[Peace-discuss] Poets (here Eric Blair) often get there first...

[E. Wayne Johnson]

42.   Have you had the measles or chicken pox?

       If so, how many? ___________


*

I see a great deal of unrest in the future.

If the masses dont have jobs it could get nasty.

The other thing that holds them back is the idea that there really is no 
hope
and nothing will change, the current Situation is Normal, and in fact is
a FUBAR beyond any relief or repair.

On 9/11/2011 9:20 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> ...In [George] Orwell's 1984, [Emmanuel] Goldstein is the shadowy, 
> possibly-fictitious-but-possibly-real former Party official whose 
> betrayals of the State, ongoing treason, and array of other 
> incomprehensibly evil acts make him, in the lore of State propaganda, 
> the Prime Villain, the Root of all Evil, whom Good Citizens blame for 
> all societal evils and on whom they exclusively focus their rage.  His 
> image is regularly paraded before the citizenry during a Two Minute 
> Hate Session, accompanied by an authoritative narration of his evil, 
> and mass, inebriating rage results (see the video version here).  The 
> ultimate benefit of this ritual is it enables the citizenry to ignore 
> their own plight and the violence and oppression of their own 
> government (political parties use a similar process -- endless focus 
> on marginal, hated figures in the other party -- to keep fear levels 
> high and party loyalty strong).  Thus can the debate over whether 
> Julian Assange should be executed or merely imprisoned for life resume 
> among all good people.
>
> Speaking of Emmanuel Goldstein, he was the putative "author" of the 
> Party manual published at length in 1984 that describes the Party's 
> means of control and manipulation, entitled "The Theory and Practice 
> of Oligarchical Collectivism."  In the chapter entitled "War Is 
> Peace," one finds what is easily the best essay for the 
> 10-year-anniversary religious observance of 9/11 upon which we are 
> about to embark:
> /
> In one combination or another, these three super-states are 
> permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. 
> War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that 
> it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. . . .
>
> This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing 
> attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. 
> On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all 
> countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of 
> children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals 
> against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, *are 
> looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side 
> and not by the enemy, meritorious.
> *
> But in a physical sense war involves *very small numbers of people*, 
> mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few 
> casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague 
> frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or 
> round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea 
> lanes. . . .
>
> To understand the nature of the present war -- for in spite of the 
> regrouping which occurs every few years, *it is always the same war -- 
> one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be 
> decisive*. . . . The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with 
> the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized 
> and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to 
> use up the products of the machine without raising the general 
> standard of living.
> *
> What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is 
> unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale 
> of the Party itself. *Even the humblest Party member is expected to be 
> competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but 
> it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant 
> fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and 
> orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have 
> the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter 
> whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory 
> is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or 
> badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.
>
> The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its 
> members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is 
> now almost universal, but *the higher up the ranks one goes, the more 
> marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war 
> hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest.* In his capacity as an 
> administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party 
> to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may 
> often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not 
> happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared 
> ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of 
> doublethink. Meanwhile *no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in 
> his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end 
> victoriously,* with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. 
> . . .
>
> War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on 
> a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the 
> knowledge of foreign languages.* If he were allowed contact with 
> foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to 
> himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The 
> sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, 
> and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. . .*
>
> The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, 
> is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain 
> ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are 
> incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not 
> meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it *helps 
> to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society 
> needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. . . .
> *
> In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might 
> recognize their common interest and therefore limit the 
> destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor 
> always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting 
> against one another at all. _*The war is waged by each ruling group 
> against its own subjects*_, and the object of the war is not to make 
> or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of 
> society intact.
> /
> There are certainly people with genuine power who understand exactly 
> how this process works and are conscious of the propaganda it entails, 
> and there are many ordinary citizens, paying only casual attention to 
> political matters, who blindly ingest it.  But it is the high-ranking 
> Inner Party members -- the D.C. cadre of think tank "scholars," 
> government and academic functionaries, and journalists and pundits who 
> fancy themselves sophisticated political junkies and insiders -- who 
> are the True Believers.  They cling to institutions of political power 
> and officialdom, plant their careers, self-esteem, self-importance and 
> social circles in its belly, and are thus the most incentivized to 
> believe in its Rightness and Goodness and the least able to critically 
> assess it.  Intoxicated with supreme loyalty to the organs of 
> political power and societal institutions which support it, they 
> become its most ardent, faithful evangelizers.  The more they gather 
> together in their insular royal court realm, the more they reinforce 
> each other's trite convictions.
>
> These pseudo-sophisticated, pseudo-intellectual nationalists may "know 
> that this or that item of war news is untruthful" or may even know 
> that the entire "war is being waged for purposes quite other than the 
> declared ones."  But no matter: they are Washington's most loyal 
> denizens and thus "never waver for an instant in their mystical belief 
> that the war is real" or in the propaganda that sustains it.  At the 
> heart of this propaganda -- and of their worldview -- is the 
> unquestioning conviction about the unmitigated evil of the State's 
> designated Enemies, and of their own Good.  Observe how WikiLekas is 
> now discussed, and especially observe the waves of self-praising 
> moralizing over this next several days, to see this dynamic in all its 
> glory.
>
> [From /<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html>./]
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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