The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Orwell Described Today's GOP 70 Years Ago

    By NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 10:41am |

    Trump campaign: Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate. Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised.

    George Orwell 1946: From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.... Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.

    Trump the Great Compeller, believing in his own infallibility, has, of course, not admitted that Obama was born in the United States. Trump campaign, but not Trump, says Obama was born in the US, CNN.

    A disbelief in the very existence of objective truth? Todays GOP?

    Like CO2 levels in the atmosphere raise world temperatures by absorbing heat, discovered over 100 years ago, on the Bush administration and Iraq, they were honest just misled.... Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war, gun homicides and crimne can only be reduced with less regulation and more guns not common sense gun laws. Or a hundred other schemes and theories heard or seen on the radio or at Fox News, where 'partisan propaganda' is the mission, and objective truth is to be manipulated or ignored, 'disbelieved' as described by Orwell.

    You could say organizations like Fox News is the Republican Party equivalent of Orwell's Ministry of Truth in his dystopian novel 1984.

    The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. Wikipedia

    You could drop the Fine Arts part.

    The rest of it fits the Orwellian parallels between today's Republican Party, and Orwell's description of a post-truth, fact averse, authoritarian world and the GOP ideal as a form of government.

    Comments

    Well said NCD!

    The best thing to say about Trump is that he has no pattern. His 'truths' change minute to minute and his history is as non existent as Palin's.

    This is the best movie (by trailer) that depicts my take on 1984; and the producers aired it in 1984

    The ministry of truth.

    I would nevertheless worry about a Cruz more than a Trump.

    Trump, again, has no vision for this country.

    Congress will never come down that hard on 'the media'.

    But as Carlin once put it:

    I prefer to just sit back and watch these idiots do what they do.

     

     


    by Richard Day on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 2:07pm

    He would break Dubya's record for most vacations ever and not care about all his bullshit promises, if he even remembered the last version of them.

    Probably mostly playing golf with Putin or some other despot or international crime kingpin at Mar-a-Lago.

    A GOP Congress would have all their dreams come true with a Trump presidency.

    Unless the Democrats could stop them, the GOP would, again, cut taxes on the rich and corporations, again producing only larger and larger deficits.

    The deficit would balloon so large that it would become necessary and patriotic then to cut Social Security or turn it into vouchers for privatized Wall Street 'personal accounts', or you could say 'line the deep pockets of Wall Street accounts where millions or billions are kicked back to the GOP accounts'. And for sure privatize Medicare for those under 55, 'replacing' it with underfunded medical vouchers, which eventually are 'income based' for the poor only, similar to Medicaid. So the middle class dies poor, and the rich continue to pay no taxes, even after they are dead - zero on the inheritance tax.


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 5:23pm

    Trump in 2014 promises to release his tax returns if Obama releases his birth certificate, video was on Irish TV. 

    You questioned his citizenship during his campaign, and you said afterwards if he produced that long-form birth certificate, you’d produce your tax returns. But you didn’t do it, did you?” asked Ireland TV3’s Colette Fitzpatrick in May 2014.

    (TRUMP) "Well, I don’t know — did he do it?” Trump said. “If I decide to run for office I’ll produce my tax returns. Absolutely. I would love to do that. 


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 6:23pm

    I'd like to point out that the snotty elitist Hillary is attempting to force normal Americans to increase their vocabulary by bringing the fringe group word "deplorable" into common usage. Is "bad" or if more emphasis is needed, "double plus bad" not good enough? The education president indeed.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 3:56pm

    Hillary was double plus bad and racist to say Obama was the no birth certificate Muslim sleep cell organizer Kenyan Usurper. It was her fault. Like the Iraq War fiasco was her fault, and then Obama's fault.

    Donald the Great Compeller deserves a sincere apology for his tireless and persistent quest over the last many years to clear Obama of these calumnies.


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 5:34pm

    It's double plus good that people like you can see the Orwellian truth behind the nonsense in the news. Like that silly statement by Obama that he always knew he was born in Hawaii. The Manchurians that conceived of the scheme to birth Obama in Kenya so he could eventually become president and institute sharia law wouldn't have told the child Obama he was the Manchurian Candidate. It wasn't until it was revealed it to him as a senator that he discovered his destiny to destroy all that was good about America..


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 5:51pm

    They even placed a fake announcement in the 1960's Honolulu newspaper about the non-birth.  

    Fox News psychologist Dr. Keith Ablow just might have to include that. Obama may be a space alien, never born at all as we know it, in his differential diagnosis of this issue.


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 6:18pm

    They were very thorough but not clever enough for Trump to see through their designs. Just as Trump is the only one clever enough to discover that "climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese." First the Manchurians, then the Chinese, Trump can see right through them.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 6:30pm

    He compels them with cleverness, and their sinister plans are revealed to him and him alone. Just as his campaign so truthfully and humbly declared Trump compelled Obama to produce his long form birth certificate. 

    Trump is the Great Compeller, His Will will Triumph.


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 8:31pm

    Yeah, it's weird that he can pull this off and is not even a good writer. Ah well. All's well that Orwells, I suppose.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 4:03pm

    You might do well in a Trump administration with that attitude. Maybe get a White House press pass, or help with his speeches...?


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 5:36pm

    Please, NCD.  I admit to being a horrible sellout, but I have standards.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 09/17/2016 - 8:23pm

    You know Mike, NCD is one of my favorite bloggers.

    But...

    I hereby render unto Mike M the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of Mike M. from all of me!

    hahahahah

    I have standards too. 

    Oh and sellouts.

    I have sold out a thousand times.

    Except mostly at a loss. hahahaha

     


    by Richard Day on Sat, 09/17/2016 - 10:13pm

    Just kidding on the job of course.

    Who would want to work for Trump with that sweaty palmed blob, Jabba the Ailes hanging his stuff around?


    by NCD on Sat, 09/17/2016 - 10:35pm

    Wow NCD, that's not funny. In these tough economic times you don't dangle a job in someone's face only to yank it away at the last second. I'd hate to see what you do with babies or dogs with candy or a doggie treat in your hand. /sigh Some people have weird sense of humor.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 09/18/2016 - 12:29am

    Trump is going to stop Hillary from taking any more candy away from babies. That is very very sad but true. It happened. Believe me.

    There will be jobs for border wall supervisors but you have to apply through John McCain, the Trump Wall Czar. Trump will monitor progress from the Mar-a-Lago White House.


    by NCD on Sun, 09/18/2016 - 1:40am

    I so much want to sell out for the big bucks. But no one cares enough about me to even offer me a petty bribe.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 09/18/2016 - 12:24am

    hahahahah

    The story of my life. hahahahs


    by Richard Day on Sun, 09/18/2016 - 1:40pm

    Donald is Dubya's reductio ad absurdum

    i.e. When you take Dubya's "truthiness" to the logical extreme, you get Donald's bald-faced lies

    Yet another way in which the GOP created this monster


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 4:10pm

    Driftglass on 'the monster':

    ..the monster they tinkered together to stomp Liberals to carry them all to power -- a monster their betters has been warning them against building in increasingly panicked tones for years -- has now, in fact and as predicted, kicked the lab door off its hinges and run amok.  The Party of Lincoln is now Rush Limbaugh's gimp-suited plaything and has stacked Congress with enough deeply paranoid, face-defiant, lockstepping meatsticks that, as Ed Rogers, (a top aide to both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush) notes, to kill "the art of governing in Washington":


    by NCD on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 5:47pm

    I do not feel that one has to reductio anything regarding T-Rump. hahahah

    IT IS ALL THERE FOR ALL TO SEE.

    HAHAHAHAHHA

    I cannot help this entre. hahahah

    Help us all understand why supporters of T-Trump keep on keepin on?

    hahahahah

    CAUSE THEY DO NOT GIVE A SHIT.

    Forgive my French hahahahah

     

     

     


    by Richard Day on Sat, 09/17/2016 - 10:20pm