How Orwellian are the NeoCONs?

I was wondering what drives some of the more inventive and persistent smear mongers you see these days, particularly but by no means exclusively on the Internet. You encounter them everywhere. My friends tell me stories of knowing hoards of them and I, myself know at least a half a dozen. Why do they complain that any argument one makes is an attack on them...an unfair one at that...while their counter-argument consists of making the most baseless accusations of entire political schools of thought. Basically, they bleat blatantly insulting language meant to anger rather than counter with an argument regarding the validity of their philosophy or it's superiority over yours. On the boards last week I rarely got on. On one occasion, however, a particularly revisionist and blatantly cherry picked post caught my attention. It was about taxes and wars and how the democrats and Fannie and Freddie caused the housing bubble and it was as if they had no recollection of the reckless behavior everyone saw encouraged at every possible outlet (television reality shows, money market shows, Books and news-stories). Even our own White House was pushing home ownership, and they swore by Bush. Even as his numbers fell and the opium of nationalism after the Iraqi invasion was wearing off of the masses, they evoked patriotism as their conscience and spoke of respect for the office over disdain for the man and got all God and Country on any dissenters. now they have moved from that to the race, with no difficulty or adjustment...it was as if they were re-writing the entire history of the world to lay blame on the Democratic party for all present ills.

For those who don't know me, I'm no zealot. I like to consider myself a pragmatist who uses logic over cliche', statistic over anecdote, and common sense over stereotype. The way they hurled hateful and obtusely constructed warnings about Democratic party-rule was intrinsically Orwellian. The poster was claiming bias, as usual of the Media against Sara Palin. She is the only candidate of four who has no national recognition. All we know is what the spin doctors have released, and some investigative journalism capped by five or so fairly unflattering interviews, blamed, once more on the interviewers. This in the face of the fact that everyone saw the interviews...to this they simply claimed partisan editing and bad lighting. She is a virtual unknown whose only two jobs in the position for which she is running are to break ties in the Senate and to replace the president if anything happened to his old ass, as the case would be. With less than two weeks until the election to decide it all, I did not see the harm in finding out a thing or two about this person who many had already decided they would cast their ballot, their trust and their faith. I suggested that they should ask themselves a simple question. Seeing how before three months ago, 99% of the U.S. Population had no Idea who she was, couldn't they admit that a few more years knowing her personality, character, and effectiveness at the national level of government for which she is posting her application could make some great difference in their opinion of her? If they could not at least admit that there was a POSSIBILITY that it COULD change their opinion of her, then I suggested that they read or re-read George Orwell's "1984" and decide what role they thought they were serving or should be serving for their party? Today I am home with a sick child and decided that perhaps I should re-read it, lest someone actually did that very thing and tried to confront me with some obscure passage or, more likely, some hybrid misquote or misinterpreted passage taken out of context. As I had suggested this thing to one who was possibly quite susceptible to suggestion, and it was quite likely to haunt me in the next month or so, I picked up the book I had been enamored by in my University of Mississippi freshman literature class decades ago.

I swear, I am getting to the point of this long winded set-up, but in reading it this morning, I came across the longest-winded analogy of the NeoCON culture, as I see it, in the history of man. Remember, if you will, that Orwell penned this book in 1949. The paragraph comes from chapter eight, and I have removed the name only of the superpower that Winston lives in, as it may throw off those who have not read it or have not read it in ages, as I hadn't.

The Party speaks for itself, but in the book, this is under the explanation of the party's motto, "ignorance is strength" bear with me, this is good:

Two-Minutes-Hate: This is an exercise described in detail at the beginning of the book where party members watch a hateful film for two minutes..it is very closely akin to a negative political add by the swiftboat veterans for truth against Kerry which has been proven was 100% contrived, or any two minute smear of Obama available to all with Internet access to you tube..in their version, enemies of the state are demonized and screamed at by the closely watched observers every day, who take a break in the middle of work to take part in the mandatory activity. My modern analogy would be negative campaign adds and Youtube smears...replace the hyphenated phrase with either of these, and the quote becomes uncannily accurate and descriptive of today's Politics.

Newspeak: This is the "official party language" of the time and place (London, 1984, as seen by a Colonial Indian born Englishman in 1949) where the main character, Winston Smith lives and works. The language, based in English is constantly updated and refined by stripping variations of words away, as well as words describing different degrees of the same thing and replacing them with multiple variations of a single word. This reduces the vocabulary, making thought-crime impossible. There were no words for "liberty" or "dissent," for instance. Ungood replaces evil, and so-on. It is also a means by which to control the order by changing the language continuously and keeping the populous confused. The language and its function are not as important as the meanings of the words and the fact that they are uncannily brilliant descriptions of modern political behavior as seen daily on the boards, blogs, radio, and fox news.

Inimical: 1: being adverse often by reason of hostility or malevolence 2 a: having the disposition of an enemy : hostile b: reflecting or indicating hostility : unfriendly — in·im·i·cal·ly \-mi-k(ə-)lē\ adverb (I had to look that up...had an idea. I didn't care first time I read it.)

Ingsoc: Ingsoc is basically short for English Socialism. It is the form of government and also the ideology of the party, there is only one party, no debate was possible...sound like anyone? It is the result of the revolution which was it was imagined by Orwell would have occurred in the sixties and seventies and had seen the merging of the Americas and the British Aisle into one superpower of Three. Each Superpower had used this ideology and evolved civilization into identical societies with a single ruling party that uses endless war and government control of information to keep the people frightened into mindsets of submission and sacrifice. (remember, 1949 is the year these words were first published.)

Oceanea: Okay, I left it in, because I had to explain so much, already. This is Winston's home. It is comprised of the Americas, the Atlantic Islands, including the British Isles, Australasia, and the Southern portion of Africa. This boundary was drawn after decades of revolutions, counter revolutions, and worldwide nuclear holocausts which were unofficially agreed by the leaders of each superpower to be under moratorium. The quote without the word makes perfect sense or you could substitute "America", but I didn't want to be accused of editing.

Big Brother: In the book Big Brother is the fearless leader, now Big Brother is the Federal Government.

So with no further adieu...here is the passage that made me go "hmmmmmm."

"A party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self abasement before the power and wisdom of the party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devises as the two-minutes-hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner-discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught to even very young children is called in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rested on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent, and the Party is infallible. But since, in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say to say that black is white when party loyalty demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This requires a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. "

So if you are still reading at this point, congratulations, and thank you. I am flabbergasted at the accuracy to which Orwell assesses the modern NeoCON culture and captures their mindset completely within the three words (thought)crimestop, blackwhite, and doulblethink. So let's all point out the perpetrators of these fallicies of spin and manipulation whenever they are seen. The doublethink must be stopped! Accuse ppphilssseng666sss of blackwhite...that would be hilarious!

Huck