Well, Things Seem To Be Going Pretty Much According To Plan ....

[FlyingSquirrel]

Just checkin' to see if anyone here actually reads.

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"In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers of all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always colored and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practiced today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.

But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed.

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. 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."

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1. Give the above excerpt a three-word title, and identify the book from which it came without the use of "Google".

2. Discuss, while you still can.

[NMMNG]

1. War is Peace

1984


Those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.

[FlyingSquirrel]

2. I love this place.

But I'm not so sure we're talking about repeating the past now. 1984 was about fascism, sure, but fascism taken to a new and scary level. I hear Bush saying "When we talk about war, what we're really talking about is peace." I hear Rove revising history to its exact opposite, "Democrats in Congress were rushing us into this war with Iraq" and hardly a peep from the MSM about it. I see McCain talking about 100 years. I see lack of body armor, proper training, etc. and really no big stir from at least half the country about it. Star Wars. Kids being dumbed down, hooked on video games and tv among other things. I hear constantly changing rationales from the leadership, lies about what the old rationales were, just constant revisionism. And I see the ruling class as plainly as day benefiting from our confusion. Why should they stop? Why should it not continue and increase, possibly to the extreme presented in 1984? I see cameras everywhere. The serious consideration of microchips in people, a national ID card, DNA collected at birth and put into a database, GPS tracking devices in vehicles, warrantless data collection of all kinds, Google recording searches, library records examined (wonder who knows I checked out "1984" again?)

It's all coming together -- perhaps 50 years behind schedule, that's all.

[FlyingSquirrel]

3. Now let's look at FreeRepublic in the context of 1984

I'm happy to have this conversation by myself if nobody wants to join in.

".....It is also that no change of doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is a confession of weakness."

Look, we've never been 'Stay the Course.' -- George W. Bush

"This holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now. ... The trick of doing this can be learned like any other mental technique. In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, 'reality control.' In Newspeak it is called Doublethink.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. ... The essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary.

Ultimately it is by means of Doublespeak that the Party has been able -- and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years -- to arrest the course of history. ... Upon no other intellectual basis could the dominion of the Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes."

[lonestarnot]

4. But I thought "mission accomplished" quagmire occupation is what appears to be endless, so when we

start the war with Iran, then we can get back into the business of discussing war again. :toast: