THE PERILS OF APATHY

Occupy protest

Politicians live in a parallel universe of 1984 where their priorities are to legislate their own agendas.   Nothing ever gets done for the average man unless the masses rise up in visible protest to a point that the politician fear for their jobs.   

There would have been no move to integration without the protest of the sixties; and the Vietnamese war would not have ended when it did without the anti-war protest.

Not all protest are constructive: the Tea Party protest of the past decade has driven the Republican Party to the extreme right.   This is a perfect example that even small minorities can sway politicians if they are visible and loud enough.   

The Occupy protest is now getting the attention of the politicians.   The government, through the police departments of state and city regimes, is moving forcefully against the Occupy protesters, as was done against early demonstrators.  The difference is that now police have new powers to spy on citizens without oversight. 

If you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 – you should; and if you have read it in the past, you should read it again.

Without the story line – the following are excerpts from 1984:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The enemy of the moment always 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.   Who controls the past, ran the party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

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

What was most important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leadership worship.

The aim of the high is to remain where they are.   The aim of the middle is to change places with the 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 distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

It was still true that men were not equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others. 

Imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the 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.

DOUBLE THINK: (reality control) Though shall not kill, but glorification of war heroes

NEW SPEAK: Designed to diminish the range of thought.  If it is not in your vocabulary- you can’t express it – if you can’t express it you can’t think it – if you can’t think it you can’t accomplish it.  

MINISTRIES

Ministry of Peace: concerns itself with war.

Ministry of Truth:  concerns itself with lies.

Ministry of Love:  concerns itself with torture.

Ministry of Plenty: concerns itself with starvation.

INGSOC: The Government ( There are striking similarities to the policies of the Republican Party.)  INGSOC, like religion, successfully manipulated the mind to the point that a person believed opposite of what was true.

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

The proles ( citizens) 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.  It is in the ranks of The Party and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.

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

We are all proles

the Ol'Buzzard