The Sky Is Brown Today, Winston

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Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:50:53 -0800

The Sky Is Brown Today, Winston

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http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/11/con05433.html

 

 

November 16, 2005

 

The Sky Is Brown Today, Winston

 

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

 

By PG Bowden

 

Don't you just hate it when the Bush administration tells you the sky

is brown? Do they actually have the audacity to think we might believe

it without even checking it with our own eyes? With their credibility?

These days, with this administration, the answer is unfortunately a

big yes. That's the thing, though; the first time they tell you the

sky is brown, you're incredulous at the brazenness of such a

statement, one that is in such direct contradiction to the facts and

all observable reality:

 

" Why, it's really blue isn't it? Isn't the sky blue? " " No, no,

actually it's quite brown. Didn't you hear? Don't look. Just listen.

Brown. "

 

Then the next time you hear such bull you are almost as surprised and

amazed as the first time; but with each succeeding false statement you

are less surprised. With enough repetition, you can become almost

desensitized to the river of lies about the color of the sky.

Eventually, you might even question your own sense of reality

(especially if you have the propensity for being an idiot). And I

would imagine that's the point.

 

Let me now apologize beforehand; I'm about to make the 56,642nd

journalistic reference to George Orwell when commenting on how these

Bushies operate. I'm certainly not the 1st to notice the similarities.

But simply calling it an " Orwellian administration " doesn't do them

proper justice. It's too easy to forget the depth of the insidiousness

of which Orwell wrote. It's therefore important to point out some

specifics.

 

Before I begin, I would humbly advise anyone who has not done so to

buy 1984 and read it for themselves. If you haven't read it in 20

years, it might serve to read it again. Then Google " Leo Strauss " and

read everything you can about his philosophy. What you will find is

that there are startling similarities between what Strauss (the father

of neocon philosophy) believed, and what Orwell wrote about " Big Brother. "

 

A few days ago Eric Alterman was on The Franken show on Air America,

and he postulated a theory (or recounted someone else's theory) about

why the Bush administration lies so much (also noted by BuzzFlash); he

said it was due to intellectual laziness. It's just easier for them to

lie than to tell the truth. If it was easier to tell the truth, they'd

do that.

 

I don't discount that at all. These Bushies are some incredibly lazy

folks (must be in bed by 9 if you're through screwing the poor for the

day). But after observing these guys for 5 years, please forgive me if

I lean towards an even more cynical view of why their pants are always

on fire (I'll make the point in a moment).

 

One thing that totally confounds us liberals is the degree to which

conservatives are able to deny that Bush lies. At times it actually

requires denying reality itself. Just exasperating. I heard someone

recount a joke that Stephanie Miller (I believe) told on the radio

about how Bush could be caught having gay sex with a 10-year-old boy

on the White House lawn and the average conservative would say, " Oh,

he's just trying to help the country. "

 

Is that an exaggeration? I'm no longer sure. The degree to which

conservatives are able to deny reality in defense of their boy is,

well, becoming a bit startling.

 

For example, last week Bush said the U.S. does not use torture on

detainees. All he needed was a drum roll for the proper comedic

effect. The mountain of evidence to the contrary is well known to

anyone with even a shred of curiosity. But, sure enough, dozens of

lying Bushies soon crowded the airwaves in defense of the absurdity

and their lying hero.

 

In another example of incredible lying, " Hardball " with Chris Matthews

ran a clip of the vanishing " Veep " declaring he never said there was a

connection between Al Qaida and an Iraqi agent in Prague, and then ran

another tape of him saying precisely that. Stephen Hayes of the Weekly

Standard (a standard Neocon shill) incredibly asked Matthews if he

really thought Cheney was lying. I yelled, " Hell Yeah he's lying, you

moron! " from my chair in hopes he could hear me from several states

away. Hayes then (with a straight face) explained the discrepancy as

simply a loss of memory. I do respect the Neocons' ability to lie

without blinking.

 

There are literally hundreds of these types of instances where the

Bushies are on record as lying (though lack-of-memory or some other

defense is usually the excuse). But today on Meet the Press Ken

Mehlman took it even a step further. When commenting on a piece of

footage we'd all just seen just 5 seconds earlier, he (in effect) told

us we didn't actually see what we all thought we'd seen. Don't trust

your eyes and ears. Don't trust your own sense of reality. We'll tell

you what's real and what's not. The audacity of it was beyond chutzpah.

 

This is all leading me back to Orwell, but first let me say something

briefly about cognitive dissonance. I won't bore you with a

definition, but in lay terms, it's basically the ability to tune out

information and stimuli which does not conform to what you already

believe. You know who's really good at that? You guessed it.

Conservatives and religious nuts. Studies have proved it, not that

these people would believe any study, scientific or otherwise. The

study's conclusion would itself provide cognitive dissonance to the

already-held nutty beliefs of the ignorant (that they're plenty

informed, thank you), thus preventing any internalization of the findings.

 

For example, conservative radio listeners believe they are the most

informed on political issues, when it has been thoroughly proven they

are the least informed (take a gander at their amazingly ignorant

belief that Saddam attacked the U.S. on 9-11-01). But just try to tell

them they are less informed. Then try to prove to them Bush is a

documented serial liar. You might want to bring your lunch.

 

Bottom line for these loons; Bush doesn't lie, Cheney doesn't lie; and

Mehlman was providing a public service for those who can't see or hear.

 

Thank God a few people are beginning to peel away from these evil

hucksters and see them for who they really are. But there's still that

hardcore 35% who apparently suffer from an incredible case of

cognitive dissonance. These are the people who scare the hell out of

me because they're the ones running the country for the next 3 years.

 

Is there reason to fear this pattern of lying on a long-term basis?

Well, yes, if you believe its cause is rooted in more than simple

hubris or laziness (and if Republicans are able to continue stealing

elections). My theory is that it is more than that. I'm just crazy

enough to believe that Karl Rove has read Orwell and liked what he read.

 

Let's face it; the Republican Party is so totally dependent on shading

truths, clouding reality, confusing the masses through lies and

deception and dividing people through emotional wedge issues that they

simply can't afford an informed public. If the public knew what they

were really up to when they legislate (i.e. stealing taxpayer

dollars), the Republican Party would cease to exist as we know it. So

they govern with the only thing that will allow success. The big lie.

Big lies for big morons.

 

The trouble with lying, though, is that people usually catch on after

awhile. Even the nut cases. Rove's solution?

 

Have the entire G.O.P. lie even more.

 

As a quick and non-germane anecdote, I remember Phil Jackson (ex-coach

of the Chicago Bulls) being exasperated at how often he perceived that

the Knicks were fouling his players in the playoffs one year, and that

the fouls were not being called. Speaking of the Knicks, Jackson

lamented (and I paraphrase), " That's the thing; the officials can't

call a foul on every possession, but they're fouling on every possession. "

 

That appears to be Rove's solution, too. Have the Party lie on every

possession. Have them tell so many lies that you can no longer keep up

with them all or point them all out (but preferably not to a grand

jury). You see, there's a larger purpose to this madness. Aside from

being insidious to the social fabric, it will nevertheless be

effective towards achieving their real goal: debasing truth-telling as

a desired public ethic. In such a world, lies will be as commonplace

as cell phones, no longer important. And it's all by design. That way

the lying Republicans can remain viable as a party. If they have their

way, in the future lying will be seen as a net plus by the electorate.

In all facets of life people will begin to wager on who can out-lie

the other. Perhaps it will even become an Olympic sport. It might take

a good 50 years of incessant Republican lying for all this to take

place, but the changes will eventually occur.

 

But for now, there's still the problem of people catching on to all

the Republican lies and not liking it. Rove's solution? The first

thing you do is…well, how about we let Orwell tell it…

 

… If all others accepted the lie that the Party imposed—if all

records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became

truth …

 

Just within the last week both Bill O'Reilly and the White House

altered transcripts on their web sites to have it conform to the

reality they wanted rather than the one which actually exists. And

they don't give a rat's behind who knows it. Over the last 5 years the

Bushies have altered numerous documents, withheld info, as well as

performing a myriad of other tomfoolery, all to make the physical

version of reality conform with their version of truth. Not even

debatable.

 

Okay, the Bushies have the altering documents and transcripts thing

down, but what of the people? How do you get them to conform to your

view of reality? Listen to Orwell:

 

… All that was needed was an unending series of victories over

your own memory. " Reality control, " they called it; in newspeak,

" doublethink " … To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete

untruthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to

simultaneously hold 2 opinions which cancel out, knowing them to be

contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against

logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that

democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of

democracy, to forget what it was necessary to forget, then to draw it

back into memory again when it was needed, and then promptly to forget

it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process

itself … consciously to induce consciousness, and then, once again, to

become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even

to understand the word " doublethink " required the use of doublethink …

 

Remind you of any particular party? I believe it's reflective of Big

Brother actually training the masses to have cognitive dissonance,

probably in order to eventually squelch all dissent. Basically it's

just an attempt to confuse the hell out of everybody and keep `em

confused. And I believe it happens to be exactly what the Neocons are

trying to do to the American people right now; lying incessantly, even

brazenly calling into question what is real and what isn't. The

Bushies not only want you to accept that the sky is brown, they'd like

you to do it without thought, and then to not notice there was no

thought. And tomorrow if they tell you the sky is purple, that it's

always been purple, and that they never said it was brown, they expect

you to believe that, too. As for the 35% of people who continue to

support the Bushies, they almost certainly will. The brainwashing job

on these dolts is nearly complete.

 

As for getting the liberals to conform to such lies, you're going to

need a blunter hammer; perhaps another attack on the homeland,

followed by a subsequent suspension of habeas corpus for U.S.

citizens, perhaps even a resumption of John Adams' hated Sedition Act,

plus lots of FBI spying, all in the name of national security, of course.

 

The question for me, though, is how long it would take to properly

train a free, democratic people to have enough cognitive dissonance to

overlook such blatant lying as that which currently exists in the Bush

administration and Republican Party as a whole? Let's see. How many

licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?

One … two … three years? Three decades? Three generations? Is this

type of pathological lying a long-term Neocon and Republican plan for

America, or just an administration anomaly? Inquiring minds ...

 

And don't even try to tell me the Clinton administration lied. I

already know that. All administrations lie. But they lie for tactical

reasons, not strategic ones. No American administration has ever lied

like the Bush administration lies. Not one. Ever. Why are they doing it?

 

Orwell further defines the goal of Big Brother/Neocons:

 

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the

range of thought? ... Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to

think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness …

 

I can't think of a better way to define Bush's ignorant, unthinking,

numbskull supporters. Unconscious. Now listen to a military vision of

Big Brother, a dead ringer for Neocon philosophy if I've ever heard it:

 

… The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and

glittering—a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and

terrifying weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward

in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same

slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—300

million people all with the same face …

 

This is not a vision of America that interests me one bit. Ask the

poor, unsuspecting Iraqi civilians how they like their democracy; red,

white phosphorous, and blue.

 

Some freedom. It really burns.

 

When an individual's brainwashing is nearly complete, Orwell explains

it this way:

 

It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon

you—something that had penetrated inside your skull, bartering against

your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you,

almost, to deny the existence of your senses. In the end the Party

would announce that 2 & 2 made 5, and you would have to believe it. It

was inevitable they would make the claim sooner or later: the logic of

their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but

the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their

philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was

terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise,

but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know 2 & 2

make 4? Or that the force of gravity works?...If both the past and the

external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is

controllable—what then?...

 

What indeed. We're not there yet, not all of us, not by a long shot.

But it will take all good Americans (the ones not yet brainwashed) to

make sure we never get there. I may be wrong about the connections and

similarities between the Neocons and Orwell's Big Brother, and I hope

to God I am. But I don't think that's the case. I realize how

incredible it sounds, but I really believe that the incredibly brazen

and pathological nature of the lies emanating from this administration

(and Republican Party), coupled all too often with a bizarre lack of a

sense of reality, points to it being by design and purposeful. It's an

attempt to poison our social fabric and confuse the " lowing masses "

(if I may borrow from Mencken), for the express purpose of making

lying more acceptable in the long-term, certainly less noticed, all in

a cynical plan to further and cement their own disgusting power for

years to come. It is no way accidental. It is a long-term strategic

effort to remake American society in the most horrid fashion so we can

have a nation of confused, mewing sheep, unsure of what reality is

anymore. Quite Rovian. Orwellian, if you will.

 

How sick is this? How else can one explain the incredible and bizarre

lying we're watching out of the " Party of Lincoln, " at every level?

 

I know one thing; If I'm right, we will have a lot of work ahead of us

in dealing with this miserable (and yes evil) American scourge known

as the Big Brother Neocons. They may have blown their chance for

fascism this go-round (hopefully, anyway, thanks to Fitz), but I feel

they'll learn from their mistakes. They'll be back, re-tooled, with a

new leader, and new lies.

 

These people really make me puke.

 

PG Bowden

 

BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION