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Friday, April 16, 2010
Policy Failures And Message Management
Two themes about the Left's demonstrated proclivities in power have dominated recent discussion in the DextroSphere. They form the title of today's screed.
The phrase 'our new, happy life' recurred several times. It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too-in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies -- more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards. As Syme had done earlier Winston had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the pale-coloured gravy that dribbled across the table, drawing a long streak of it out into a pattern. He meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient -- nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one's body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?
Your Curmudgeon would hope, albeit vainly, that any American of voting age would recognize the passage above. It's from George Orwell's 1984, beyond question the grimmest and most frightening of all depictions of a totalitarian future. The Party, the organization that controls Oceania, of which England -- "Airstrip One" -- is a province, exercises total power through a combination of means, one of the most important being its absolute control over all information and record-keeping.
Just in case it's not clear to persons unfamiliar with the novel -- and given the degraded state of American education in our time, a few such among Eternity Road's Gentle Readers would not be impossible -- things are bleak in 1984's England. Outer Party members must endure a meager and joyless existence; the "proles" -- persons outside the Party -- must get by with still less. And everywhere are the telescreens: the inescapable monitors of every waking word and deed. No one knows who might be watching at any moment; privacy is banished, the desire for it deemed thoughtcrime of the worst order.
Yet the jubilant messages pour forth from the telescreens unceasingly. Every development of any sort is presented as a triumph for the Party and Oceania, even if that requires the rewriting of history:
It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.
A huge government department, the Ministry of Truth, ensures that the joyous proclamations cannot be countervailed by objective evidence, by gathering it up, destroying it, and substituting an officially approved version:
Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.
But one obstacle remains to absolute control of the past: human nature.
And though, of course, it grew worse as one's body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?
So it's necessary that those who exhibited the smallest inclination to dissent must be rounded up and "re-educated." Even the excessively intelligent and articulate are vaporized -- made "unpersons" -- to avert the possibility of contradiction:
'By 2050 earlier, probably -- all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron -- they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
Winston Smith, the antihero-protagonist of 1984, hasn't been completely beaten down, He retains enough memory, and enough willfulness, to insist to himself that the lies are lies, and that conditions, notwithstanding Party propaganda, are getting grimmer rather than better. By degrees he comes to a conscious decision to resist: to seek out whatever node of resistance to the Party might exist in the shadows, and to enlist in its cause at any cost. Eventually he comes into possession of a copy of the book, believed to be the manifesto of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Party's devil figure. From the book he gleans a bleak insight into the nature of power politics:
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other....The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
In a crushing final irony, Winston learns that the book is really a Party production, used by the Ministry of Love -- the secret police -- as a tool for ferreting out would-be rebels. Yet the essential truth of its message remains unobscured.
In 1984 we see a near-perfect tableau of message control in a totalitarian society. What remains unexpressed for nearly the whole of the work is why any ruler would tolerate what appears to be such all-embracing, grotesque policy failures: the constant deterioration of the conditions of life for those under Party rule. The Party is even hostile to enterprise entirely irrelevant to its power. Wouldn't a ruler secure in his power want to improve the conditions of life for his subjects?
A man of good will feels that objection rise to his lips automatically. Even if the regime were indifferent to the well-being of its subjects, he might say, it would have no positive incentive for suppressing human activity in service of a better life. To do so would be to disclose an actual hostility toward the well-being of men.
In confronting this obscenity, we confront at last the fundamental theme of 1984:
'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?'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. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'
Just in case you've been wondering, this tirade is not a review or exegesis of 1984. Your Curmudgeon's intent with the above citations is to awaken his readers to the possibility that what appears to some to be a policy failure might well appear to others to be a policy triumph.
- Government schooling produces legions of uneducated morons who have no knowledge of American history or its founding principles.
- Government welfare programs increase dependency and encourage breeding among precisely those persons likely to produce more permanent clients of the State.
- Government regulation of every sort hobbles productivity, stifles innovation, and suppresses competition to the benefit of the already established.
- Government taxation prevents the accumulation of private capital, thus discouraging the formation of new businesses.
- Government employment policy, retirement, and old-age pensions foster entitlement-minded activism among persons whose sole interest is in increasing the flow of benefits to them, and therefore the size of the State.
From the standpoint of a man of good will, these are clearly policy failures. But are you quite sure, Gentle Reader, that those who designed them, those who administer them, and those who profit by them at others' expense see them that way?
America is not yet remotely comparable to Orwell's England of 1984. We're still a rich people...though Washington has impeded our ability to advance and prosper as we've historically done. We're still largely free to speak our minds...though Washington, the Left, and the barons of the Main Stream Media are doing their best to make sure only their preferred messages are widely heard. We're still permitted to vote out our current scoundrels and vote in a new set, every two years...but have you noticed how little things have changed these past few decades, no matter who's "in" and who's "out?" (And that's before we address the effect of ever-expanding vote fraud and voter intimidation.)
No, not everyone who advocates for increasing federal activism, taxation, and regulation is a would-be tyrant. Some sincerely if naively believe that what they advocate would only be for the best. But their opinions are, to an increasing degree, handed out to them by others -- and those others are predominantly persons of no morals, consumed by a great lust for power.
It's time we ceased, once and for all, to attribute good intentions to our adversaries as a default condition of our discourse. As the old English order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter, inscribed as its motto: "Honi soit qui mal y pense:" "Shame upon him who thinks evil." Those who can be led to understand better might be many, but they must not be credited with better intentions than they display by their deeds. Those who already understand perfectly well, and approve of the damage to freedom and prosperity wrought by Leftist policies, must get no shrift at all.
Comments
Ask no favor. Grant no mercy. War is hell. Victory is sweet.
Posted by on 04/16/2010 at 10:31 AMWow! I came home all bleary-eyed after a night shift and read this. By the end I had a grin from ear to ear.
What a beautiful salvo.Posted by KG on 04/16/2010 at 04:35 PMI’ve long since given up the notion that the destruction of this country from within is being done out of misguided fool headed ignorance. I believe it is purely intentional.
Posted by Heather on 04/16/2010 at 06:01 PMI remember in 1984 celebrating the fact that 1984 hadn’t come to pass.
In hindsight, I believe my celebration was a bit premature.
And yes, to any rational man, there is no other explanation other than the deliberate desire to destroy this society and culture
Posted by on 04/16/2010 at 09:40 PM
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