Simply Orwellian: Cutting and running from 'stay the course'
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: Who controls the present controls the past." - from 1984 by George Orwell I'm here to tell you we're going to stay the course. - George W. Bush, Nov. 28, 2003 We've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course. - George W. Bush, April 5, 2004 The United States of America will stay the course. - George W. Bush, Nov. 21, 2004 We will stay the course; we will complete the job in Iraq. - George W. Bush, Aug. 4, 2005 We will stay the course, we will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed. - George W. Bush, Aug. 31, 2006 Listen, we've never been 'stay the course.' - George W. Bush, Oct. 22, 2006
Ahem.
"Orwellian" is one of those words you toss out to prove you stayed awake in freshman English. Often, it is used to evoke a world in which all people are always under surveillance, as was the case in the totalitarian state George Orwell depicted in 1984, his 1949 masterpiece.
But as you know if you've read the book, surveillance wasn't the most chilling aspect of the world Orwell foresaw.
No, the thing about that world that made your skin creep on your bones was the shameless intellectual dishonesty of its leaders, the brazen way they savaged objective truth and dared anyone to call them on it. Nobody did. The people simply accepted what they were told.
In the world Orwell invented, words had no objective meaning beyond that assigned them by the Party, whose slogans, not incidentally, were "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength."
In that world, there was no past - or rather, the past was what the leaders said it was, and it was a waste of time to check for yourself, because all books, newspapers and other records were constantly being updated to reflect whatever the new reality was.
Thus, "Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia." Much as we now learn the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq has "never been stay the course."
And never mind that the president and his henchmen have spent three years pounding that phrase like nails into the public consciousness.
"Stay the course" doesn't work anymore, not with most of the nation united against the war, so the White House recently announced that the phrase would no longer be used. That's its prerogative. But it's quite a leap from won't be used to never has been used.
So did we dream these last three years? Is "stay the course" just something we mumbled in our collective sleep as we twisted in our collective sheets? Or do we learn something here about the administration's level of respect for our collective intelligence?
It is not, by now, surprising that the president and his surrogates rewrite the past. We've seen that before, after all.
We've seen it with Sen. John Kerry the war hero "traitor," with Rep. John P. Murtha the Marine "coward."
We've seen it with weapons of mass destruction, which, it turned out, were not the reason we invaded Iraq (where'd we ever get that idea?).
What's painful, though, is that we see it so quietly, see it, as the citizens of 1984 did, with apparent acceptance.
The truth is being stolen right before our eyes. Yet there are no mass demonstrations at the executive mansion. There are not a million headlines saying, "Wait Just A Bleeping Minute!"
"We've never been 'stay the course,'" he says. Oh, we say.
To which I can only add that war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. And Orwell was only off by 22 years.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for The Miami Herald. His column appears Sundays in The Sun. His e-mail is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
|
Spread the word  Stumble It! -  Digg it!
-  reddit
Latest Articles in: Big Brother/Orwellian
- NSA Is Giving Microsoft Some Help On Windows 7 Security
- Apple Patents Technology That Would Force Users to Interact with Ads
- Law & Order Shills for Obamacare
- Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power
- Council recruits army of snoopers to spy on Londoners
- Police prepare drill for plague at school
- Pupils terrified after arriving at school to bloody crime scene… which was lesson on ‘problem solving’
- State to 'spy' on every phone call, email and web search
|
PLEASE NOTE
|
Please read our About Page, our Disclaimer, and our Comments Policy.
Please note: InformationLiberation is neither liberal or conservative. When one takes the time to research the "liberal elite," whom the conservatives oppose, and the "conservative elite," whom the liberals oppose, one finds both "elite" are one and the same. "Liberal" or "Conservative" is not a substantive choice, it is only the carefully crafted illusion of a choice, for both parties come together when they are instructed to.
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."
A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, 1933
"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure."
Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, in the July 26th, 1936 issue of The New York Times.
If you care to know who runs the world you live in, view these films. If you care not then I leave you with this quote to ponder:
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution."
Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
Audio - Transcript
|
|
|
FAIR USE NOTICE
|
|
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
|
About Us - Disclaimer
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill |
The Century of the Self: The Untold History of Controlling the Masses Through the Manipulation of Unconscious Desires
Operation Gladio: "One of the most secret programs that ever existed"
The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Print
Shocking H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Miscarriage Stories From Pregnant Women
Unbelievable: Government Hijacks Kids TV To Propagandize For Swine Flu Shots
Government Propaganda To Infest Network TV Shows 
One bank to rule them all: UN wants new global currency to replace dollar
The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb
German health expert's swine flu warning: Does virus vaccine increase the risk of cancer?
The Pentagon Wants Authority to Post Almost 400,000 Military Personnel in U.S.
Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder