Orwell and Republicanism2006

The Grand Old Party is surely old and over said the Government Of Desperately Duped People?

circa Orwell 1984
Attention everyone......The telescreen struck fourteen. He (Winston) must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty. The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Winston wrote….
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone -- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings! He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.

He wrote:
Thoughtcrime does not entail death:
Thoughtcrime IS death.
Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink......

Doublethink
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

Orwell’s Ministry of Truth portends The Republican Party Leadership

Doublethink is now the call of the day......Having been in the Presidential Office for six years with the luxury of a majority in the House and in the Senate, the Republican Party seems totally incapable of governing this nation. They were ushered into office with a mandate of the populace, with themselves swearing to reform government, restore moral and family values, and to make America strong again. What they now leave us with is a multi-trillion dollar budget deficit, an unpopular war in Iraq that was started based on a multitude of coordinated lies regarding weapons of mass destruction and fighting the front of terrorism, voting irregularities, moral scandals, inappropriate political/business dealings with lobbyists, Nosama Bin Laden capture, an unstable Middle East, a fractionalized Western coalition, a hapless bungler of foreign policy, and on it goes. He touts having cut taxes but the result of the cuts are fewer jobs and more government debt due to an unbalanced budget.

Yet still, they ask for more years in office. To do WHAT? Are there new proposals for solutions of this current malaise one might ask? “Stay the course" they say. Stay the course? Don’t they even realize we’re off-course? And now that it’s time for mid-term elections, they resort to doing what they do best…..negative mudslinging using specious sound-bite advertising that has worked for them in the past because the general public has resorted to receiving their news knowledge from trusted advisors like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Hannity, each pundits who've found a way to make a superior living beyond their acumen. They couldn't debate a good high school debate team. Yes, they rally the call of the wild from the Speakright media horn, helping ensconce more "kindler, gentler conservatives into office again and again.

Let’s face it right now -

This Republican administration can't be trusted with governing anymore! How could government get so bungaled? Did they promise too much and now owe too much to too many?

In the past, they’ve known how to get elected using Newspeak, the language of The Ministry of Truth……nonetruth. Negative...negative…..negative……negative. Who cares about actual truth even when the evidence stares them blatantly in the face and the opposition criticizes them for their ineptness? They resort to more Newspeak of carefully-crafted sound bites, reconstructing and misrepresenting known fact while calling the diminished opposition non-patriots, cut-and-runners, and other adolescent phrases that resound throughout their political base in a “tipping-point fashion.” Their view of defending democracy and only their view is much maligned with the Party view from Orwell’s 1984 where the constituencies responses have become a chorus of agreement for whatever course The Party has chosen by simply stating…..B..B-B…..B, over and over again in agreement….B…B…B...like babbling sheep. You dare not think and formulate your own thoughts; only The Party has vision and controls The Ministry of Truth.

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

....But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. 'Reality control', they called it: [in Newspeak, 'doublethink']

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....The little sandy haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like 'My Saviour!' she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer. At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of 'B-B! ...B-B!' -- over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second-a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human chanting of 'B-B! ...B-B!' always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.

Fellow Americans, this condition we’re in is not the result of bad American values but of "bad judgment." We are not minions of the state that are in need of being spied upon to protect us. Can we on one hand defend our way of life while with the other hand attempt to take away our liberties which are our way of life? We need not fight totalitarianism, only to succumb to the slipery slope of a symbiosis of the very thing we fight.

What happened to Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death call?" No, we haven't forgoten 9-11-2001! We'll get our enemies. But we are still a courageous people who's president once said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I recently read a comment in The Memphis Flyer newspaper stating that President Bush's comments would probably have been - "the only thing we have to fear is.......everything?" That's fear-based politics.

Thought Police

And what about the eavesdropping intrusions; are they to be the beginning of the need for a Thought Police as in 1984? The government is accountable to us. We hold them accountable through a functional democracy with a corresponding right to vote candidates and administrations into office and out of office. We are free to criticize them when their policies won't hold water. The time has come to boot the dominant party decision-makers out of office and let’s get some new, maybe even more youthful visionaries of a brighter tomorrow into elected offices for posterity sake.Let’s forget allegiances. This time, vote the better candidate, even if the man or woman is a Democrat, Republican, or an Independent, should they be so deserving. Yes, this is a referendum. This administration is not deserving a re-election or the support that came with it.

Don't you hear the bell of freedom ringing?

I’m voting for CHANGE! Join me.