Life Under the Ministry of Love.
Never in my lifetime, seventy years, and, on the basis of my long and intensive - avocational, that is – study of history, has the United States government at all levels been held in lower esteem with the public than today. From the outrage of the Iraq War to the security debacle of the World Trade Center, to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, to even more societally palpable outrages like the latest shooting by supposed drug law enforcement officers of a ninety-two year old woman, and the astonishing fusillade of bullets that riddled a young man leaving his bachelor party, the depredations of those in power against those subservient grows more horrendous daily.
Throw into the evil cauldron a Congress of supposedly elected officials shepherded by thirty-five thousand lobbyists owned by corporations whose wealth – and, hence, power – beggars description. Consider the tip of the iceberg represented by corruption personified with individuals like Congressmen Duke Cunningham, Tom Foley, and more, include a federal Gestapo like the Internal Revenue Service, then consider the implications of open borders and corporate treachery in the form of invitation and incentive to the aliens they exploit, and then try further to imagine the mountain of ice that must be below the surface.
Want more? Mine further the waters of our national life with generations of youth largely without parental supervision or even care, grown into illiterate morons who identify the victor in the battle of Yorktown as Douglas MacArthur, and the conflict in question as the Civil War, have the mathematical understanding of an exceptional chimpanzee, and listen ardently to the mindless drivel called rap (“music?”). Eighty-four percent of people interviewed in a small Texas town identified logic as a computer program. None – that’s zero, zip, nada, bupkis – could say correctly what is meant by the expression “begging the question.”
There’s more, and more. Ninety percent of people asked during the past four years say they listen to FoxNews either because it is “fair and balanced,” or do not listen to FoxNews because it is “biased.” None – that’s zip . . . oh, never mind – was able to offer any logically valid proof for his contention. Ninety-two percent did, however, say they were entitled to their opinion regardless of their ignorance of either the subject or the disciplines by which proof is established.
I don’t know what to make of that, except to recognize that it is the stuff most of our problems as a society are made from and stay ready. “Stay ready” means eschew wherever possible contact with what is dangerous. It’s the fundament, basic tactic of all living things. But therein lies yet another of the pitfalls of life in the land of corporate capitalism. You can’t stay away from them. They won’t let you. There is nothing more fundamentally inimical to societies and their governments than the right to be alone and left that way.
You see, the human being is a corrupt and concupiscent creature. He knows it, too. Knowing that he is corrupt, easily led by evil – especially evil he can foist upon his fellow as good (religion, for instance) – he assumes that everyone is like him. Dangerous. Neither is he willing to simply avoid what is dangerous. Uh-uh. That would mean that he had to provide for his own subsistence – all by himself. No one to exploit, no one from whom to steal, no one from whom to learn. The corollary, therefore, is that he fears to be alone as much as he fears his evil fellow. What a dilemma!
So, what does he do? Why, he creates governments. Governments do everything for him that he once imagined god did. Governments protect him from what he is – his fellow, that is. Governments do that by demanding to know everything there is to know about – know the very thoughts of - each potentially dangerous person; and, since governments are made of people who suspect everyone of thinking what they, themselves, think, there must be no privacy. In the words of humanist sociologists, it’s “anti-social.”
Now, just like the evil mind of man having been limited in the evil it could wreak upon its fellow man having become unlimited, the once upon a time limited ability of government to invade the privacy of individual has now become unlimited. The dynamite bomb that was a tap on your phone has become the nuclear one that can surveille everything you do – everything you think, even. Remember George Orwell? The book “1984?”
“It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
How about this (1984, again)?
“The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. 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
“The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
“The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
“1984.” The difference today – 2,006 – is that Big Brother rules with state-of-the-art Newspeak technology. The Ministry of Truth, 2,006, is far, far more subtle. Gone are brutally obvious tactics like unisex uniforms, big “eyes” in every room, “The Two Minute Hate,” and all that. Oh, no. None of that.
Unless you look carefully, through eyes kept out of reach of the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, and the Ministry of Love. Eyes kept private, that is.
Eyes kept free of indoctrination and today’s version of the Two Minute Hate rally see the similarities and parallels, the microcosms. And there is much to see, too much to deal with in a few pages.
But we can site examples. Consider the case of Michael Richards (I called him “Keith” the other day – I really do protect my mind from Big Brother). What is the seething diatribe elicited by his intemperate remarks if not a Two Minute Hate? Is there no alternative to an effort to ruin or end the productive life of the man?
How about sober refutation of what is being so rabidly denounced?
How about Professor Ward Churchill? Remember that? FoxNews people like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, rather than rebut the professor’s supposedly inaccurately cruel remarks with valid argument, these Ministers of Truth demanded that Churchill lose his source of income. More, O’Reilly called his adversary in viewpoint “a traitor.” That isn’t hate? It will sure pass for it in my deliberations.
Do you know about Melinda Duckett, the woman who committed suicide after having been ambushed by a supposed newswoman named Nancy Grace? It’s a newsman’s business to put to third degree questioning persons uncharged with any crime, and of whom there is little – except in the fevered and lusting-for-ratings mind of the newsman – suspicion? Really?
I suppose for a society that thinks the Battle of Yorktown was during the Civil War, and thinks General Douglas MacArthur was the victor there, it’s a term from too long ago, but does no one recognize what was called in the time of another such “newsman” “yellow journalism?”
Does anyone ever see anything but yellow journalism today, 2,006?
Wanna play some more Orwellian word games? How about all out – meaning everything they’ve got, and if they had better weapons they’d use them - war between the true political factions (that it happens all politics there are religious issues makes a difference?) being termed “insurgency?” What makes it not a civil war? Or is what is happening really peace?
Without the Ministry of Truth, how do we tell?
And what of the Ministry of Love, 2,006? Well, the first thing that comes to mind for a guy whose body bears the scars of bullet wounds inflicted by our Ministry of Love, 1986, is something like the 92-year old woman shot to death in her own home by undercover officers of love, serving a “no-knock” warrant. Ninety-two. The earth-shaking, democracy-threatening, ruinous to peace crime being prevented? Suspicion of possession with intent to deliver . . . no, not a nuclear weapon; not even high explosives, or guns.
Marijuana!
WE – that’s you and I – killed a ninety-two year old woman in order to prevent the sale of ounces of marijuana.
When, by the way is the next of our regular, FoxNews Two Minutes of Hate rallies against that particular enemy of the people and destroyer of mankind?
Then we have the young soon-to-be (never plan anything as long-term as marriage in the Land of the Free - where you don’t dare venture out any where the Ministry of Love has easy access) bridegroom who somehow merited being riddled – fifty-one shots is pretty much a riddling, not matter what the Ministry of Truth calls it – as he left his bachelor party.
What’s that, commissioner? Mayor? Oh, it was a “Contagious shooting?”
Contagious. Well. That explains it, then. The boys didn’t know – we’re saying ignorant, right? - what was happening, so they just took care of everything by killing what they didn’t know about. Right?
Right – Ignorance Is Strength. Got it. Straight from the Ministry of Love.
It seems time for a “FoxNews Question.” You don’t know what a FoxNews question is? Why, it’s a question like, “Are those who question the White House giving aid and comfort to the enemy?” “Is a vote for Democratic Party candidates a vote for terror?” No more of the old, archaic – circa 1984 – questions like, “When did you stop beating your wife.”
Oh, no – No more Ministry of Truth. That was 1984. This is 2,006.
Throw into the evil cauldron a Congress of supposedly elected officials shepherded by thirty-five thousand lobbyists owned by corporations whose wealth – and, hence, power – beggars description. Consider the tip of the iceberg represented by corruption personified with individuals like Congressmen Duke Cunningham, Tom Foley, and more, include a federal Gestapo like the Internal Revenue Service, then consider the implications of open borders and corporate treachery in the form of invitation and incentive to the aliens they exploit, and then try further to imagine the mountain of ice that must be below the surface.
Want more? Mine further the waters of our national life with generations of youth largely without parental supervision or even care, grown into illiterate morons who identify the victor in the battle of Yorktown as Douglas MacArthur, and the conflict in question as the Civil War, have the mathematical understanding of an exceptional chimpanzee, and listen ardently to the mindless drivel called rap (“music?”). Eighty-four percent of people interviewed in a small Texas town identified logic as a computer program. None – that’s zero, zip, nada, bupkis – could say correctly what is meant by the expression “begging the question.”
There’s more, and more. Ninety percent of people asked during the past four years say they listen to FoxNews either because it is “fair and balanced,” or do not listen to FoxNews because it is “biased.” None – that’s zip . . . oh, never mind – was able to offer any logically valid proof for his contention. Ninety-two percent did, however, say they were entitled to their opinion regardless of their ignorance of either the subject or the disciplines by which proof is established.
I don’t know what to make of that, except to recognize that it is the stuff most of our problems as a society are made from and stay ready. “Stay ready” means eschew wherever possible contact with what is dangerous. It’s the fundament, basic tactic of all living things. But therein lies yet another of the pitfalls of life in the land of corporate capitalism. You can’t stay away from them. They won’t let you. There is nothing more fundamentally inimical to societies and their governments than the right to be alone and left that way.
You see, the human being is a corrupt and concupiscent creature. He knows it, too. Knowing that he is corrupt, easily led by evil – especially evil he can foist upon his fellow as good (religion, for instance) – he assumes that everyone is like him. Dangerous. Neither is he willing to simply avoid what is dangerous. Uh-uh. That would mean that he had to provide for his own subsistence – all by himself. No one to exploit, no one from whom to steal, no one from whom to learn. The corollary, therefore, is that he fears to be alone as much as he fears his evil fellow. What a dilemma!
So, what does he do? Why, he creates governments. Governments do everything for him that he once imagined god did. Governments protect him from what he is – his fellow, that is. Governments do that by demanding to know everything there is to know about – know the very thoughts of - each potentially dangerous person; and, since governments are made of people who suspect everyone of thinking what they, themselves, think, there must be no privacy. In the words of humanist sociologists, it’s “anti-social.”
Now, just like the evil mind of man having been limited in the evil it could wreak upon its fellow man having become unlimited, the once upon a time limited ability of government to invade the privacy of individual has now become unlimited. The dynamite bomb that was a tap on your phone has become the nuclear one that can surveille everything you do – everything you think, even. Remember George Orwell? The book “1984?”
“It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
How about this (1984, again)?
“The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. 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
“The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
“The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
“1984.” The difference today – 2,006 – is that Big Brother rules with state-of-the-art Newspeak technology. The Ministry of Truth, 2,006, is far, far more subtle. Gone are brutally obvious tactics like unisex uniforms, big “eyes” in every room, “The Two Minute Hate,” and all that. Oh, no. None of that.
Unless you look carefully, through eyes kept out of reach of the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, and the Ministry of Love. Eyes kept private, that is.
Eyes kept free of indoctrination and today’s version of the Two Minute Hate rally see the similarities and parallels, the microcosms. And there is much to see, too much to deal with in a few pages.
But we can site examples. Consider the case of Michael Richards (I called him “Keith” the other day – I really do protect my mind from Big Brother). What is the seething diatribe elicited by his intemperate remarks if not a Two Minute Hate? Is there no alternative to an effort to ruin or end the productive life of the man?
How about sober refutation of what is being so rabidly denounced?
How about Professor Ward Churchill? Remember that? FoxNews people like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, rather than rebut the professor’s supposedly inaccurately cruel remarks with valid argument, these Ministers of Truth demanded that Churchill lose his source of income. More, O’Reilly called his adversary in viewpoint “a traitor.” That isn’t hate? It will sure pass for it in my deliberations.
Do you know about Melinda Duckett, the woman who committed suicide after having been ambushed by a supposed newswoman named Nancy Grace? It’s a newsman’s business to put to third degree questioning persons uncharged with any crime, and of whom there is little – except in the fevered and lusting-for-ratings mind of the newsman – suspicion? Really?
I suppose for a society that thinks the Battle of Yorktown was during the Civil War, and thinks General Douglas MacArthur was the victor there, it’s a term from too long ago, but does no one recognize what was called in the time of another such “newsman” “yellow journalism?”
Does anyone ever see anything but yellow journalism today, 2,006?
Wanna play some more Orwellian word games? How about all out – meaning everything they’ve got, and if they had better weapons they’d use them - war between the true political factions (that it happens all politics there are religious issues makes a difference?) being termed “insurgency?” What makes it not a civil war? Or is what is happening really peace?
Without the Ministry of Truth, how do we tell?
And what of the Ministry of Love, 2,006? Well, the first thing that comes to mind for a guy whose body bears the scars of bullet wounds inflicted by our Ministry of Love, 1986, is something like the 92-year old woman shot to death in her own home by undercover officers of love, serving a “no-knock” warrant. Ninety-two. The earth-shaking, democracy-threatening, ruinous to peace crime being prevented? Suspicion of possession with intent to deliver . . . no, not a nuclear weapon; not even high explosives, or guns.
Marijuana!
WE – that’s you and I – killed a ninety-two year old woman in order to prevent the sale of ounces of marijuana.
When, by the way is the next of our regular, FoxNews Two Minutes of Hate rallies against that particular enemy of the people and destroyer of mankind?
Then we have the young soon-to-be (never plan anything as long-term as marriage in the Land of the Free - where you don’t dare venture out any where the Ministry of Love has easy access) bridegroom who somehow merited being riddled – fifty-one shots is pretty much a riddling, not matter what the Ministry of Truth calls it – as he left his bachelor party.
What’s that, commissioner? Mayor? Oh, it was a “Contagious shooting?”
Contagious. Well. That explains it, then. The boys didn’t know – we’re saying ignorant, right? - what was happening, so they just took care of everything by killing what they didn’t know about. Right?
Right – Ignorance Is Strength. Got it. Straight from the Ministry of Love.
It seems time for a “FoxNews Question.” You don’t know what a FoxNews question is? Why, it’s a question like, “Are those who question the White House giving aid and comfort to the enemy?” “Is a vote for Democratic Party candidates a vote for terror?” No more of the old, archaic – circa 1984 – questions like, “When did you stop beating your wife.”
Oh, no – No more Ministry of Truth. That was 1984. This is 2,006.
posted by Judo Knight-Errant at 12:42 PM
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