{"id":400,"date":"2008-01-26T11:57:02","date_gmt":"2008-01-26T17:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2008\/01\/26\/by-george-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2008-01-26T09:23:43","modified_gmt":"2008-01-26T15:23:43","slug":"by-george-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/by-george-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"By George, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only some of the essayists in What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics<\/em>, edited by Andras Szanto for PublicAffairs Books, which I will review soon, think George Orwell (1903-1950) is the man for 2008. After all, their thesis is in the title.<\/p>\n

Any other George you can think of already has one foot in the presidential library, as he’s a lame duck.<\/p>\n

Human nature is over the centuries is constant. It’s consistent through mere decades as well. The New Media is still communication. Marketing tries to dupe us, but that goes back to the ancient bazaars. These essayists, writing in the last six-nine months, generally say propaganda is succeeding because it’s more sophisticated, forgetting in 2006 the balance of power in Congress cycled back toward Democrats and this year that direction seems likely to continue. If one side’s freedom fighter is the other’s terrorist, then the straw hats’ plea for common sense by citing the facts is the felt hats’ propaganda that manipulates facts. You travel left far enough you find the right coming toward you.<\/p>\n

Even as I recommend revisiting Orwell’s 1984<\/em> to enjoy the surprise that Orwell was a skilled storyteller not a mere sermonizer, I can note without surprising anyone that the hero, Winston Smith, is arrested and tortured. He’s not waterboarded, but what is said about torture and confessions shows Orwell’s astuteness.<\/p>\n

In this section of the novel, we are persuaded that everyone confesses under torture. Everyone betrays under torture. No exceptions, and skilled torturers know this. And they know that the subject will confess to both truth and lies to stop the pain. So cruelty is useless — if its purpose is information. So another reason has to exist.<\/p>\n

1984<\/em>, Book 3, Chapter 3 from george-orwell.org<\/a>. Orwell is all over the Internet; there must be a place with his works with fewer typos.<\/p>\n

The Party official O’Brien talking to the tied-down Winston.<\/p>\n

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it 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 object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This made me understand the so-called interrogation techniques U.S. representatives have done to people who may be linked to al-Qaida. Six years after 9\/11, and the results of the questioning have not led any agency or any ally to bin Laden. Orwell explains why: “The object of torture is torture.” “D’oh!” to quote another philosopher<\/a>.<\/p>\n

-30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only some of the essayists in What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, edited by Andras Szanto for PublicAffairs Books, which I will review soon, think George Orwell (1903-1950) is the man for 2008. After all, their thesis is in the title. Any other George you can think of already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":399,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/by-george-part-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":400,"position":0},"title":"By George, Part I","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"No, not that George, the other one. Not that George, either. It's not fair to say if George Orwell were alive today, he'd be totally yada yada yada on creation science and intelligent design. But what if Orwell actually wrote about the subject, even though those two terms were not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2224,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/09\/by-george\/","url_meta":{"origin":400,"position":1},"title":"By George","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"With apologies to George Orwell: Winston gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two Victory Gin-scented tears trickled down the sides\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Loose Talk of the Town"","block_context":{"text":"Loose Talk of the Town","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/loose-talk-of-town\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/03\/georgie-porgie-porgy-and-bess\/","url_meta":{"origin":400,"position":2},"title":"Georgie Porgie, Porgy and Bess","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Democrat-Gazette published today my review of What Orwell Didn\u2019t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, Andras Szanto, editor. I was so excited by this book, even though it was disappointing, that I wrote three Bricks referring to George Orwell. Two of them were on revelations about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":402,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/the-green-candidate\/","url_meta":{"origin":400,"position":3},"title":"The Green Candidate","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Four years ago Charlie Rose interviewed Garrison Keillor, who said something so provocative that for a detectable millisecond Rose was speechless, a rarity. Keillor of course was on promoting A Prairie Home Companion, but early on they discussed the just-ended 2004 election, where the progressive Keillor nailed John Kerry's defeat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":417,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/04\/judge-date-by-her-cover\/","url_meta":{"origin":400,"position":4},"title":"Judge Date by Her Cover","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are three articles claiming with scant evidence that women are fiction and men non-fiction. The earliest comes from the March 24, 2008, edition of The New Yorker, which started out as possibly a look at where the two literatures overlap in either memoir or false memoir. But near the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2003\/12\/humor-put-to-pasture\/","url_meta":{"origin":400,"position":5},"title":"Humor, put to pasture","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 26, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Friday, Dec. 26, 2003. Consider the retirement this month of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette humor columnists Richard Allin and Charles Allbright. It's fair and appropriate and honest (as in honest opinion, NOT truth and NOT fact) to point out the positives in the involuntary departure. I believe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}