Posted on 01/15/2021 4:51:09 AM PST by MtnClimber
When O'Brien, the interrogator from the Thought Police in Orwell's 1984, holds up four fingers and asks Winston Smith, an imprisoned member of the underground opposition, how many he sees, poor Winston persists in saying he sees four. But that is not what O'Brien wants to hear. "No, Winston, you are insane. There are five fingers." The interrogations continue until Winston, wracked with pain and exhaustion and persuaded of his insanity, agrees finally through his tears that he was lying to himself, that he had always been lying to himself, and admitted that he saw five fingers. He understood that two and two make five. Emptied of his individuality and broken by the inquisition, he also knew that he had won the victory over himself. He knew he was a flaw in the social pattern. He learned, he understood, he accepted. And in the end, he knew that he loved Big Brother.
The new liberal programs of revisionist history and psychological persecution now directed toward the American people are not at all dissimilar to the enforcement techniques of Orwell's Thought Police. Whoever controls the present controls both past and future. The Democrats are telling us to live with a lie and to believe the lie, for the lie is stronger than the truth. They do not tell us that such compulsory instructions are the instruments of a totalitarian regime.
The great lie is that America is a racist nation, that the Constitution of the United States is a racist document, and that you are a racist if you believe otherwise. We are told to believe these things or we are judged insane by those who are insane. Unfinished minds that accept these misguided narratives in pursuit of political identity and power are mistaking a disease of reason for a virtue.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism
Many of the greatest horrors of the history of humanity owe their occurrence solely to the establishment and social enforcement of a false reality. With gratitude to the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper and his important 1970 essay “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities. Pseudo-realities, being false and unreal, will always generate tragedy and evil on a scale that is at least proportional to the reach of their grip on power—which is their chief interest—whether social, cultural, economic, political, or (particularly) a combination of several or all of these. So important to the development and tragedies of societies are these pseudo-realities when they arise and take root that it is worth outlining their basic properties and structure so that they can be identified and properly resisted before they result in sociopolitical calamities—up to and including war, genocide, and even civilizational collapse, all of which can take many millions of lives and can ruin many millions more in the vain pursuit of a fiction whose believers are, or are made, sufficiently intolerant.
You are holding up five fingers. I now love Big Brother.
This should be made into bumper stickers!!!!
Political Dissidents.
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
— Frontpage Interview with Dr. Theodore Dalrymple: Our Culture, What’s Left Of It interviewed by Jamie Glazov [August 31, 2005]
So, this isn't a review of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby movie - featuring Dorothy Lamour?
Regards,
Brilliant analysis!
#2
That’s a really good piece!!!
“On the Road to” is more aptly “On the Outskirts of”.
And we have so many Winston Smith’s at this point!
And that is exactly why this site must continue to ridicule and humiliate the Left, but in a manner that communicates probity and dissolves the underpinnings of Marxism.
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