For example, in many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty.
Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard [Obama's “racism” speech]; and if they did, they wondered for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell [...] But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.
[Gandalf said,] “I fancy [Saruman] could do some mischief still in a small mean way.”
[Saruman said,] “ ‘One ill turn deserves another.’ It would have been a sharper lesson, if only you had given me a little more time and more Men. Still I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.”...
But Frodo said, “...He has lost all power, save his voice that can still daunt you and deceive you, if you let it. ...”
Do me a favor, tell my nephew he's a boy, will you?He doesn't know. He doesn't know! I asked him before, he didn't know what the hell I was talking about!What do you mean, "he's a baby"? Now is when he should know! Now, during his formative years! Don't wait till he grows up and makes an arbitrary decision!
Descartes wrote in heavy but lucid nontechnical French, for the layman if not for the man in the street. He was the first of the great popularizers (vulgarisateurs in the strictly French sense): a distinguished line and particularly Gallic, in which Pascal himself, and Renan, were to be his successors. He went so far as to include among his potential audience "even women": a revolutionary step, for the elaborate gallantry of the time had not yet broken down the prejudice against feminine brains: chivalry is the most delicate form of contempt. It is odd to think of the austere logician, mathematician, and physicist as a professor for society ladies: yet he had among his disciples Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of Sweden. We might consider him as a forerunner of Trissotin in Moliere's Learned Ladies; most decidedly of Fontenelle, whose Chats on the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds are masterpieces of drawingroom wit and courtesy; of Voltaire, who wrote his Universal History for Madame du Chatelet; of Bellac in Pailleron's Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie, the professor as society pet, a composite picture of many successful academic lecturers; even of Bergson, whose courses at the College de France were thronged with the aristocracy of birth and wealth.
Like most ’60s radicals—of whatever stripe—he [Chavez] vastly overestimated the appeal of hard times and simple living; he was not the only Californian of the time to promote the idea of a Poor People’s Union, but as everyone from the Symbionese Liberation Army to the Black Panthers would discover, nobody actually wants to be poor.
Soc. The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.
Phaedr. Clearly.
Soc. And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?
And what is good, Phaedrus , and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)
Test all things; hold fast what is good.
How Now, Sirrah? Oh, Anyhow
Oh, sometimes I sit around and think, what would you do if you were up a dark alley and there was Caesar Borgia,And he was coming torgia,And brandished a poisoned poniard,And looked at you like an angry fox looking at the plumpest rooster in a boniard?Why that would certainly be an adventure,It would be much more exciting than writing a poem or selling a debenture,But would you be fascinated,Or just afraid of being assassinated?Or suppose you went out dancing some place where you generally dance a lot,And you jostled somebody accidentally and it turned out to be Sir Lancelot,And he drew his sword,Would you say Have at you! or would you say Oh Lord!?Or what if you were held up by a bandit,And he told you to hand over your money, would you try to disarm him and turn him over to the police, or would you over just meekly hand it?What would you do if you were in a luxurious cosmopolitan hotel surrounded by Europeans and Frenchmen,And a beautiful woman came up to you and asked you to rescue her from some mysterious master mind and his sinister henchmen?Would you chivalrously make her rescue your personal objective,Or would you refer her to the house detective?Yes, and what if you were on trial for murdering somebody whom for the sake of argument we might call Kelly or O'Connor,And you were innocent but were bound to be convicted unless you told the truth and the truth would tarnish a lady's honor,Would you elect to die like a gentleman or live like a poltroon,Or put the whole thing in the hands of an arbitration committee headed by Heywood Broun?Yes, often as through life I wander,This is the kind of question I ponder,And what puzzles me most is why I even bother to ponder when I already know the answer,Because anybody who won't cross the street till the lights are green would never get far as a Musketeer or a Bengal Lancer.
However, with the white chauvinism campaign of 1949-1953, what had been a legitimate concern turned into an obsession, a ritual act of self-purification that did nothing to strengthen the Party in its fight against racism and was manipulated by some Communist leaders for ends which had nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole campaign. Once an accusation of white chauvinism was thrown against a white Communist, there was no defense. Debate was over. By the very act of denying the validity of the charge, you only proved your own guilt. Thousands of people were caught up in this campaign—not only in the Party itself, but within the Progressive Party and some of the Left unions as well. In Los Angeles alone we must have expelled two hundred people on charges of white chauvinism, usually on the most trivial of pretexts. People would be expelled for serving coffee in a chipped coffee cup to a Black or serving watermelon at the end of dinner.
Because it was almost impossible to criticize a Black leader, the Party suffered and I think the Black leaders themselves suffered […] When Blacks were spared this [criticism], it wasn't doing them any favor. [sic] […] when you have the notion that only Blacks can lead or that you must uncritically accept Black leadership without any standards, then you get reverse application of what you were fighting for. […] One of the great ironies of the white chauvinism campaign is that we lost a large number of Black members because of it. They were just contemptuous of the whole thing because it had so little to do with fighting racism in the real world outside the Party's ranks.Joseph R. Starobin was the American foreign editor of The Daily Worker. In his book, American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1947 (U. of California Press, 1975), he described the campaign against "white chauvinism" as a "witch hunt" and that it was used to "settle [personal] scores". Words like "whitewash" and "black sheep" were considered racist.
Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with Communism—as Swift, for one, tells us—but the pedantries and verbosity of Communism had its root in German academia. And now it has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world. […]
Raising Consciousness, like Commitment, like Political Correctness, is a continuation of that old bully, the Party Line. […]
The demand that stories must be 'about' something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers. The phrase Political Correctness was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the Political Correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.
Biberman found, much to his surprise, that they "were too busy and occupied to spend an instant dealing with people who were so misinformed as to still consider that they were being 'broad-minded' in consulting Negro cultural leaders as 'experts' on Negro material" that was developed by "lily-white artists for the good of the Negro people." White artists could join with them, he reported, but they would have to admit that "they needed the Negro People more than the Negro people needed them."
With each sentence, Biberman sounded more and more agitated. What he had learned from his experience in New York, he wrote, was "soul-shaking, land-shaking, country-shaking." He learned about "the poison of chauvinism" and how it was deeply embedded even in people like themselves. After all, they were only white middle-class artist, separated from the real struggles going on in America. After talking with the New York African-American cultural leaders, Biberman decided that all their films—including those they thought were favorable to the fight for civil rights—were in reality patronizing and racist.From October 2017, a watermelon incident similar to that reported by Dorothy Healey. Snopes:
Detroit firefighter Robert Pattinson was fired for behavior deemed offensive and racially insensitive after bringing a watermelon to work on his first day on the job.
Rating: TRUE.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/detroit-firefighter-watermelon-fired/
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/detroit-firefighter-fired-for-bringing-watermelon-to-station
Black Detroit firefighters defend white recruit fired over watermelon:
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/black-detroit-firefighters-defend-white-recruit-fired-over-watermelon
[...] But my attitude changed when the new regime turned its back on the promises of a national reconciliation and, taking off its patriotic mask, revealed its Marxist face.
When I was suddenly ordered to work on a plan to confiscate all private property and create a Communist state, I refused. [...] I resigned from my post. A few days I was arrested as I was attending a public concert in the National Theater. I asked my captors, "Why have you arrested me, what have I done?" They replied: "That is for you to work out." [...]
While I was in jail, Mai Chi Tho, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, addressed a selected group of political prisoners. He told us: ''Ho Chi Minh may have been an evil man; Nixon may have been a great man. The Americans may have had the just cause; we may not have had the just cause. But we won and the Americans were defeated because we convinced the people that Ho Chi Minh is the great man, that Nixon is a murderer, and the Americans are the invaders.'' He concluded that ''the key factor is how to control people and their opinions. Only Marxism-Leninism can do that. None of you ever see resistance to the Communist regime, so don't think about it. Forget it. Between you - the bright intellectuals - and me, I tell you the truth.'' And he did tell us the truth. [...]
When I was still inside, I used to talk to one of the older prisoners who was a South Vietnamese Communist named Nguyen Van Tang. Tang had been imprisoned for 15 years by the French, for 8 years by Diem, for 6 years by Thieu, and now for 2 years already by his own comrades, the Marxist rulers of the New Vietnam. While we were in prison together this old Communist said to me, "My dream is not that I will be released. My dream is not that I will see my family. My dream is to be back in a French prison 30 years ago."
(a version of this essay was published in the NY Times Magazine, 3/29/81, titled A Lament for Vietnam.)
The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralized government. As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient. The ruling groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas, and were content to leave loose ends everywhere, to regard only the overt act and to be uninterested in what their subjects were thinking. Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.
Michael Moore declares these lines in his film Fahrenheit 9/11 as something "Orwell once wrote". They are nearly identical to a block of narration in the 1984 Richard Burton/John Hurt movie version of 1984 when Winston (Hurt) is reading Goldstein's book. All of the lines are excerpts from various parts of Goldstein's book in part 2, chapter 9 of the novel with some paraphrasing.I have made a detailed comparison between the "Orwell once wrote" quote, 1984 movie (Burton/Hurt version), and the novel 1984. Link to Google Docs document.
“I’m rather sorry you take this so lightly,” said Fanshaw to the host; “for the truth is, I’ve brought these friends of mine with the idea of their helping you, as they know a good deal of these things. Don’t you really believe in the family story at all?”
“I don’t believe in anything,” answered Pendragon very briskly, with a bright eye cocked at a red tropical bird. “I’m a man of science.”The Perishing of the Pendragons, G.K. Chesterton
‘Do you believe in curses?’ asked Smaill curiously.G.K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross
‘I don’t believe in anything; I’m a journalist,’ answered the melancholy being — ‘Boon, of the Daily Wire. ...'
Whin annything was wrote about a man 'twas put this way: "We undhershtand on good authority that M-l-chi H---y, Esquire, is on thrile before Judge G---n on an accusation iv l--c-ny. But we don't think it's true."... Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explainin' th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit.Newspaper Publicity in Observations by Mr. Dooley by Finley Peter Dunne (1902)
'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' [O'Brien] paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'1984, part 3, chapter 3.
Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.
'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing...'
The high value of spoons can be seen from the fact that along with cups they were frequently stolen. To guard against theft, many households had them collected and counted by the steward after the main course. Even at the papal court in Avignon it was customary to keep the doors locked after a meal and not let anyone leave until all dinnerware was accounted for.Adamson, Food in Medieval Times, p. 169
In a just world, a terrorist like Kimberlin would be too ashamed to show his neckbearded, overbiting, felonious face on the street, much less associate it with a peaceful revolution against oppression. This is not a just world. But Google is just, and the association can be removed. We’re asking you to link to this blog. On your own blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, on the web forum where you discuss taxidermy with your fellow taxidermists.
