Is it Orwell? Sort of.....
Developing a thought......

Start with vague observation: Deepstate's latest trick is sort of Orwellian but not quite.

What do I mean?

The trick: All facts are paranoia. All paranoia is fact.

Example of facts are paranoia: Anyone who describes Hillary's obvious neurological defect as a neurological defect is paranoid.

Example of paranoia is fact: Attributing all bad things to Russia is classic political paranoia. The truth is directly opposite the theory. We have been pushing Russia into a corner for several years. Russia is trying to defend itself against OUR attack. Despite the blazingly obvious falsehood, all media state as a simple fact, like gravity, that Russia is responsible for all evil. [In earlier times Russia was in fact doing lots of bad things, so attributing attacks to Russia in 1962 was NOT paranoia.]

= = = = =

Well, this sounds like WAR IS PEACE / PEACE IS WAR. But there's something else going on, not quite the same as simple reversal. The simple reversal would be FACTS ARE LIES / LIES ARE FACTS.

Treating a fact-observer as CRAZY is not the same as calling a fact-observer a LIAR. There's some liar-calling (or more precisely OUTRAGEOUSLIAR-calling) but it's not the primary mode.

Did Orwell foresee this? Not exactly. Orwell gave us a slightly exaggerated version of Stalin's methods.

Comrade O'Brien showed and explained the method in meticulous detail.

(1) First the state scrambles the citizen's brain with a long and constant barrage of perfect contradictions and cognitive dissonance. This scrubs out the CONNECTIONS that allow a human to live a self-sufficient life, to observe reality and draw useful conclusions.

(2) Then the state sets up ONE BIG PAVLOVIAN METACONNECTION: Any time the citizen tries to observe reality and draw a conclusion based on ANY sort of logic, he is shocked into submission. Room 101. LOGIC = EXTREME PAIN.

(3) Then the state fills in the connections on a TRANSIENT basis, never allowing a consistent pattern to re-form.

(4) Result: You are incapable of observing direct reality and drawing conclusions that lead to survival. You are no longer a living thing, picking up sensory data and processing it into patterns; you are simply a direct cable receiving the State's constant input and transducing it into the State's desired sounds and actions. You are a loudspeaker and a solenoid.

= = = = =

Let's compare this to real schizophrenia. A real schizy has poorly controlled and poorly filtered connectivity. He is functioning in dream mode. Like the dream-scripter, he connects everything into a narrative which works amazingly well.

Our new Deepstate is not cultivating perfect emptiness like Comrade O'Brien; rather it's cultivating a schizy-like condition in which our connective abilities are slack and loose and atrophied.

TV takes care of Orwell's first step, HAMMERING us with cognitive dissonance and contradictions and moral conundrums until our connectors become weak and fatigued.

Our brain is hungry for connections. That's why we make and consume music and art and architecture and civilization. Those artifacts, in pre-modern form, nourish us with temporal and spatial rhythm and symmetry, forming a scaffold to build new emotional and logical tissue.

Modern art and music and architecture and law are explicitly non-rhythmic, non-tonal and non-symmetrical. Their job is to sever all internal bracings and connections.

Deepstate (so far!) is applying a weak version of Orwell's second step. We are trained to associate facts with disrespect and low status (basket of deplorables) but not quite pain. However! I may be lagging behind on this.... Consider the explicit response of young idiots to the name of Trump written in chalk. "We are in pain."

The third step is also comparatively weak. TV fills in the missing connections for us, but again it's not QUITE as direct and constant as Orwell's telescreen.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Asked and sort of answered

  ¶ 4:10 AM