It is indeed alarming the number of 1984 type incidents that have happened lately. But WE remember.
Posted on 07/31/2004 9:10:56 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob
There’s a reason why literate Americans should be familiar with classic books. A solid example arose last week. Those Americans who went to college a generation ago would have read the book that explains the situations of Joe “Isuzu” Wilson and Sandy “Shoplifter” Berger. That book was written in 1948; its title is 1984.
The author of that book, George Orwell, died in 1950. Still, he better understood these events in 2004 than most of the reporters covering them in newspapers and on TV, today. Does that sound impossible? Here’s the proof:
As of a week ago, a special website named RestoreHonesty.com touted the wisdom and truthfulness of Joe Wilson. It was paid for and sponsored by “John Kerry for President.” As I speculated a week ago, that website has ceased to exist. Anyone using its address is redirected to the Kerry/Edwards website. And those who search for the name of Joseph Wilson on that site now, receive the answer, “Not Found.” Ironically, the Kerry webmaster had to delete an entire subdirectory named “Honesty” to dump the Wilson website. A single Wilson attack letter, praised by Kerry, remains available through Google. Odds are, that too will disappear before this article is published.
What has happened here? A week ago, Joe Wilson was an advisor to John Kerry. Wilson’s attacks on President Bush were a major part of Kerry’s campaign. But in the meantime, the unanimous Report of the 9/11 Commission has been published. It establishes chapter and verse of how Wilson lied to the Commission, lied to the press, lied in his book, and lied in his hour-long appearance on “60 Minutes” that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and lined Wilson’s pockets with money.
So, the situation is that Wilson went in one week from being a talisman of truth to a proven liar, and from an important person to Kerry to a “nonperson.” The first change is an example of Doublespeak, a word invented in the book 1984 to describe the change from believing a thing to believing its opposite, with no memory left of the prior view. Nonperson was also invented in that book to describe the utter rejection of the humanity as well as the specific views of anyone who was rejected by the Party.
In short, what the powers that be in the Kerry Campaign just did in their effort to forget that Joe Wilson ever existed, they have played out a scenario described by Orwell more than half a century ago. But is this an isolated event? By no means.
Sandy Berger got a similar shuffle off to Buffalo last week. He’s been under criminal investigation for stealing top secret documents from the National Archives in Washington since last October. The Democrats are accusing the Republicans of leaking the news of the Berger investigation. It is equally as likely that Clinton (him or her) put the word out to sabotage the Kerry/Edwards Campaign for their future benefit.
But to get wound up over how the word got out is to miss the point that Berger’s admitted conduct constitutes a number of federal felonies of breach of security. Berger claims it was “an honest mistake,” that it was “accidental.” Let’s examine that extraordinary claim.
Perhaps 100,000 times a day, give or take a bunch, some high school dropout goes into a 7-11, a Wal-Mart, or some other convenient target, and stuffs some cheap products down his pants in an effort to shoplift them, and get them off the premises without being caught. When approached by security guards, such individuals run for the door.
If a high school dropout can understand that stealing from a corner store is wrong, how can a former National Security Advisor for the President of the United States possibly NOT understand that stealing from the National Archives is wrong? And nobody, not the shoplifter of a 20-ounce can of malt liquor nor a shoplifter of secret documents, can possibly get those items down their pants by ACCIDENT. The physical act of stuffing such items into your clothing is a deliberate act; it is not a product of a palsied right hand, or a sudden gust of wind, for instance.
The final cop out that Berger offered was that he “returned” the documents, at least the ones he had not “accidentally lost or destroyed.” A bank robber in Milwaukee offered a similar excuse last week. After robbing a bank he returned to “give the money back.” The police who had been called to the scene accepted the money back, and then charged him with the crime.
Okay, we’ve established that Sandy Burger probably deserves to go on a multi-year mandatory vacation in a federal facility. Whether he will be tried and imprisoned is not the issue for today. The important question concerns how the Kerry Campaign has reacted.
Until last week, Sandy Berger was a “Key Advisor” to the Kerry Campaign. Now, he is described as a “former unpaid volunteer.” That’s quite a comedown. To go from such a high position to such a low one in the span of a few days is well on the way to becoming a nonperson. But there’s more.
We know from the 9/11 Commission Report that the documents that Berger was filching from National Archives had to do with internal reports on the thwarted Millennium attacks on Los Angeles Airport, among others. A very alert Border Patrol person at the Canadian border near Seattle stopped that by discovering the explosives in the trunk of a Middle Eastern man who was driving into the US.
In the same week that Berger was first downgraded in his function for the Kerry Campaign and then dismissed from it, two documents disappeared from the Kerry website. One was Kerry’s highly touted and detailed speech about border and port security that he delivered in Seattle last December. The other was Kerry’s detailed Security Plan, which had several paragraphs dealing with such subjects.
What’s the connection between Berger and those now expunged Kerry website documents? We also have the evidence of Kerry telling a reporter last week that he had not accepted the intelligence briefings which are routinely offered by any administration to opposing candidates for President. Kerry said he “didn’t have the time” for those briefings.
On the other hand, Kerry did have, until last week, Sandy Berger on staff as a resource. And the apparent five documents that Berger put the snatch on, were all related to the subject matter of Kerry’s Seattle Speech and his Security Plan. There is a possibility that three paragraphs of Kerry’s Plan were directly copied from the documents that Berger took from National Archives.
There is another aspect from Orwell’s 1984 which applies to the Wilson and Berger situations. The hero of that book is Winston Smith who works in the Ministry of Truth. It is his job to rewrite or alter records, including newspaper articles, so the past consistently supports whatever is the Party line today. For an example of how that process worked in real life, after Beria, the head of the KGB, was assassinated in the former USSR, a new paragraph was written for the Soviet Encyclopedia that was exactly the length to paste over the existing paragraph on Laventia Beria. The new paragraph was about the Bering Strait.
The process of changing the past in 1984 included putting the documents which didn’t match the Party line down the “memory hole” where they would be destroyed, and then could be replaced. Of course, in the era of the Internet the memory hole would seem to be immediate and electronic. Not so fast, computer-breath.
The two documents taken down from the Kerry website in the wake of the Berger burglary have been preserved from his website before the change took place. They have been archived, and distributed liberally to the press. So any news media who discuss the Berger situation without mentioning the Orwellian reactions of the Kerry Campaign are ducking a story that has been dropped in their not-so-willing laps by assorted able friends of mine.
We live in a sadly post-literate world. Beyond the problem that a significant proportion of Americans cannot read, there are many others who can read but don’t. The proportion of Americans who have read a book, any book, in the last year, and of those who get most of their political news from print media are both still falling. So, here is a source to understand the Wilson and Berger situations that’s available in your nearest video store.
The Terry Gilliam classic, Brazil, deals with similar subjects to Orwell’s 1984. It offers a visual explanation of how the Kerry Campaign sought to pretend that neither Wilson nor Berger were important players in the campaign, and it doesn’t matter if their ideas and statements were false. In Brazil, the hero, Sam Lowry, worked in the Ministry of Information, which had a similar function to Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. The job was not to promote truth, but to promote the Party line, whatever that might be at the moment.
Not just governments, but all large organizations that have agendas, are capable of stepping on, denigrating, and sometimes destroying those who disagree with them or become dangerous to them. Every week the headlines offer additional examples of such suppressions in governments, religions, civic organizations, corporations, universities, and so forth. All such organizations have a tendency to “circle the wagons” and go into fighting mode against their perceived enemies.
The Presbyterian Church (USA), the NAACP, the Kerry Campaign, and a handful of American universities all provided examples of such conduct in the last week. If it is too much trouble to get and read a copy of 1984 to understand this process, rent and watch Brazil to serve the same purpose.
As a longtime student of excellence in movies, I recommend Brazil to everyone who reads these columns. Given that we are now in a War on Terror and bombing attacks on civilians are now commonplace in the Middle East and distinctly possible in the United States, this movie is even more compelling. From the day it came out in 1985, Brazil has been one of the best of the “black comedies.” In 2004 it is even blacker, and its humor even more sardonic.
Is there a general lesson to take away from Wilson and Berger being given the bum’s rush from the Kerry Campaign? Yes.
Any institution, no matter its purpose and no matter its leaders, is defective if it cannot face the truth about its own past. For instance, Japan has not yet been able to admit the complete truth about its WW II atrocities against both the Chinese and the Koreans. It has been unable to allow the full facts to be published in the history books for its high schools and universities. The United States, on the other hand, has faced up to the complete truth about its dealings with the Indians and its traffic in slavery.
All of those examples involved mass murder, so it might seem odd to compare that to honest or dishonest behavior by political parties or campaigns. The underlying principle is the same. When an institution cannot face its own prior failures, when it responds to adverse facts by expelling individuals and burying documents, it is demonstrating more than just a one-time failure. Beyond the immediate failure is the culture of dishonesty to cover up problems, rather than face and solve them, in the future.
Even though the Kerry Campaign has sought to drop Joe Wilson down the memory hole, thoughtful observers should not allow that to happen. The security of all Americans depends in part on remembering Joe Wilson, and reflecting on how and why Kerry sought to make him a nonperson, last week.
Then again, the simple route to the same conclusion is this: What is your reaction to a candidate who without explanation deep sixes a website entitled “RestoreHonesty”? Doesn’t that question answer itself?
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About the Author: John Armor is a civil rights attorney who lives in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. CongressmanBillybob@earthlink.net
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J / BB
Joe Wilson, what a Disgusting Creep. Thanks for posting this Article, Congressman BillyBob.
I'd like to share my very first Article Posting With You.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1182225/posts
Very Best FReegards,
D2
You might want to note that he sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his book, and not of the "60 Minutes" interview.
Not quite like with Kimba Woods, but definitely a tactic they use.
We won't forget.
Excellent!
I'm waiting for Berger to come out with the "George Castanza Defense" (when he is being fired for having sex with the cleaning lady): "Was that wrong?"
ping
It is indeed alarming the number of 1984 type incidents that have happened lately. But WE remember.
Newspeak:
"Kerrysite ref unperson Wilson, revise. Association this unperson doubleplus ridiculous, bordering crimethink. Delete all ref unperson. Relink."
"Kerrysite ref 'Key Advisor Berger', revise. Ref 'former unpaid volunteer', plus distance."
"Joseph Wilson is a traitor. I poop on him!"
Democratic Presidential candidate Kerry ["Spermboy"] caught "red-handed"
trying to hide Joseph Wilson .
Caught, Sen. Kerry claimed to only be on a hamster rescue mission.
Excellent!
Excellent, excellent article, CBB: this one wraps up two extremely significant Kerry campaign acts in a beautiful package which is devastating in clarity.
I think it is worthwhile to provide some links to FReeper's work in both of those regards. We "saved" some of the stuff that was purged by using Google and Yahoo and ... caches, at least of the Wilson stuff. The thread, last weekend, was quite interesting to be part of, and contains several of the articles in it:
"Kerry pulls Joe Wilson website link - 'restorehonesty.com'"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1177688/posts
Regarding Berger, two important FR threads are:
First, the "links" thread started by backhoe. Included are threads that capture in detail the part he played in the Kerry campaign as well as the breach of security:
Yes, Down My Pants. Oh, Like You Haven't? The Sordid Sandburglar Story
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175187/posts
Second, tang-soo's very good description of how this highest-level security material is handled. This article will give everyone a much better idea of how difficult it would be for Berger to "inadvertently" commit his crime:
"Details of Classified Document Handling Procedures"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1176576/posts
LOL.
Since Kerry switches positions so often, his webmaster is becoming quite adept at making changes, I'd bet.
Kerry needs an alert proofreader, too.
Earlier this week, Kerry's press releases and website said "America can't afford" a leader who is "peddling and back peddling" in the fight on terror.
Kerry says: "Peddling and back peddling
is something America can't afford."
Using the word PEDDLING, instead of PEDALING makes it sound like Kerry is taking a stand against small-businessmen with carts.
Nicely done.
By the grace of God, John Kerry will become an 'unpolitician' on November 3rd, 2004.
Oh, yeah! This is going to be interesting! !
Excellent article!
If Kery's security plan directly copied anything from papers filched by Berger, isn't that and doesn't that constitute espionage?
J / BB
OOps.
Kery's = KeRRy's..
Me and my typos..
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