Orwellian Deceptions
By William Grigg
Radio Liberty Newsletter, April 27, 2011
For background information see George Orwell's 1984
Note: The follow insights can be applied to the current Osama Bin Laden issue as well.
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Orwellian Deceptions By William Grigg Radio Liberty Newsletter, April 27, 2011 For background information see George Orwell's 1984 |
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Note: The follow insights can be applied to the current Osama Bin Laden issue as well. |
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A Soviet-era Russian dissident once wryly described his society as one in which the Regime could revise yesterday’s weather by decree. Orwell captured this facet of totalitarianism in his description of Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth, where he was employed to “rectify" the official record to bring it into conformity with the Party line:
“The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from The Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened.
“'This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs — to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance,' Orwell continued. 'Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.'”As the exalted vanguard of the revolution, the Party must preserve its pretense of infallibility. Whatever it decrees is a self-ratifying truth, one to which any contrary historical record must yield.
The Regime ruling us hasn’t yet reached that stage of ripeness, although Commissar Cass Sunstein is doubtless working on a way to bring that evil dream to fruition. In the meantime, those who presume to rule us have to practice piecemeal “rectification” of the kind proposed by Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairperson of the Senate Armed Services Committee....Where the assault on Libya is concerned, there is one annoying little detail to be addressed: Comrade Obama never bothered to involve Congress in any way before ordering U.S. military personnel to attack a country that never harmed or threatened us in any way. The UN Security Council resolution that supposedly authorized this crime was issued after Congress was in recess, and hostile action was undertaken before Congress re-convened. This is complicated further by the fact that both the Dear Leader himself and his political consort Joe Biden are on record stating, in unambiguous terms, that a presidential action of this kind is grounds for impeachment (to which we should add prosecution and imprisonment).
Not being able — yet — to “rectify” the historical record by expunging the earlier statements by Obama and Biden, Sen. Levin wants to do the next best thing: Issue a congressional resolution “authorizing” the war after the fact.
“I’m interested in a vote authorizing military action,” Levin said yesterday (March 29) — a week and a half after that war had begun. “The president said he’d welcome it and I think it would be helpful. It’d show public support for the effort. And that’s always useful.”
Were this an actual constitutional republic, public support for a formally declared war, expressed through an appropriate vote by elected representatives before the war began, would be mandatory. Now we’re told that a useless resolution issued well after the fact would be taken as a binding statement of “public support,” which is “useful” but materially irrelevant to the actions of our rulers.
Of course, no human being has the moral authority to coerce others to make material sacrifices on behalf any government’s war. What is remarkable in this case, however, is the cynical contempt displayed by the American Nomenklatura for what we’re supposed to call the “rule of law.”
Dr. Monteith currently spends five hours daily on talk radio across the nation. He writes extensively, and lectures on geopolitics. He is the author of AIDS: The Unnecessary Epidemic and his most recent book Brotherhood of Darkness is in its 8th printing.
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