Today is the first day of 2018 and an opportunity to review
what happened in 2017, but not with specifics but more with generalities. A
number of general concerns that have become very prominent are: "fake
news", "junk science" and a general feeling that a lot of what
went on kept reminding me of the book "1984" by George Orwell. I had
read that book back in high school sometime around 1970, or almost 50 years
ago. While I have read a lot of books over the years I find it intriguing as to
why fragments of prose from only a very small selection of those books keep
floating up into my consciousness and the two that do, and have done that, far
too often over the years have been by the same authour; George Orwell, being
"1984" and "Animal Farm".
So to end 2017 I decided it was time to reread both,
beginning with "1984". George Orwell (actually his name was Eric
Arthur Blair but that was the pseudonym he used) published the book in 1949 and
he died the year after. He had experienced firsthand the Spanish Civil war and
World War 2 plus saw the rise of communism in Russia with the eventual rise to
power of Josef Stalin. When in his 30's he proclaimed that “the only regime which, in the long run, will
dare to permit freedom of speech is a socialist regime. If Fascism triumphs I
am finished as a writer — that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity.
That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a socialist party".
And two years before publishing "1984" he stated “every line of serious work that I have
written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against
totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it". Yet
neither "1984" or "Animal Farm" come across as supporting
"Socialism" with the former most certainly being a condemnation of
that very concept with such things as "Big Brother", The Party",
"doublespeak" and "the thought police" .
So let's explore a bit the concept of "socialism"
before getting more in how "1984" is a warning of what lies ahead for
modern "civilization" if the current trends continue.
Churchill, in a speech to the House of Commons in 1945,
proclaimed that "the inherent vice
of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of
socialism is the equal sharing of miseries". And Orwell again, in 1938, proclaimed that “the thing that attracts ordinary men to
Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the ‘mystique’ of
Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism
means a classless society, or it means nothing at all". But there in
itself Orwell made a non sequitur in that there is no such thing as a
"classless society" since society will always partition into classes,
the most basic of which being the leaders and the followers. Democracy is Greek
for "rule of the people" and the only time society, under a
democracy, can be "classless" is at the polling booth whereby every
person gets to cast a ballot and that ballot has an equal weight to that cast
by anyone else. Is this what Orwell meant when he said "as I understand
it"? The only part of democracy that is true socialism is when one votes,
or in other words "democratic socialism"? Now that I have read
"1984" again I am convinced that is indeed what he meant.
So back to the book itself. We are introduced to such terms as "Doublethink"
(a word with two mutually contradictory meanings), "Prole" (natural
inferiors, just like Clinton's "deplorables"), the "Thought
Police" (not unlike our modern day Social Justice Warriors) and using
names that mean the exact opposite such as the "Ministry of Love" for
the war department and the "Ministry of Truth" for the department
assigned the duty to alter history.
The story describes the mental anguish experienced by
Winston Smith, a writer with the "Ministry of Truth" whereby every
effort is made to expunge the real history of people, places and events to
support the current narrative. One glaring modern day example is what we are experiencing with
"Global Warming" and "Climate Change" whereby government
agencies and universities cashing in on the readily available government
sourced "research" funds who conveniently alter the historical record,
as exposed by "Climate
Gate", or this piece in a recent American
Thinker article, as two of many examples in an effort to support the
fictional story they are promoting. The only difference is that currently the Internet
is so vast that the actual records still exist and can be relatively easily
found, for now. Even the name "Ministry of Truth" is so reminiscent
of the title of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth". In reality
it should have been titled "Convenient Lies". The movie went on to win two Academy Awards and is highly thought of
by many. As Orwell said "the lie
became truth".
A chilling paragraph from the book: "The date had stuck in Winston's memory
because it chanced to be midsummer day; but the whole story must be on record
in countless other places as well. There was only one possible conclusion: the
confessions were lies. Of course, this was not in itself a discovery. Even at
that time Winston had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the
purges had actually committed the crimes that they were accused of. But this
was concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil
bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory. It
was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been
published to the world and its significance made known."
The political "swamp", if left unchecked, is the precursor of the "Ministry of
Truth" with most Main Stream Media complicit with the deceit. The
Democrats in the US tried to lay the blame on loosing the Presidential election
on collusion of Trump and his supporters with the Russians. As it turns out all of the collusion was by
the Democrats but that for the most part is being swept under the rug since that
should have been enough to "blow the Party to atoms" but isn't
because the Main Stream Media try their best to refute it even exists. Thus the
predominance of "Fake News", a name which they in turn apply to real
news in an effort to deceive. Without careful scrutiny and the application of a
lot of skepticism one can be easily misled. And here in Canada we have a Prime Minister
found guilty of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR violations of Conflict of
Interest legislation and is that "published to the world and its
significance made known"? Already it has almost been expunged from the
public record or at the very least downplayed. But we had a senator affiliated
with the previous government who was accused of 31 different charges including "breach
of trust" and was found innocent of all
charges. The media could not "publish" this case enough!
Speaking of Trudeau here are some of his quotes.
- Openness, respect, integrity - these are principles that need to underpin pretty much every other decision that you make.
Numerous times in just two years he has shown to have a
disregard for all three. And his conviction of breaking the Conflict of Interest law is just the latest
example that has surfaced.
- I have no regrets
He has no respect for anyone or any legislation he is expected
to follow. One with such low ethical and moral standards of course would have
no regrets.
- Sunny ways my friends, sunny ways.
This quote supposedly is a nod to Sir Wilfred Lauier who
said, during one parliamentary debate "Well,
sir, the government are very windy. They have blown and raged and theatened,
but the more they have theatened and raged and blown the more that man Greenway
has stuck to his coat. If it were in my power, I would try the sunny way. I would approach this man Greenway with the sunny way of patriotism, asking him
to be just and to be fair, asking him to be generous to the minority, in order
that we may have peace among all the creeds and races which it has
pleased God to bring upon this corner of our common country. Do you not believe
that there is more to be gained by appealing to the heart and soul of men rather
than to compel them to do a thing?" Now think, has Trudeau delivered
by focusing on patriotism, on being just and fair?
- Because it’s 2015
Sorry Justin, but you misspoke as I'm sure you meant 'It's going to be like "1984"'.
Orwell may have got the date wrong but we are definitely on
our way down that dark path. Human nature is such that many preach and praise
Socialism as being the perfect political system. But it is not as it is based
on a false narrative that ignores human nature. As Sir Winston Churchill said
in 1947; "It has been said that democracy
is the worst form of government, except for all of the rest".
The current poster boy of Socialism in Canada is Trudeau and
the only thing we have to be thankful for is that he is so ignorant of his
weaknesses that he ends up being so obvious the tyrant he wants to be. One of
many examples include enacting M-103, the thin edge of the wedge to stifle free speech. We must remember that "Freedom
of Speech" isn't having the freedom to say anything, it is the freedom to listen to anything and then being able to judge for one self and exercising our innate freedom to think
for ourselves.
I would like to close with two more quotes from
"1984" that you can ponder on and then determine if you see relevance
to what is currently going on around us:
"The official
ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for
them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the
Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of
Socialism."
"One does not
establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the
revolution in order to establish the dictatorship."
