accepted the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became true.”

Mission Accomplished


“Who controls the past, ran the party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

George W Bush Presidential Library


“Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version.  A great deal of the time you were supposed to make them up out of your head.”



“The aim of the high is to remain where they are.   The aim of the middle is to change places with high.   The aim of the low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinction and create a society in which all men shall be equal.”

U.S. Congress


“Imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public execution, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and deportation of whole populations not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”



“In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance.”



“The essential act of the party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.   To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient…”

Weapons of Mass Destruction


“The Proles (people) are only intermittently conscious of the war.   When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.  

What War?

 It is in the ranks of the party, and above all the inner party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.”


Republican Neo-Cons



“We know that no one ever seized power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means; it is an end.”


Partisan Politics



NEWS SPEAK: (news released designed to diminish the range of thought.)



DOUBLE THINK: (to successfully manipulate the mind to the point that people think the opposite of what is true.)



The correlations are obvious.  
the Ol’Buzzard




4 comments:

  1. I read the book and yes it is an eerie truth that we have come into 1984.
    As for the snow comment. Why doesn't the government melt it down to water and ship it out west to the drought stricken west.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eurasia and Oceania are well on their way. Russia is a fascism of the left, America of the right. All the quotes apply equally to both countries/empires.

    ReplyDelete

COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."