November 4, 2025 • 45 mins
In "1984," Orwell described a thought-police totalitarian state. How prescient was he?
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
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The population of atheists this country is going through the.
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Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Just you and me today. I'm not going to take calls.
We'll do that on the next broadcast. I wanted to
offer an opinion and then sound off all you want
in the comments section, because I do welcome your input.
But so much of what we have been seeing relates
to Orwell and his writings in Animal Farm and of
course nineteen eighty four. And you know how much I
(01:17):
love to read the words of other people, those who
are smarter and more astute than myself. I stand on
their shoulders, and as a narrator, I get a chance
to sort of bring that information to you, and I'm
going to do some or Well here at the beginning
and at the end, and in the middle, I want
to give an opinion. I don't know if I'm right
or wrong, but I have an opinion about this fiasco
(01:41):
with the White House Press Corps. And we'll get into
the specifics of what has happened if by chance, you
have been in a deep coma, or maybe you've just
been doing other things because you can't bear to watch anymore.
Of course, Orwell's nineteen eighty four talks about how the
government has begun. I'm a propaganda machine, rewriting history, fashioning
(02:04):
the news of the day, and altering our future so
that everybody essentially lines up like drones, and dear leader
is never challenged. So, of course nineteen eighty four is
being referred to by a lot of USTs these days.
And in chapter five, part one, the section here starts
like this. It says, just the man I was looking for,
(02:26):
said a voice at Winston's back, And of course Winston
is the protagonist of nineteen eighty four. He turned around.
It was his friend Seemi, who worked in the research department.
Perhaps friends was not exactly the right word. You did
not have friends nowadays you had comrades, but there were
some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others.
(02:51):
Seem was a philologist, a specialist in new Speak capital
N N E w knew Speak. Indeed, he was one
of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling
the eleventh edition of the New Speak Dictionary. How is
the dictionary getting on, said Winston, raising his voice to
(03:13):
overcome the noise, slowly said Seem, I'm on the adjectives.
It's fascinating. The eleventh edition is the definitive edition, he said.
We're getting the language into its final shape. The shape
is going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When
we've finished with it, people like you will have to
(03:34):
learn it all over again. You think I dare say
that our chief job is inventing new words, But not
a bit of it. We are destroying words, scores of them,
hundreds of them every day. We are cutting the language
down to the bone. The eleventh edition won't contain a
single word that will become obsolete before the year twenty fifty.
(03:58):
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course,
the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, But
there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid
of as well. It isn't only synonyms. There are also antonyms.
After all, what justification is there for a word which
is simply the opposite of some other word? A word
(04:22):
contains its opposite in itself. Take good, for instance. If
you have a word like good, what need is there
for a word like bad? Un good will do just
as well better because it's an exact opposite which the
other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger
version of good, what sense is there? And having a
(04:43):
whole string of vague, useless words like excellent and splendid
and all the rest of them plus good covers the
meaning or double plus good if you want something stronger. Still,
of course we use those forms already. But but in
the final version of news Speak, there'll be nothing else.
(05:04):
In the end, the whole notion of goodness and badness
will be covered by only six words, in reality, only
one word. Don't you see the beauty of that? Winston?
It was BB's idea originally, of course, he added as
an afterthought, A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's
(05:25):
face at the mention of big Brother. Nevertheless, see Me
immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm. You haven't a
real appreciation of news speak, Winston, he said, almost sadly.
Even when you write it, you're still thinking in old speak.
I've read some of those pieces that you write in
the Times. Occasionally they're good enough, but they're translations. In
(05:50):
your ear, you'd prefer to stick to old speak, with
all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You
don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do
you know that news speak is the only language in
the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? Winston did
(06:10):
know that, of course, he smiled sympathetically. He hoped, not
trusting himself to speak. See Me bit off another fragment
of dark colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on,
don't you see that the whole aim of new speak
is to narrow the range of thought. In the end,
we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will
(06:34):
be no words in which to express it. Every concept
that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly
one word, with its meaning rigidly defined, and all its
subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten already in the eleventh edition.
We're not far from that point. But the process will
(06:55):
still be continuing long after you and I are dead.
Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of
consciousness always a little smaller. Even now. Of course, there's
no reason or excuse for committing thought crime. It's merely
a question of self discipline, reality control. But in the
(07:16):
ends there won't be any need even for that. The
revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. News
speak is ingsock, and by the way, ingsoc is shorthand
for English socialism. The totalitarian political ideology of the super
(07:37):
state ing sook is characterized by the absolute control of
the party over every aspect of life, surveillance, manipulation of history,
psychological control, etc. Back to the excerpt from George Orwell,
news speak is ingsock and ingsoc is news speak. He added,
(07:59):
with a sort of mystical satisfaction. Has it ever occurred
to you, Winston, that by the year twenty fifty at
the very latest, not a single human being will be
alive who can understand such a conversation as we are
having now. By twenty fifty earlier, probably all real knowledge
of old speak will have disappeared. The whole literature of
(08:21):
the past will have been destroyed Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton Byron.
They'll exist only in new speak 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
(08:44):
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
thoughts as we understand it now, Orthodoxy means not a
thing thing, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. One
(09:06):
of these days, thought Winston, with sudden, deep conviction Seemi
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. So that's from chapter five of nineteen
(09:29):
eighty four, up there with Robert Green ingersoll as George
orwell as far as quotability. And we've seen so much
to quote. Who controls the past controls the future? Who
controls the present controls the past. The most effective way
to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own
(09:50):
understanding of their history. But if thought corrupts language, language
can also corrupt thought. If liberty means anything at all,
it means the right to tell people what they do
not want to hear. Until they have become conscious, they
will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they
(10:13):
cannot become conscious. This excerpt from nineteen eighty four. Now,
I will tell you the answer to my question. It
is this, the Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
We are not interested in the good of others. We
are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power
(10:35):
means you will understand. Presently we are different from the
oligarchies of the past, and that we know what we
are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves,
were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian
Communists came very close to us and their methods, but
they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
(10:57):
They pretended, perhaps they even be leaved, that they had
seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that
just around the corner, there lay a paradise where human
beings would be free and equal. We are not like that.
We know that no one ever seeses power with the
intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it
(11:20):
is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in
order to safeguard a revolution. One makes the revolution in
order to establish the dictatorship. The objective persecution is persecution.
The objective torture is torture. The objective power is power.
(11:41):
Now you begin to understand me now, because I don't
want to interrupt my thought, my offering of opinion, let
me take my short break right here and then come
back and talk about the big dramatic press core walk
out of twenty twenty five. Hang on, I just saw
(12:09):
a you gov poll that released that was talking about
the No King's protest from October eighteenth. The poll was
also published in The Economists just a few days ago. Now,
the original estimates where the No King's protests had about
seven million people in the United States and elsewhere marching
the streets. That's a big number, seven million people in
(12:32):
thousands of cities. But actually, according to the new u
gov poll, triple that number participated triple eight percent of
US adults. Around twenty million people participated and rallied and marched.
It's remarkable. According to the same poll, by a slight margin,
(12:56):
more Americans approved than disapprove of those protests. Two thirds
believe that it was a peaceful endeavor. That's still a
terrifying number. Right. Two thirds of Americans say it was peaceful.
That's a low estimate. Six percent of Americans say that
day was defined by violence. What I mean a lot
(13:20):
of US states did mobilize the National Guard in anticipation
of violence because the propagandist at the White House were
doing what inksok does, what big Brother does. They were
quote getting the language into its final shape, the shape
it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. What
(13:41):
was the narrative? What were the warnings? These aren't free
protesters expressing concern because they love their country. It's Antifa,
it's domestic terrorists they hate America. Makes no difference what
actually happened. The facts do not matter. As Orwell also
wrote in nineteen eight four, he said, the party told
(14:02):
you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command, which brings me
to the big Press Corps walk out of just a
few weeks ago. Let me set it up for you.
The White House Press Corps is a group of journalists, correspondents,
and media representatives and they meet at the Pentagon in
(14:24):
DC to cover the President and the goings on at
the White House and briefings by the Press Secretary. The
Press Corps itself was started back over one hundred years ago.
Now I find the White House press briefings pretty tedious
because with every administration, two varying degrees, the press secretary
(14:46):
is just a spin doctor. Never ever, not once, not once.
If I seen a press secretary he was pressed on
a hard question, looking at the reporter and going, you
know what, that's a good point. I may be wrong
on that, or we screwed that up, or this was
a mistake, but you know what, it's time to fix
it and course correct and we're going to do better
(15:08):
next time. Thank you for challenging me on that score.
Does that happen? I've never seen it happen. Instead, when
pressed reporters here a slick litany of prepared talking points.
So I think, you know, are there a couple of
useful things about these press conferences? It's interesting to see
(15:30):
which reporters actually do journalism, which ones are asking challenging
questions and pushing back, and which ones are asking smart queries,
and which ones are asking stupid stuff or acting just
like sick of fans. So that has been useful to
a degree. And I've also found a little bit of
(15:51):
utility in watching just how the Press secretary reacts when challenged.
Do they answer the question, do they dodge? Do they
out right? And this of course brings us to our
current Press Secretary, Carolyn Levitt, who is not a liar.
The word liar is far too charitable. Carolyn Levitt is
(16:14):
a psychopath, a straight up transactional, enabling, self serving Trump
boot licking ghoul whose press conferences are so orwellian. I'm
honestly surprised that the Press Corp didn't walk out a
long time ago. Carolyn Levitt Now, she got into politics.
(16:35):
She lost a congressional race three years ago. She lost
to a Democrat. She faced accusations of illegal campaign donations,
and then she went to work for Trump's super pack,
the political action committee that is called and I am
not kidding, trumps superback named Maga inc. Her face was
(16:56):
featured on a Project twenty twenty five training video for
you know, the Christian Nationalist takeover of the Nation, and she,
of course became Trump's press secretary during his campaign before
being named to the White House in November of twenty
twenty four. Now I'm going to get into the walkout.
Trump and his minions, of course, do not like to
(17:17):
be challenged, countered, or presented with pesky language that is
not new speak. And so the White House made a demand.
They said, sign our statement, a contract, really an agreement
guaranteeing that you will only have a more restricted access
(17:39):
to our people, lend sources, and you will only do
so when given an official escorts. Oh and you will
not be allowed to report any news, any news without
official approval from the White House. The Trump presidency wants
(17:59):
to manage massage info coming from what it calls a quote,
disruptive press, and so we want reporters to sign on
the dotted line, and we want you to guarantee to
us you will only report what we approve. Holy Nikes.
Rather than agree to this, you know, essentially they would
(18:21):
have become just propagandists. You know, you're told what the
news is by ingsock. Dozens of Press Corps reporters said
screw this and they turned in their badges walking out
of the Pentagon. And you can see the photos and
the video of the press and the big walkout is
very dramatic. October fifteenth, forty to fifty I think maybe
(18:42):
sixty journalists walking out of the Pentagon with boxes of
their stuff. And even Fox News joined the walkout. Fox News, Wow,
how bad do you have to be to lose five news,
dear leader State Television? Right, the walkout itself was news
(19:07):
for about six minutes until the country just shrugged and
moved on to the next crazy thing. But of course
we're doing twenty twenty five or well here, So we
have to ask why the censoring and propagandizing of important information.
This is the people's information. Why is it being shut down?
If not because the Ministry of Truth has been installed
(19:30):
instead of a government buy and for the people. So
this has been the adult portion of the conversation on
the broadcast. But now we begin romper room because the Pentagon,
the Pentagon has named a new Press Corps to replace
the old Press Corps, and it is so terrifyingly right
(19:54):
wing batshit that I cannot even come up with a punchline.
Check out these journalists like the Gateway Pundit. Now, the
Gateway Pundit is a far right disinformation mill that was
once blasted by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology
for essentially being a hub of conspiracy theories and outright bullshit.
(20:17):
It is an anti VAXX publication, anti COVID science election denial.
It cannot even get the identities of America's mass shooters
right before it publishes the wrong names of innocent people
and gets those people named and blamed. It's crazy. Then
comes the post Millennial. This is a media outlet out
(20:39):
of Canada. They've got a mixed track record, but still
leaning rights and failing a whole lot of fact checks
before they publish their stories. Also part of news speak
is the conservative news site Human Events. Now. Human Events
Magazine has been muddling along for years until ton up.
(21:00):
It now has a front row seat in trump Isstand.
Back in the day, according to the man himself, it
was Ronald Reagan's favorite magazine and it published pieces by
nightmare human beings like Phyllis Schlaffley and Calter Sean Hannity
has been in it. Current magazine anchors include Brett Hammetcheck.
(21:23):
This is a guy who was an advisor for Charlie
Kirk's Turning Point USA and Jack Pisovic. He is a
conspiracy nutbar who once pushed the Pizza Gate thing. Remember
pizza Gate. It was a QAnon claim that there were
Democrat blood drinking child traffickers who were operating out of
(21:45):
the basement of a Washington, d C. Pizza parlor which
had no basement. That's the kind of journalist he is.
There's also an actual Turning Point USA affiliate called front
Lines Influencer, Tim Poole's an writing and a substack newsletter
called Washington Reporter. And here is my favorite new addition
(22:07):
to the White House press pool, Lindell TV, founded by
the my pillow guy, Mike Lindell. Oh oh yeah, this
guy is a piece of work, self professing Bible thumping
evangelical Christian and whack a doodle conspiracy theorist. Aha, but
(22:32):
he has a PhD. He has a doctorate honorary doctorate
from Liberty University. Liberty University, the Christian College which was
founded by Moral Majority leader and bigot and general cultural
pain in the ass Jerry Folwell Senior. Oh yes, it
(22:53):
was liberty that gave Lindell his honorary doctorate. And this guy,
Mike Lindell, is not He's crazy. He might be a grifter,
con tragically ignorant. I mean, I untethered to reality. He
lives in a bubble. But I genuinely think this man's
(23:13):
hard drive is skipping. There was a glitch in his matrix.
Mike Lindell founded My Pillow about twenty years ago. When
he grew it into a somewhat profitable business. Problem is,
there were a lot of customer complaints at the time.
The quality sucks a whole lot of retailers like bed
(23:34):
Bath and Beyond said, you know, not a lot of
demand for this stuff. So the retailers took My Pillows
off their shelves and the business really started to tank.
When Lyndell came out for Trump, he was a huge
Trump supporter. In twenty sixteen, he called Trump one point
zero a divine appointment. He was praised by the Great
(23:56):
Donald for his business acumen, and he used a lot
of his money to fund far right political candidates. Most tragically,
Mike Lindell began to speak words the nonsense which emitted
from the orifice under his nose is pretty remarkable. He
(24:18):
recommended for COVID to treat COVID nineteen. He recommended a
substance that is toxic to the heart. Am I saying
this right? Oleandron ol ea n drin This is dangerous
to the heart, he said, it's a COVID treatment. He
of course pounded the election fraud drum. He was at
(24:40):
the January sixth rally. Wasn't at the riot, wasn't part
of the break in the domestic terrorism at the Capitol,
but he was at the rally. On one American news
networkA n N, which by the way, is also part
of the New Press Corps, he bought three hours to
(25:00):
air a documentary and I'm using that word in the
loosest sense, documentary about how the election was stolen. This
movie was so crazy, so bad, so full of lies
that evena N fronted the broadcast with a big disclaimer say, well,
(25:21):
we're gonna air this, but yeah, yeah, you know, please
don't sue us smartmatic and dominion, because well you know,
we're just airing it. By the way, the Raspberry Awards,
which is the opposite of the Oscars. The Raspberries gave
this film called Absolute Proof its award for the Worst
Picture of the Year, and Mike Lindell's erratic behavior and
(25:47):
crazy theories, just toxic behaviors have reportedly gotten him millions
of dollars into debt. He's been going public and saying
how financially devastated he is. I'm sure this is all
you know, those woke lib domestic terrorist Antifa frog costume
wearing America hating rebels who are responsible for his decline,
(26:09):
you know, But he's just off the rails. His media outlet,
Lyndel TV is among the new elite as parts of
the approved White House Press Corps. And finally, after all
of this, here is the point, maybe the obvious point
that I have been coming to all along, the press
(26:31):
corps walk out and the hardline right wingers who are
replacing real journalists. All of it doesn't matter, doesn't matter,
not really, because everything Carolyn Levitt, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth,
Stephen Miller, Mike Johnson, at everything these people have said
(26:54):
and done has almost always been better reported from outside
the press core room. Having that Pentagon press badge accomplished
mostly one thing, the media got fed bullshit from a
few feet away instead of seeing it from a few
miles away. I mean, I swear to you that's the
(27:15):
only difference. Are you in the room or out of
the room. As Big Brother Bullhorn's news speak to the commoners,
Levitt doesn't answer questions. She either doesn't know the answer,
so she attacks the journalist, or she gives intentionally false
answers and then attacks the journalist. Every freaking week. This
(27:39):
woman claimed there were real officials with necessary expertise set Doge,
not a bunch of hackers that Elon Musk brought in
to probably backdoor our social Security numbers and who knows
what other private information and not really saving us any
money at all. She said, no, no, there are real
people with true expertise. When and ask who that person was,
(28:02):
she refused to answer. Tanking stocks soaring grocery prices prompted
Carolyn Levitt to say, great news, the economy is starting
to roar. That's a direct quote. She said that tariffs
were actually tax cuts on Americans. She claimed the Big
(28:22):
Beautiful Bill is not a drain on the debt, when
in fact it adds about four trillion to the debt
In about ten years she blamed Democrats when key Trump
people shared classified information about military attacks on signal the
public messenger app. She said, it's the Democrats they were
(28:43):
making this is a big deal and no war plans
were actually discussed, when in fact it was all right
there in black and white. The party told you to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears, she has said.
The Democratic Party, Now, this is a party in this
country made up of forty four million people, including me,
(29:07):
possibly you. The Democratic Party's main constituency. According to Carolyn Levitt,
is Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. Well, I
meet a lot of liberal, progressive Democrats type people in
my travels, and I'm not seeing the pro Hamas T shirts.
(29:32):
I'm not seeing those demonstrations, illegal aliens. I may have
met some undocumented people along the way, and the vast
majority I've met or are often natural born residents here
violent criminals. I mean, how violent are they? They're doing
community service, they're running food banks, they're manning booths at
public events, having conversations about religion, secular values, the secular constitution, humanism.
(29:59):
How dare they those violent domestic terrorists? Many people say
she just a troll, or she's gas lighting, or she
just doesn't give a shits. I think she's a psychopath.
She is a straight up size. She is totally uninterested
in what is true or what is moral. She has
(30:20):
no empathy center. And for that reason, she fits right
end to the big brother model that you and I
are facing today. If questions are dodged and the answers
are worthless anyway, how valuable is how much do we
really need or want a White House press core fifty
(30:41):
or sixty people staging a walkout and getting replaced. This
is going to have almost zero impact on how the
journalists were reporting in the first place, or how seriously
we take the news speak that is vomiting out of
the administration's motor mouths. And I do fantasize that at
(31:02):
some point even Fox News writ Fox News part of
the walkout. Now, they haven't really changed their tune as
far as the prime time lineup and Fox and Friends
and all these sick of fans and whatnot. But I
can't help but think if Fox leaves, is there going
to be just a tiny little bit of that that
(31:22):
might maybe perhaps someday it's a dream, Is it a possibility.
Could it ever turn out that they might turn on
dear Leader and his merry band of stuck ups and sociopaths.
I can imagine it, I can fantasize about it. I
(31:42):
will not expect it. I'm going to read you some
more George Orwell from nineteen eighty four. Pretty remarkable that
this book was written between nineteen forty six and nineteen
forty nine. And it feels like a documentary of the times.
(32:03):
I feel like this is It's almost like Orwell was
not supposed to be an instruction manual people. It was
supposed to be a warning for the ages. But nobody
said it like Orwell did. And I'm going to read
more from him next. George Orwell famously wrote, and this
(32:27):
was not in nineteen eighty four. It was in a
piece called Homage to Catalonia. He said, all the war propaganda,
all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from
people who are not fighting. Isn't that the truth? Watching
Donald Trump play army in this way, he's murdering people
(32:51):
and knowing that this guy's a silverspoon trust fund baby
with five draft deferments. President bone spurs has been used
the United States military like his own little sandbox, his
own little military war game. It's a video game, and
he's sitting there mashing the buttons like an eight year old. Hell,
not even an eight year old. At least eight year
(33:12):
olds know how to play. From nineteen eighty four, or
Well wrote it was possible, no doubt, to imagine a
society in which wealth in the sense of personal possessions
and luxury should be evenly distributed, while power remained in
the hands of a small privileged cast. But in practice
such a society could not long remain stable, For if
(33:36):
leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great
mass of human beings, who are normally stupefied by poverty,
would become literate and would learn to think for themselves.
And when they had done this, they would sooner or
later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and
(33:56):
they would sweep it away. In the long run. A
higher archical society was only possible on a basis of
poverty and ignorance. That's chilling, especially considering the recent report
that the top ten percent of Americans added five trillion
dollars to their wealth in the second quarter of twenty
(34:20):
twenty five, the total wealth of that top ten percent
one hundred and thirteen trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the median household
income right here in the US is about eighty thousand dollars,
and I think that's pretty high for a great many people.
There's a huge and widening income gap in this country.
(34:42):
There are two thousand, seven hundred eighty one billionaires in
the world. And how about the dispensers of information or
disinformation in this country? How many hundreds or thousands of
media outlets are we looking at, whether it's national, state, regional,
local news, online media, radio, at cent. Did you know
(35:05):
that six companies own ninety percent of the media in
this country. Six corporations manage the flow of information here
in the United States. Those six including Comcast, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramounts,
(35:26):
and Fox Corp. Compare that to forty years ago, when
ninety percent of our media was owned by fifty companies.
At least that was an improvement. But so much of
the oligarchy is really about the elites being able to
run unchecked. After all, I think many or most believe
they are genuinely smarter. They deserve to be in charge
(35:47):
they want consumers instead of free thinkers. It's all about
being a loyal party member. As the poor and the
relatively poor prop up the rich and the powerful for
the gain and benefits of the rich and the powerful,
we are all supposed to be proper party members, which
(36:11):
finally brings me back to nineteen eighty four and another
excerpt from that book. A party member is expected to
have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He
is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred
of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and
(36:33):
self abasements before the power and wisdom of the party.
The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately
turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the two
minutes hate. By the way two minutes Hate in nineteen
eighty four, it's exactly what you would think. It is
a designated slot where all kinds of bile about all
(36:58):
dissenters and outsiders, foreigners, others, etc. Just blast through these
publicly placed loud speakers. And it is a requirement for
you to subject yourself to the two minutes hate and
the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude,
are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline.
(37:23):
The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can
be taught even to young children, is called new speak.
Crime stop. Crime stop means the faculty of stopping short,
as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.
It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing
(37:43):
to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if
they are inimical to insot and of being bored or
repelled by any train of thoughts which is capable of
leading in a heretical direction. Crime stop, in short, it
means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary,
(38:06):
Orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's
own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist
over his body. Oceanic society and Oceanic is linked with
ink sockets kind of the overarching big brother entity. Oceanic
society rests ultimately on the belief that big Brother is
(38:27):
omnipotence and that the party is infallible, but since in
reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is
not infallible, there is need for an unwearying moment to
moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word
here is black white. Like so many news speak words,
(38:49):
this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent,
it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is
white in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a
party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that
black is white when party discipline demands this. But it
(39:10):
means also the ability to believe that black is white,
and more to know that black is white and to
forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands
a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the
system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and
(39:31):
which is known in new speak as double think. The
alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons, one
of which is subsidiary and so to speak, precautionary. The
subsidiary reason is that the party member, like the proletarian,
tolerates present day conditions partly because he has no standards
(39:53):
of comparison. He must be cut off from the past,
just as he must be cut off from four or
in countries, because it is necessary for him to believe
that he is better off than his ancestors, and that
the average level of material comfort is constantly rising. But
by far the more important reason for the readjustment of
(40:15):
the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of
the party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and
records of every kind must be constantly brought up to
date and in order to show that the predictions of
the party were in all cases right. It is also
that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can
(40:37):
ever be admitted, for to change one's mind or even
one's policy is a confession of weakness. If, for example,
Eurasia or East Asia, whichever it may be, is the
enemy today, then that country must have always been the enemy,
and if the facts say otherwise, than the facts must
be altered. Thus history is continuous rewritten. This day to
(41:02):
day falsification of the past carried out by the Ministry
of Truth is as necessary to the stability of the
regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out
by the ministry of Love. The mutability of the past
is the central tenets of Ngsak. Past events, it has argued,
(41:24):
have no objective existence, but survive only in written records
and in human memories. The past is whatever the records
and the memories agree upon, and since the party is
in full control of all records and in equally full
control of the minds of its members, it follows that
the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.
(41:47):
It also follows that though the past is alterable, it
has never been altered in any specific instance. For when
it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at
the moment, then this new new version is the past,
and no different past can ever have existed. This holds
good even when, as often happens, the same event has
(42:11):
to be altered out of recognition several times in the
course of a year. At all times, the party is
in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can
never have been different from what it is now. It
will be seen that the control of the past depends
above all on the training of memory to make sure
(42:31):
that all written records agree with the orthodoxy of the
moment is merely a mechanical act. But it is also
necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner,
And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or
to tamper with written records, then it's necessary to forget
(42:52):
that one has done so. The trick of doing this
can be learned, like any other mental technique. It is
learned by the majority of party members, and certainly by
all who are intelligent as well as orthodox. In old
speak it is called, quite frankly, reality control. In new
(43:12):
speak it is called double think, though doublethink comprises much
else as well. I, as your host, cannot help but
think about Maga cult today, an entire demographic that does
not or will not understand our history, or they've rewritten it,
or they've allowed someone else to rewrite it. It's like
(43:36):
we see a completely different country. We live in a
different world, and we fashion opinions around the world we
live in, whether it's rooted in reality or not. The
two minutes hate try twenty four hour hate propaganda mills,
right outlets that are funneling reasons supposed reasons to other
(43:59):
and divide and inflict harmon and even destroy the other, Well,
that's just hate. And there's an epidemic, a cancer of hate.
So we're definitely seeing that. The party saying, don't trust
your eyes and ears. Remember Donald Trump said, what you
are seeing and what you are hearing is not what's happening.
(44:21):
Those were his words. Or well, well, you were right, George. Unfortunately, sadly, tragically,
you were kind of a prophet. I would love for
so many Americans to pick up a copy of nineteen
eighty four and read it cover to cover, and maybe
maybe they will feel the chill in their bones as
(44:44):
they see just how they have been and are being manipulated.
They recognize the strategy of the totalitarians, the oppressors, the oligarchs,
the agents of new speak, and maybe they can, indeed
someday break free. Anyway, that is our broadcast this week.
(45:08):
Thank you so much for allowing me to share or
well with you and a few of my thoughts. I
welcome your opinions in the comments section, and I will
see you next time.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
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Speaker 2 (00:10):
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
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Speaker 2 (00:29):
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Speaker 1 (00:35):
Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Just you and me today. I'm not going to take calls.
We'll do that on the next broadcast. I wanted to
offer an opinion and then sound off all you want
in the comments section, because I do welcome your input.
But so much of what we have been seeing relates
to Orwell and his writings in Animal Farm and of
course nineteen eighty four. And you know how much I
(01:17):
love to read the words of other people, those who
are smarter and more astute than myself. I stand on
their shoulders, and as a narrator, I get a chance
to sort of bring that information to you, and I'm
going to do some or Well here at the beginning
and at the end, and in the middle, I want
to give an opinion. I don't know if I'm right
or wrong, but I have an opinion about this fiasco
(01:41):
with the White House Press Corps. And we'll get into
the specifics of what has happened if by chance, you
have been in a deep coma, or maybe you've just
been doing other things because you can't bear to watch anymore.
Of course, Orwell's nineteen eighty four talks about how the
government has begun. I'm a propaganda machine, rewriting history, fashioning
(02:04):
the news of the day, and altering our future so
that everybody essentially lines up like drones, and dear leader
is never challenged. So, of course nineteen eighty four is
being referred to by a lot of USTs these days.
And in chapter five, part one, the section here starts
like this. It says, just the man I was looking for,
(02:26):
said a voice at Winston's back, And of course Winston
is the protagonist of nineteen eighty four. He turned around.
It was his friend Seemi, who worked in the research department.
Perhaps friends was not exactly the right word. You did
not have friends nowadays you had comrades, but there were
some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others.
(02:51):
Seem was a philologist, a specialist in new Speak capital
N N E w knew Speak. Indeed, he was one
of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling
the eleventh edition of the New Speak Dictionary. How is
the dictionary getting on, said Winston, raising his voice to
(03:13):
overcome the noise, slowly said Seem, I'm on the adjectives.
It's fascinating. The eleventh edition is the definitive edition, he said.
We're getting the language into its final shape. The shape
is going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When
we've finished with it, people like you will have to
(03:34):
learn it all over again. You think I dare say
that our chief job is inventing new words, But not
a bit of it. We are destroying words, scores of them,
hundreds of them every day. We are cutting the language
down to the bone. The eleventh edition won't contain a
single word that will become obsolete before the year twenty fifty.
(03:58):
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course,
the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, But
there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid
of as well. It isn't only synonyms. There are also antonyms.
After all, what justification is there for a word which
is simply the opposite of some other word? A word
(04:22):
contains its opposite in itself. Take good, for instance. If
you have a word like good, what need is there
for a word like bad? Un good will do just
as well better because it's an exact opposite which the
other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger
version of good, what sense is there? And having a
(04:43):
whole string of vague, useless words like excellent and splendid
and all the rest of them plus good covers the
meaning or double plus good if you want something stronger. Still,
of course we use those forms already. But but in
the final version of news Speak, there'll be nothing else.
(05:04):
In the end, the whole notion of goodness and badness
will be covered by only six words, in reality, only
one word. Don't you see the beauty of that? Winston?
It was BB's idea originally, of course, he added as
an afterthought, A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's
(05:25):
face at the mention of big Brother. Nevertheless, see Me
immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm. You haven't a
real appreciation of news speak, Winston, he said, almost sadly.
Even when you write it, you're still thinking in old speak.
I've read some of those pieces that you write in
the Times. Occasionally they're good enough, but they're translations. In
(05:50):
your ear, you'd prefer to stick to old speak, with
all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You
don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do
you know that news speak is the only language in
the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? Winston did
(06:10):
know that, of course, he smiled sympathetically. He hoped, not
trusting himself to speak. See Me bit off another fragment
of dark colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on,
don't you see that the whole aim of new speak
is to narrow the range of thought. In the end,
we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will
(06:34):
be no words in which to express it. Every concept
that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly
one word, with its meaning rigidly defined, and all its
subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten already in the eleventh edition.
We're not far from that point. But the process will
(06:55):
still be continuing long after you and I are dead.
Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of
consciousness always a little smaller. Even now. Of course, there's
no reason or excuse for committing thought crime. It's merely
a question of self discipline, reality control. But in the
(07:16):
ends there won't be any need even for that. The
revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. News
speak is ingsock, and by the way, ingsoc is shorthand
for English socialism. The totalitarian political ideology of the super
(07:37):
state ing sook is characterized by the absolute control of
the party over every aspect of life, surveillance, manipulation of history,
psychological control, etc. Back to the excerpt from George Orwell,
news speak is ingsock and ingsoc is news speak. He added,
(07:59):
with a sort of mystical satisfaction. Has it ever occurred
to you, Winston, that by the year twenty fifty at
the very latest, not a single human being will be
alive who can understand such a conversation as we are
having now. By twenty fifty earlier, probably all real knowledge
of old speak will have disappeared. The whole literature of
(08:21):
the past will have been destroyed Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton Byron.
They'll exist only in new speak 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
(08:44):
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
thoughts as we understand it now, Orthodoxy means not a
thing thing, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. One
(09:06):
of these days, thought Winston, with sudden, deep conviction Seemi
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. So that's from chapter five of nineteen
(09:29):
eighty four, up there with Robert Green ingersoll as George
orwell as far as quotability. And we've seen so much
to quote. Who controls the past controls the future? Who
controls the present controls the past. The most effective way
to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own
(09:50):
understanding of their history. But if thought corrupts language, language
can also corrupt thought. If liberty means anything at all,
it means the right to tell people what they do
not want to hear. Until they have become conscious, they
will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they
(10:13):
cannot become conscious. This excerpt from nineteen eighty four. Now,
I will tell you the answer to my question. It
is this, the Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
We are not interested in the good of others. We
are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power
(10:35):
means you will understand. Presently we are different from the
oligarchies of the past, and that we know what we
are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves,
were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian
Communists came very close to us and their methods, but
they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
(10:57):
They pretended, perhaps they even be leaved, that they had
seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that
just around the corner, there lay a paradise where human
beings would be free and equal. We are not like that.
We know that no one ever seeses power with the
intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it
(11:20):
is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in
order to safeguard a revolution. One makes the revolution in
order to establish the dictatorship. The objective persecution is persecution.
The objective torture is torture. The objective power is power.
(11:41):
Now you begin to understand me now, because I don't
want to interrupt my thought, my offering of opinion, let
me take my short break right here and then come
back and talk about the big dramatic press core walk
out of twenty twenty five. Hang on, I just saw
(12:09):
a you gov poll that released that was talking about
the No King's protest from October eighteenth. The poll was
also published in The Economists just a few days ago. Now,
the original estimates where the No King's protests had about
seven million people in the United States and elsewhere marching
the streets. That's a big number, seven million people in
(12:32):
thousands of cities. But actually, according to the new u
gov poll, triple that number participated triple eight percent of
US adults. Around twenty million people participated and rallied and marched.
It's remarkable. According to the same poll, by a slight margin,
(12:56):
more Americans approved than disapprove of those protests. Two thirds
believe that it was a peaceful endeavor. That's still a
terrifying number. Right. Two thirds of Americans say it was peaceful.
That's a low estimate. Six percent of Americans say that
day was defined by violence. What I mean a lot
(13:20):
of US states did mobilize the National Guard in anticipation
of violence because the propagandist at the White House were
doing what inksok does, what big Brother does. They were
quote getting the language into its final shape, the shape
it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. What
(13:41):
was the narrative? What were the warnings? These aren't free
protesters expressing concern because they love their country. It's Antifa,
it's domestic terrorists they hate America. Makes no difference what
actually happened. The facts do not matter. As Orwell also
wrote in nineteen eight four, he said, the party told
(14:02):
you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command, which brings me
to the big Press Corps walk out of just a
few weeks ago. Let me set it up for you.
The White House Press Corps is a group of journalists, correspondents,
and media representatives and they meet at the Pentagon in
(14:24):
DC to cover the President and the goings on at
the White House and briefings by the Press Secretary. The
Press Corps itself was started back over one hundred years ago.
Now I find the White House press briefings pretty tedious
because with every administration, two varying degrees, the press secretary
(14:46):
is just a spin doctor. Never ever, not once, not once.
If I seen a press secretary he was pressed on
a hard question, looking at the reporter and going, you
know what, that's a good point. I may be wrong
on that, or we screwed that up, or this was
a mistake, but you know what, it's time to fix
it and course correct and we're going to do better
(15:08):
next time. Thank you for challenging me on that score.
Does that happen? I've never seen it happen. Instead, when
pressed reporters here a slick litany of prepared talking points.
So I think, you know, are there a couple of
useful things about these press conferences? It's interesting to see
(15:30):
which reporters actually do journalism, which ones are asking challenging
questions and pushing back, and which ones are asking smart queries,
and which ones are asking stupid stuff or acting just
like sick of fans. So that has been useful to
a degree. And I've also found a little bit of
(15:51):
utility in watching just how the Press secretary reacts when challenged.
Do they answer the question, do they dodge? Do they
out right? And this of course brings us to our
current Press Secretary, Carolyn Levitt, who is not a liar.
The word liar is far too charitable. Carolyn Levitt is
(16:14):
a psychopath, a straight up transactional, enabling, self serving Trump
boot licking ghoul whose press conferences are so orwellian. I'm
honestly surprised that the Press Corp didn't walk out a
long time ago. Carolyn Levitt Now, she got into politics.
(16:35):
She lost a congressional race three years ago. She lost
to a Democrat. She faced accusations of illegal campaign donations,
and then she went to work for Trump's super pack,
the political action committee that is called and I am
not kidding, trumps superback named Maga inc. Her face was
(16:56):
featured on a Project twenty twenty five training video for
you know, the Christian Nationalist takeover of the Nation, and she,
of course became Trump's press secretary during his campaign before
being named to the White House in November of twenty
twenty four. Now I'm going to get into the walkout.
Trump and his minions, of course, do not like to
(17:17):
be challenged, countered, or presented with pesky language that is
not new speak. And so the White House made a demand.
They said, sign our statement, a contract, really an agreement
guaranteeing that you will only have a more restricted access
(17:39):
to our people, lend sources, and you will only do
so when given an official escorts. Oh and you will
not be allowed to report any news, any news without
official approval from the White House. The Trump presidency wants
(17:59):
to manage massage info coming from what it calls a quote,
disruptive press, and so we want reporters to sign on
the dotted line, and we want you to guarantee to
us you will only report what we approve. Holy Nikes.
Rather than agree to this, you know, essentially they would
(18:21):
have become just propagandists. You know, you're told what the
news is by ingsock. Dozens of Press Corps reporters said
screw this and they turned in their badges walking out
of the Pentagon. And you can see the photos and
the video of the press and the big walkout is
very dramatic. October fifteenth, forty to fifty I think maybe
(18:42):
sixty journalists walking out of the Pentagon with boxes of
their stuff. And even Fox News joined the walkout. Fox News, Wow,
how bad do you have to be to lose five news,
dear leader State Television? Right, the walkout itself was news
(19:07):
for about six minutes until the country just shrugged and
moved on to the next crazy thing. But of course
we're doing twenty twenty five or well here, So we
have to ask why the censoring and propagandizing of important information.
This is the people's information. Why is it being shut down?
If not because the Ministry of Truth has been installed
(19:30):
instead of a government buy and for the people. So
this has been the adult portion of the conversation on
the broadcast. But now we begin romper room because the Pentagon,
the Pentagon has named a new Press Corps to replace
the old Press Corps, and it is so terrifyingly right
(19:54):
wing batshit that I cannot even come up with a punchline.
Check out these journalists like the Gateway Pundit. Now, the
Gateway Pundit is a far right disinformation mill that was
once blasted by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology
for essentially being a hub of conspiracy theories and outright bullshit.
(20:17):
It is an anti VAXX publication, anti COVID science election denial.
It cannot even get the identities of America's mass shooters
right before it publishes the wrong names of innocent people
and gets those people named and blamed. It's crazy. Then
comes the post Millennial. This is a media outlet out
(20:39):
of Canada. They've got a mixed track record, but still
leaning rights and failing a whole lot of fact checks
before they publish their stories. Also part of news speak
is the conservative news site Human Events. Now. Human Events
Magazine has been muddling along for years until ton up.
(21:00):
It now has a front row seat in trump Isstand.
Back in the day, according to the man himself, it
was Ronald Reagan's favorite magazine and it published pieces by
nightmare human beings like Phyllis Schlaffley and Calter Sean Hannity
has been in it. Current magazine anchors include Brett Hammetcheck.
(21:23):
This is a guy who was an advisor for Charlie
Kirk's Turning Point USA and Jack Pisovic. He is a
conspiracy nutbar who once pushed the Pizza Gate thing. Remember
pizza Gate. It was a QAnon claim that there were
Democrat blood drinking child traffickers who were operating out of
(21:45):
the basement of a Washington, d C. Pizza parlor which
had no basement. That's the kind of journalist he is.
There's also an actual Turning Point USA affiliate called front
Lines Influencer, Tim Poole's an writing and a substack newsletter
called Washington Reporter. And here is my favorite new addition
(22:07):
to the White House press pool, Lindell TV, founded by
the my pillow guy, Mike Lindell. Oh oh yeah, this
guy is a piece of work, self professing Bible thumping
evangelical Christian and whack a doodle conspiracy theorist. Aha, but
(22:32):
he has a PhD. He has a doctorate honorary doctorate
from Liberty University. Liberty University, the Christian College which was
founded by Moral Majority leader and bigot and general cultural
pain in the ass Jerry Folwell Senior. Oh yes, it
(22:53):
was liberty that gave Lindell his honorary doctorate. And this guy,
Mike Lindell, is not He's crazy. He might be a grifter,
con tragically ignorant. I mean, I untethered to reality. He
lives in a bubble. But I genuinely think this man's
(23:13):
hard drive is skipping. There was a glitch in his matrix.
Mike Lindell founded My Pillow about twenty years ago. When
he grew it into a somewhat profitable business. Problem is,
there were a lot of customer complaints at the time.
The quality sucks a whole lot of retailers like bed
(23:34):
Bath and Beyond said, you know, not a lot of
demand for this stuff. So the retailers took My Pillows
off their shelves and the business really started to tank.
When Lyndell came out for Trump, he was a huge
Trump supporter. In twenty sixteen, he called Trump one point
zero a divine appointment. He was praised by the Great
(23:56):
Donald for his business acumen, and he used a lot
of his money to fund far right political candidates. Most tragically,
Mike Lindell began to speak words the nonsense which emitted
from the orifice under his nose is pretty remarkable. He
(24:18):
recommended for COVID to treat COVID nineteen. He recommended a
substance that is toxic to the heart. Am I saying
this right? Oleandron ol ea n drin This is dangerous
to the heart, he said, it's a COVID treatment. He
of course pounded the election fraud drum. He was at
(24:40):
the January sixth rally. Wasn't at the riot, wasn't part
of the break in the domestic terrorism at the Capitol,
but he was at the rally. On one American news
networkA n N, which by the way, is also part
of the New Press Corps, he bought three hours to
(25:00):
air a documentary and I'm using that word in the
loosest sense, documentary about how the election was stolen. This
movie was so crazy, so bad, so full of lies
that evena N fronted the broadcast with a big disclaimer say, well,
(25:21):
we're gonna air this, but yeah, yeah, you know, please
don't sue us smartmatic and dominion, because well you know,
we're just airing it. By the way, the Raspberry Awards,
which is the opposite of the Oscars. The Raspberries gave
this film called Absolute Proof its award for the Worst
Picture of the Year, and Mike Lindell's erratic behavior and
(25:47):
crazy theories, just toxic behaviors have reportedly gotten him millions
of dollars into debt. He's been going public and saying
how financially devastated he is. I'm sure this is all
you know, those woke lib domestic terrorist Antifa frog costume
wearing America hating rebels who are responsible for his decline,
(26:09):
you know, But he's just off the rails. His media outlet,
Lyndel TV is among the new elite as parts of
the approved White House Press Corps. And finally, after all
of this, here is the point, maybe the obvious point
that I have been coming to all along, the press
(26:31):
corps walk out and the hardline right wingers who are
replacing real journalists. All of it doesn't matter, doesn't matter,
not really, because everything Carolyn Levitt, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth,
Stephen Miller, Mike Johnson, at everything these people have said
(26:54):
and done has almost always been better reported from outside
the press core room. Having that Pentagon press badge accomplished
mostly one thing, the media got fed bullshit from a
few feet away instead of seeing it from a few
miles away. I mean, I swear to you that's the
(27:15):
only difference. Are you in the room or out of
the room. As Big Brother Bullhorn's news speak to the commoners,
Levitt doesn't answer questions. She either doesn't know the answer,
so she attacks the journalist, or she gives intentionally false
answers and then attacks the journalist. Every freaking week. This
(27:39):
woman claimed there were real officials with necessary expertise set Doge,
not a bunch of hackers that Elon Musk brought in
to probably backdoor our social Security numbers and who knows
what other private information and not really saving us any
money at all. She said, no, no, there are real
people with true expertise. When and ask who that person was,
(28:02):
she refused to answer. Tanking stocks soaring grocery prices prompted
Carolyn Levitt to say, great news, the economy is starting
to roar. That's a direct quote. She said that tariffs
were actually tax cuts on Americans. She claimed the Big
(28:22):
Beautiful Bill is not a drain on the debt, when
in fact it adds about four trillion to the debt
In about ten years she blamed Democrats when key Trump
people shared classified information about military attacks on signal the
public messenger app. She said, it's the Democrats they were
(28:43):
making this is a big deal and no war plans
were actually discussed, when in fact it was all right
there in black and white. The party told you to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears, she has said.
The Democratic Party, Now, this is a party in this
country made up of forty four million people, including me,
(29:07):
possibly you. The Democratic Party's main constituency. According to Carolyn Levitt,
is Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. Well, I
meet a lot of liberal, progressive Democrats type people in
my travels, and I'm not seeing the pro Hamas T shirts.
(29:32):
I'm not seeing those demonstrations, illegal aliens. I may have
met some undocumented people along the way, and the vast
majority I've met or are often natural born residents here
violent criminals. I mean, how violent are they? They're doing
community service, they're running food banks, they're manning booths at
public events, having conversations about religion, secular values, the secular constitution, humanism.
(29:59):
How dare they those violent domestic terrorists? Many people say
she just a troll, or she's gas lighting, or she
just doesn't give a shits. I think she's a psychopath.
She is a straight up size. She is totally uninterested
in what is true or what is moral. She has
(30:20):
no empathy center. And for that reason, she fits right
end to the big brother model that you and I
are facing today. If questions are dodged and the answers
are worthless anyway, how valuable is how much do we
really need or want a White House press core fifty
(30:41):
or sixty people staging a walkout and getting replaced. This
is going to have almost zero impact on how the
journalists were reporting in the first place, or how seriously
we take the news speak that is vomiting out of
the administration's motor mouths. And I do fantasize that at
(31:02):
some point even Fox News writ Fox News part of
the walkout. Now, they haven't really changed their tune as
far as the prime time lineup and Fox and Friends
and all these sick of fans and whatnot. But I
can't help but think if Fox leaves, is there going
to be just a tiny little bit of that that
(31:22):
might maybe perhaps someday it's a dream, Is it a possibility.
Could it ever turn out that they might turn on
dear Leader and his merry band of stuck ups and sociopaths.
I can imagine it, I can fantasize about it. I
(31:42):
will not expect it. I'm going to read you some
more George Orwell from nineteen eighty four. Pretty remarkable that
this book was written between nineteen forty six and nineteen
forty nine. And it feels like a documentary of the times.
(32:03):
I feel like this is It's almost like Orwell was
not supposed to be an instruction manual people. It was
supposed to be a warning for the ages. But nobody
said it like Orwell did. And I'm going to read
more from him next. George Orwell famously wrote, and this
(32:27):
was not in nineteen eighty four. It was in a
piece called Homage to Catalonia. He said, all the war propaganda,
all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from
people who are not fighting. Isn't that the truth? Watching
Donald Trump play army in this way, he's murdering people
(32:51):
and knowing that this guy's a silverspoon trust fund baby
with five draft deferments. President bone spurs has been used
the United States military like his own little sandbox, his
own little military war game. It's a video game, and
he's sitting there mashing the buttons like an eight year old. Hell,
not even an eight year old. At least eight year
(33:12):
olds know how to play. From nineteen eighty four, or
Well wrote it was possible, no doubt, to imagine a
society in which wealth in the sense of personal possessions
and luxury should be evenly distributed, while power remained in
the hands of a small privileged cast. But in practice
such a society could not long remain stable, For if
(33:36):
leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great
mass of human beings, who are normally stupefied by poverty,
would become literate and would learn to think for themselves.
And when they had done this, they would sooner or
later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and
(33:56):
they would sweep it away. In the long run. A
higher archical society was only possible on a basis of
poverty and ignorance. That's chilling, especially considering the recent report
that the top ten percent of Americans added five trillion
dollars to their wealth in the second quarter of twenty
(34:20):
twenty five, the total wealth of that top ten percent
one hundred and thirteen trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the median household
income right here in the US is about eighty thousand dollars,
and I think that's pretty high for a great many people.
There's a huge and widening income gap in this country.
(34:42):
There are two thousand, seven hundred eighty one billionaires in
the world. And how about the dispensers of information or
disinformation in this country? How many hundreds or thousands of
media outlets are we looking at, whether it's national, state, regional,
local news, online media, radio, at cent. Did you know
(35:05):
that six companies own ninety percent of the media in
this country. Six corporations manage the flow of information here
in the United States. Those six including Comcast, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramounts,
(35:26):
and Fox Corp. Compare that to forty years ago, when
ninety percent of our media was owned by fifty companies.
At least that was an improvement. But so much of
the oligarchy is really about the elites being able to
run unchecked. After all, I think many or most believe
they are genuinely smarter. They deserve to be in charge
(35:47):
they want consumers instead of free thinkers. It's all about
being a loyal party member. As the poor and the
relatively poor prop up the rich and the powerful for
the gain and benefits of the rich and the powerful,
we are all supposed to be proper party members, which
(36:11):
finally brings me back to nineteen eighty four and another
excerpt from that book. A party member is expected to
have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He
is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred
of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and
(36:33):
self abasements before the power and wisdom of the party.
The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately
turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the two
minutes hate. By the way two minutes Hate in nineteen
eighty four, it's exactly what you would think. It is
a designated slot where all kinds of bile about all
(36:58):
dissenters and outsiders, foreigners, others, etc. Just blast through these
publicly placed loud speakers. And it is a requirement for
you to subject yourself to the two minutes hate and
the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude,
are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline.
(37:23):
The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can
be taught even to young children, is called new speak.
Crime stop. Crime stop means the faculty of stopping short,
as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.
It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing
(37:43):
to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if
they are inimical to insot and of being bored or
repelled by any train of thoughts which is capable of
leading in a heretical direction. Crime stop, in short, it
means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary,
(38:06):
Orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's
own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist
over his body. Oceanic society and Oceanic is linked with
ink sockets kind of the overarching big brother entity. Oceanic
society rests ultimately on the belief that big Brother is
(38:27):
omnipotence and that the party is infallible, but since in
reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is
not infallible, there is need for an unwearying moment to
moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word
here is black white. Like so many news speak words,
(38:49):
this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent,
it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is
white in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a
party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that
black is white when party discipline demands this. But it
(39:10):
means also the ability to believe that black is white,
and more to know that black is white and to
forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands
a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the
system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and
(39:31):
which is known in new speak as double think. The
alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons, one
of which is subsidiary and so to speak, precautionary. The
subsidiary reason is that the party member, like the proletarian,
tolerates present day conditions partly because he has no standards
(39:53):
of comparison. He must be cut off from the past,
just as he must be cut off from four or
in countries, because it is necessary for him to believe
that he is better off than his ancestors, and that
the average level of material comfort is constantly rising. But
by far the more important reason for the readjustment of
(40:15):
the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of
the party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and
records of every kind must be constantly brought up to
date and in order to show that the predictions of
the party were in all cases right. It is also
that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can
(40:37):
ever be admitted, for to change one's mind or even
one's policy is a confession of weakness. If, for example,
Eurasia or East Asia, whichever it may be, is the
enemy today, then that country must have always been the enemy,
and if the facts say otherwise, than the facts must
be altered. Thus history is continuous rewritten. This day to
(41:02):
day falsification of the past carried out by the Ministry
of Truth is as necessary to the stability of the
regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out
by the ministry of Love. The mutability of the past
is the central tenets of Ngsak. Past events, it has argued,
(41:24):
have no objective existence, but survive only in written records
and in human memories. The past is whatever the records
and the memories agree upon, and since the party is
in full control of all records and in equally full
control of the minds of its members, it follows that
the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.
(41:47):
It also follows that though the past is alterable, it
has never been altered in any specific instance. For when
it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at
the moment, then this new new version is the past,
and no different past can ever have existed. This holds
good even when, as often happens, the same event has
(42:11):
to be altered out of recognition several times in the
course of a year. At all times, the party is
in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can
never have been different from what it is now. It
will be seen that the control of the past depends
above all on the training of memory to make sure
(42:31):
that all written records agree with the orthodoxy of the
moment is merely a mechanical act. But it is also
necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner,
And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or
to tamper with written records, then it's necessary to forget
(42:52):
that one has done so. The trick of doing this
can be learned, like any other mental technique. It is
learned by the majority of party members, and certainly by
all who are intelligent as well as orthodox. In old
speak it is called, quite frankly, reality control. In new
(43:12):
speak it is called double think, though doublethink comprises much
else as well. I, as your host, cannot help but
think about Maga cult today, an entire demographic that does
not or will not understand our history, or they've rewritten it,
or they've allowed someone else to rewrite it. It's like
(43:36):
we see a completely different country. We live in a
different world, and we fashion opinions around the world we
live in, whether it's rooted in reality or not. The
two minutes hate try twenty four hour hate propaganda mills,
right outlets that are funneling reasons supposed reasons to other
(43:59):
and divide and inflict harmon and even destroy the other, Well,
that's just hate. And there's an epidemic, a cancer of hate.
So we're definitely seeing that. The party saying, don't trust
your eyes and ears. Remember Donald Trump said, what you
are seeing and what you are hearing is not what's happening.
(44:21):
Those were his words. Or well, well, you were right, George. Unfortunately, sadly, tragically,
you were kind of a prophet. I would love for
so many Americans to pick up a copy of nineteen
eighty four and read it cover to cover, and maybe
maybe they will feel the chill in their bones as
(44:44):
they see just how they have been and are being manipulated.
They recognize the strategy of the totalitarians, the oppressors, the oligarchs,
the agents of new speak, and maybe they can, indeed
someday break free. Anyway, that is our broadcast this week.
(45:08):
Thank you so much for allowing me to share or
well with you and a few of my thoughts. I
welcome your opinions in the comments section, and I will
see you next time.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
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