Whammo! We've Reverted To 1984, Pt. I

 

Whammo! We’ve Reverted To 1984, Pt. I

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Now that Trump has been elected and taken office the attack on him has changed.  Gaslighting is in full force.  Of course. the forces led by the warlord George Soros are in open rebellion, rioting in the streets and promising all sorts of condign harassment, but the ‘thinkers’ at the Wall Street Journal take a more subtle approach.  One wonders what Trump means to them.  The reaction can only be compared to when goofball FDR assumed office, or, perhaps Herbert Hoover’s term when everyone piled on. 

In FDR’s first term he was perceived as a threat to democracy by the Right so perhaps Trump is threatening the fantasy world of the Left.  One imagines that they can see their Weltanschauung begin to evaporate into the thin air that they breathe.

Both groups must now construct a Trump to suit their needs.  For the nonce let’s concentrate on a couple articles in the 1/24/17 Wall Street Journal.  One by Bert Stephens, a real Trump hater and the other by William McGurn, no relation to Machine Jack McGurn, who seems more amenable to Trump.

Stephens who I have reviewed before is a regular contributor to the Journal, indeed, one of its editors.  I don’t know how he got his job, nepotism perhaps.  In this effort, accentuate effort, Bret seeks a fictional character who best characterizes Trump.  Needless to say, his speculatives, Willie Stark, Jay Gatsby or the American Psycho are all derogatory including the character he settles on, Thomas Mann’s Peeperkorn from The Magic Mountain.  A character to mock as sub-human.

Bert then runs through derogatory historical characters settling on Napoleon III of whom the Red writer Victor Hugo noted:  He is not an idiot.  With encomiums like that Bret then turns to the grit or meat of his condemnation by turning to that mega icon of the Left, Hannah Arendt.   She who invented the Authoritarian Personality to vilify anyone on the Right.  As Bret saved Hannah for a clinching last two paragraphs I quote, Drumroll:

And then there is Hannah Arendt’s “Origins Of Totalitarianism” with its clear eyed analysis of how public cynicism toward flawed political institutions can be transformed by a wily regime in an assault on foundational concepts of truth, the substitution of facts with Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts”.

 

Here the narrative is clear, Bert’s essay is right because he’s based it on a ‘clear eyed’ authority who, being Jewish, can’t be contradicted safely.  If others think Arendt is not the ultimate authority why, then they are just plain kablooey.  And as the master of the subject, as a leader of the right sort of people, thinking and doing the right sort of thing is infallible.  Miss Arendt carefully places her finger on the villains -wily regimes-  who abandon the paths of righteousness favored by the Right Sort, to assault foundational concepts of truth.  Foundational concepts of truth, many think truth is impossible to ascertain, let alone foundational concepts of it whatever they may be.  Sounds darn good though, doesn’t it.  Foundational truths.  Hmm?

One gathers then Miss Arendt and by extension Bret represent the truth, honesty personified.  As Miss Arendt was Jewish writing about Nazis who the bearers of truth and untruth are is clear thus Bret cleverly associates Trum with the Nazis.

What does the ‘assault on truth’ consist of?  The substitution of ‘facts’ with Kellyanne Conway’s ‘alternate facts.’

True facts are true and alternate facts that are automatically false.  Who determines true facts are indeed facts?  What is fact and what is not?  Why the controllers of the narrative.  Who is controlling the narrative here?  Why the Liberals; so facts are determined to serve their ends.  In this case the Liberals presented a pair of photos purporting to show the maximum attendance at Obama’s inauguration on the left hand side and Trump’s on the right.  In these days of photo shopping we are then asked to believe the photos are undoctored.  They may be but the mere presentation of photos does not make facts, but assuming the photos individually are authentic, thus making them ‘facts’, their pairing is wide open to manipulation and thus has to be authenticated, not just accepted, as the Liberals ask.  Their pairing is stated by the Liberals to be a fact.  The truth.  It isn’t.

Representing Trump who declared the pairing to be no fact Kellyanne said the Trumpers had ‘alternate facts’ meaning I presume a different interpretation of the attendance situation.  As the Liberal pairing was a false representation of the situation it was no fact, in fact it was dishonest.  Cleverly seizing the narrative Liberals acted as though their opinion was fact condemning Kellyanne’s ‘alternate facts’ as Orwellian double speak from his novel 1984.  Double speak is something the Democrats are expert at as witness the Obama administration. 

Not surprisingly the sales position of Orwell’s 1984 jumped from obscurity to number 1 on Amazons sales chart.  Note, amazon is only one outlet easily controlled and it was the sole outlet cited.  How many copies of 1984 does one have to buy to manipulate amazon’s sales list on any given day?  A couple hundred or thousand?  Easily and cheaply done and of course they could be returned shortly after the point was made.  The point?  Trump is Big Brother with all that entails and his ‘alternate facts’, which indeed he could certainly have as do any two lawyers in a court of law.

Bret continues his accusation into the last paragraph:

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties [of the twentieth century] was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive,”  Arendt writes.  Anyone watching Ms. Conway’s performance with NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday (1/22/17) knows that one needn’t be totalitarians much less elite, to employ the same tactic.

So, Kellyanne was employing a tactic favored by totalitarians but needn’t necessarily be a totalitarian. She’s also beneath our dignity, nothing elitist about her.   This raises the question then do only Nazis or would be totalitarians pursue the tactic of false facts for that is how they portray ‘alternate facts?’ 

Since our Liberal friends, championed here by Bret Stephens, created a false fact in their pairing of two pictures not directly related they are guilty of what they are condemning and hence Nazis and would be totalitarians and agents of the Big Brother of 1984.   People who live in glass houses….