lower case* thinking

George Orwell is often cited here in the land of the free, but only in reference to others, and not the self. His ideas on totalitarian society were only allowed to air in reference to the old Soviet Union. In his introduction to Animal Farm he talked about literary censorship not in Russia, but in England. Those words were removed prior to the publishing of the book, in other words, censored in England.

Indeed Orwell was disenchanted of Communists during the Spanish Civil War, as he saw they they were in league with Franco (perhaps it was a primitive form of what we now call “triangulation”). But Orwell was a lifelong socialist, and his other writings are as dismissive of elements of British society as the old USSR.

He invented “Newspeak” as a metaphor for they way people learn to think in totalitarian societies. By removing the ability to express revolutionary thoughts, people are gripped in emotions that they cannot put to words, and so descend into utter hopelessness. They learn to take joy in small and pointless affairs as the “Two Minutes’ Hate.” It is very important for us to get the hatred out, but also to be sure that it is not pointed at people truly deserving of hatred.

I’ve spent (hopefully productive most likely futile) time on the blogs trying to get people to see that the current “Standoff” in Washington is a stage play. I am hoping that when the trap is sprung that some Democrats will see that Obama was indeed really after Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Usually after Obama commits a betrayal, Democrats reflexively circle around him and defend the action as necessary, actually part of a farsighted plan to make things better by means of short-term betrayals. It’s basically license to kill for Obama, who should be referred to by his Kenyan/Muslim nickname, 008.

Others express it better than me, of course, and if one simple insight from Paul Craig Roberts isn’t enough to clear the air a bit, then the situation is hopeless. Here’s what he wrote at Counterpunch regarding a threat from Moody’s to downgrade US Treasury bills:

If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government.

This is why the markets are sailing along, blissfully indifferent to the supposed crisis. It’s fake. As Roberts says, the fake crisis is nothing more than Wall Street making another run at Social Security and the Medi’s.
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Another blog post, Progeba’s Intelligent Discontent, talks about standardized testing (Heresy! A Teacher Likes a Standardized Test). While it is common in his profession to diss the tests and resent having to teach down to them, he’s impressed with the quality of some of the questions asked on tests. He says

Yet good test questions that measure core knowledge do matter. We need to ensure that our students are aware of the fundamentals of Geography, English, History, Science, and even Math. Finding a way to teach and measure these skills—while preserving student critical thought—is the real challenge going forward.

As the inability of virtually all Americans to grasp that politics is a stage play demonstrates, our education system has failed us, and miserably. Most people are born smart, and stupidity is surgically implanted through education. It is fertilized by sports, entertainment, and the call to laziness. The job of education in a totalitarian society is complex: It has to dumb people down while appearing to smarten them up. The means by which this is done is standardized testing. We only measure those things that we want measured, and education cannot go beyond those boundaries. If a student doesn’t have the necessary words to express a thought, he can only exist in cognitive dissonance.

Our “two” party system is Newspeak in action. There are only two acceptable channels in which to participate in American politics, and both lead nowhere. To attempt to act outside those channels is seen as futile even while acting inside those channels is also futile. Indeed cognitive dissonance is our way of life. The internal confusion is resident more in Democrats than Republicans, as totalitarian beliefs (labeled “freedom”) actually get played out through the Republican party. They believe that torture and unjust imprisonment, military aggression and obscene wealth accumulation are OK. They can be openly hateful.

Democrats have a harder job. Even though their party leaders also believe that torture and unjust imprisonment, military aggression and obscene wealth accumulation are OK, they must express opposite thoughts even as they carry these things out in plain view. In a just society we help each other by means of personal charity and government programs to assist us in health care and retirement. Neither party wants a just society. Republicans can openly disdain the concept, but the urge for justice has to be contained in the Democratic Party, confined there, and never allowed to escape.

I think that cognitive dissonance explains the anger that Democrats feel when we who they now call the “far left” explain to them that their party is only perceptually different from the “other” party. When Democratic Party leaders betray them, it’s a hard life for them. They form a circle around them, and deny that their deeds actually constitute betrayal. It all comes out in Two Minutes’ Hates where the far left is disdained and blamed for the worst thing that can happen to a Democrat, electoral defeat.

Anyway, it helps me to understand that at the bottom of our dysfunction is our education system, and that cannot be fixed because the system is thought to be effective to the degree that it successfully dumbs us down. Efforts to reform education, such as NCLB, are designed to make it better at dumbing us down.

In the future I am not going to refer to myself as a lefty or a “European-style socialist,” even though those phrases have some meaningful content. In the future, I am merely an “escapee.” I know one or two others. You know who you are. [Group hug.]
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*in honor of a testy little man of low caliber who writes all of his passing ‘thoughts’ in lower case.