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Zwabu posted:Cross posting from the Ukraine war threads: At the start the wingnuts of the GOP and Fox were pro-Russia all the way. They were even waving little Russia flags at a CPAC around the time of the invasion.
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Jan 11, 2023 22:04
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FMguru posted:The idea that today's blood enemy can be tomorrow's dear ally is a cornerstone of "realist" theories of international relations, and one that has a fair amount of historical evidence. My favorite example is from 1756: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_Revolution Yeah, there's really nothing odd about it. What makes the moment in the novel striking is that it happens abruptly, for no expressed reason, and the people immediately accept the new state of affairs without question.
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Jan 11, 2023 22:41
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PeterWeller posted:The Theory and Practice of Oligarchal Capitalism is definitely an entirely accurate description of the system. It serves a double purpose in the novel. First, it lays out to the reader the policy and practice of all three parties/states. Second, it demonstrates how insidious and powerful information control can be. Winston is allowed to see the truth so that knowledge can then be used to destroy him. It's like what J.A.B.C. said about the warning about the boot becoming the boot itself. Julia intuits this, which is why she doesn't care at all for the book and just wants to enjoy their time together in apparent freedom. Also it's to show the full power of the State that someone could know this completely know that the system was entirely a lie and then still be broken and turned servile to it. My favorite thing is where O'Brian talks about power to be the goal in and of itself. Not power to do anything specific just power for its own sake, very similar to discussing wealth, where at some point it just becomes a scorecard. “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 means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in 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 in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, 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 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. Now you begin to understand me.”
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Jan 11, 2023 22:43
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LionYeti posted:“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 means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in 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 in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, 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 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. Now you begin to understand me.” Wow it's like you're reading one of Joe Biden's executive orders right at me.
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Jan 11, 2023 22:56
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happyhippy posted:At the start the wingnuts of the GOP and Fox were pro-Russia all the way. CPAC also literally had the super onion level line/motto of "WE ARE TERRORIST"
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Jan 11, 2023 23:00
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, there's really nothing odd about it. What makes the moment in the novel striking is that it happens abruptly, for no expressed reason, and the people immediately accept the new state of affairs without question. Hence the cold war comparison since that was a pretty quick flip as opposed to happening over decades.
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Jan 11, 2023 23:08
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That part was the most realistic of all, and was one of the foundations of Asimov's pretty brutal takedown of the book and author generally, because if that's the truth (it is) then that's all the state would ever have to do. When I was a kid I thought the book was a tedious bore, and now as a much better read adult I think the government he created was largely based on his experience working with western intelligence agencies
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Jan 11, 2023 23:12
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I often think Brave New World has a more accurate approach to the state of modern capitalist society, while 1984 accurately critiqued the language of authoritarianism.
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Jan 11, 2023 23:17
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I'm fairly sure they were all ripping off We by Zamyatin, which never caught on in the west for mysterious reasons, but Huxley had the better by far imho because he had the two crucial traits of having a pretty good idea of how technology works at a conceptual level, and also not trusting or liking it very much. 1984's world is pretty shambolic and held together with duct tape because there's little internal consistency and the characters are hot garbage. Huxley could write and also at least understood using material analysis to build a world even if I couldn't tell you if he was a socialist or not, though after reading Island I've got some suspicions that he at least loved him some drugs. Same reason why imho Dune's world holds up so well (until Herbert returned to them for the last two)
Epic High Five fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Jan 11, 2023 |
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Jan 11, 2023 23:25
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Huxley has a quote in another of his books, Crome Yellow, that I think about a lot:quote:“The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” I think you can see ways it can apply in modern political discourse.
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Jan 11, 2023 23:42
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Angry_Ed posted:Hence the cold war comparison since that was a pretty quick flip as opposed to happening over decades. I dunno. That was an uneasy alliance against a common enemy that fell apart over clear ideological differences. Maybe a better comparison is Germany suddenly invading Russia after they had happily divvied up Poland, but Nazism and Communism saw each other as existential foes, so that pact was going to end. In 1984, Ingsoc, Neo-Bolshevism, and Death Worship are all ideologically identical and actually colluding to perpetuate their forever war.
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Jan 12, 2023 01:53
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PeterWeller posted:I dunno. That was an uneasy alliance against a common enemy that fell apart over clear ideological differences. Maybe a better comparison is Germany suddenly invading Russia after they had happily divvied up Poland, but Nazism and Communism saw each other as existential foes, so that pact was going to end. It's been a while since I've read it, but was there ever any evidence that any of the things outside of Ingsoc existing?
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Jan 12, 2023 02:28
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IIRC something similar occurred in Animal Farm with the shifting betrayals among Napoleon and the two other farmers. 1984 feels like Orwell revisiting that idea so he could lead it to its logical endpoint. Well, logical for totalitarians anyway. One part of RWM that I think counts as “Orwellian” is the way it cuts vocabulary. One of the functions of Newspeak is to shrink political thought by shrinking language; it’s hard to articulate, let alone discuss, concepts like “freedom” when there just aren’t words in the dictionary for these things. On the right wing I see this sort of shrinkage in action. Words with meanings get flattened into interchangeable synonyms for “bad thing I don’t like”. Woke, socialist, canceling, political correctness, liberal, etc. — these all have real and separate definitions, but in RWM they are just the scare word of the day. No meaning except “you are expected to get angry at this”, and six months later it’ll be a new scare word in the mix. I think part of the reason you see Democrats called “far left” or, God help me, Mitt Romney called a RINO, is that conservatives literally lack the vocabulary to articulate what they object to about these people or things. It’s fine to disagree with, say, Marxism, but you still need to be able to define the thing you dislike and explain what is objectionable about it. And I think RWM deprives people of those tools. Democrats are “far left” because that’s one of a very small supply of terms they have available to discuss such things. We all know RWM makes you dumb, and I think this is one of the specific ways it does that.
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Jan 12, 2023 02:30
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Neito posted:It's been a while since I've read it, but was there ever any evidence that any of the things outside of Ingsoc existing? We do get to see enemy prisoners being paraded through the streets during Hate Week, and presumably (though not explicitly stated) there is also the experiences of Oceanic soldiers at the fronts, however filtered through the Party and Thought Police.
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Jan 12, 2023 02:32
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Mechanical Ape posted:IIRC something similar occurred in Animal Farm with the shifting betrayals among Napoleon and the two other farmers. 1984 feels like Orwell revisiting that idea so he could lead it to its logical endpoint. Well, logical for totalitarians anyway. For some reason, of all things, this reminds me of Brian Kerninghan's description of Pascal in Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language: bwk posted:9. There is no escape In both senses, they're intentionally circumscribed to promote and ingrain a certain type of thought: Structured Programming for Pascal and super duper mega hate on the Right.
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Jan 12, 2023 03:18
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quote:“The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” Yep, reminds me of right wing radio hosts talking about how the most humane solution to the "border crisis" is to shut it down completely and turn away anyone who comes up to it, completely get rid of the concept of asylum, don't let a single person through. Sending people into the desert to die, truly the most moral and humane choice.
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Jan 12, 2023 18:16
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Twelve by Pies posted:Yep, reminds me of right wing radio hosts talking about how the most humane solution to the "border crisis" is to shut it down completely and turn away anyone who comes up to it, completely get rid of the concept of asylum, don't let a single person through. Nice to hear we're back to the automated turrets/self-healing minefields/mile-wide trench of burning tires stage of border policy planning once again. Wait, not nice. The other thing.
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Jan 12, 2023 19:22
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PeterWeller posted:I dunno. That was an uneasy alliance against a common enemy that fell apart over clear ideological differences. Maybe a better comparison is Germany suddenly invading Russia after they had happily divvied up Poland, but Nazism and Communism saw each other as existential foes, so that pact was going to end. There's plenty now. Osama Bin Laden and the mujahadeen were our god-fearing freedom-loving buddies fighting against the atheistic Soviets one day, and evil fundamentalist lunatics the next Saddam was our good buddy bravely dropping WMDs we're sending him on the extremist Iranian regime one day, and a violent monster the next (and where did he get those WMDs, he must have a secret factory!) Putin has flipped back and forth between our tough no-nonsense ally in the GWoT, and the incarnation of the devil himself etc
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Jan 12, 2023 19:36
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Neito posted:It's been a while since I've read it, but was there ever any evidence that any of the things outside of Ingsoc existing? I don't think it actually matters whether or not Neo-Bolshevism or Death Worship exist outside of Ingsoc because they're all the same exact thing under different names involved in the same project of keeping that boot on that face forever. VitalSigns posted:There's plenty now. Yes. You can always find examples of people turning on their former friends. This is a normal part of human existence. Again, what makes the switch in 1984 so striking is it's immediate, unexplained, and unquestioned.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:43
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PeterWeller posted:I don't think it actually matters whether or not Neo-Bolshevism or Death Worship exist outside of Ingsoc because they're all the same exact thing under different names involved in the same project of keeping that boot on that face forever. Well in the book that's probably best explained by Orwell not being a terribly good writer, but effectively overnight shifts happen all the time. It can be minor like a party leader announcing that this or that is now the party line and challenging membership as to if it's worth social death to oppose (it's not for most), like with M4A or being okay with immigration as long as they're God fearing conservatives, and bigger stuff like a socialist or (more rarely) fascist leader taking power in other countries over preferred candidates and incumbents. One day close and trusted trading partners, the next day freedom hating illegitimate terrorists. Policy and rhetoric of course move at different speeds and in different lanes but you'd need to read Le Guin for that sort of thing. I don't think a lot of people are happy facing this fact but it's true, and is the basis of why the rest of the book feels like so much fluff. You don't need to do that other stuff! People are turning on their former friends overnight as we speak as a deliberate strategy of conservative agitprop as we're seeing with Q and other insular reactionary movements. You don't even need valorization of individualism and social atomization, or a media ecosystem that's largely stenographers, but it seems to help a lot. Point is, there's usually quite a bit more going on, and if it feels shocking in its swiftness it's because you're (generic you, not you specifically) only just now seeing it. Orwell was probably just too busy grinding an axe to make the scene make sense within the rest of the narrative.
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Jan 13, 2023 01:00
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Good news everyone, the RWM and a bunch of RW politicians are losing their poo poo over this false idea that the government is going to ban gas stoves now So expect to hear about this non-stop for like two weeks and then almost never again
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Jan 13, 2023 01:39
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also caturd has an llc named caturd and has his real name attached to it and him virtually signalling about gas stoves showed he has a smooth top electric.
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Jan 13, 2023 03:11
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PhazonLink posted:also caturd has an llc named caturd and has his real name attached to it and him virtually signalling about gas stoves showed he has a smooth top electric. If I recall correctly, a couple of irascible Twitter chuds have accidentally doxxed themselves like that in similar ways. Some C-tier "forever mad at media" dork accidentally revealed all his personal information by trying to copyright the username of one of his frequent targets of Twitter harassment and was then horrified to find out that copyright applications are publicly searchable legal documents.
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Jan 13, 2023 03:21
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how am I going to cook hotdogs right on a gas stove if I dont have a gas stove?
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Jan 13, 2023 05:13
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Mercury_Storm posted:how am I going to cook hotdogs right on a gas stove if I dont have a gas stove? Half full, you can do “Benihana up in this bitch” anytime you want
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Jan 13, 2023 05:14
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Mercury_Storm posted:how am I going to cook hotdogs right on a gas stove if I dont have a gas stove? I've never used a gas range in my entire life and I manage to get it right somehow. Also I've never had to worry about my kitchen or house randomly blowing the gently caress up because of a gas leak or something.
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Jan 13, 2023 05:25
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nine-gear crow posted:I've never used a gas range in my entire life and I manage to get it right somehow. Also I've never had to worry about my kitchen or house randomly blowing the gently caress up because of a gas leak or something. Wait you use an electric stove? You let the murder juice that is electricity into your place? Where you live? where you sleep, undefended from it's murdering'ness?  FOOL!
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Jan 13, 2023 06:33
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dr_rat posted:Wait you use an electric stove? You let the murder juice that is electricity into your place? Where you live? where you sleep, undefended from it's murdering'ness? Love the child in the center of the picture who's just doing the Jackie Chan "WHAT?!" pose over all the adults running in terror away from or just dropping dead at the sight of a lightbulb. Extra kudos to the dude who climbed up onto the wires just to die in a dramatic pose like that.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:53
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nine-gear crow posted:Love the child in the center of the picture who's just doing the Jackie Chan "WHAT?!" pose over all the adults running in terror away from or just dropping dead at the sight of a lightbulb. Extra kudos to the dude who climbed up onto the wires just to die in a dramatic pose like that. Old political cartoons were just the best for all those sort of great weird details. Favorite will always be the famous anti-suffragette one with women at a bar:  And now days it's just like, yeah that looks like it would of been a pretty legit bar for the time. Just a great example of conservatives just drawing something and going this is bad because I think it is, so I will show it to you so you will obviously agree with me.
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Jan 13, 2023 08:08
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Epic High Five posted:Well in the book that's probably best explained by Orwell not being a terribly good writer, but effectively overnight shifts happen all the time. It can be minor like a party leader announcing that this or that is now the party line and challenging membership as to if it's worth social death to oppose (it's not for most), like with M4A or being okay with immigration as long as they're God fearing conservatives, and bigger stuff like a socialist or (more rarely) fascist leader taking power in other countries over preferred candidates and incumbents. One day close and trusted trading partners, the next day freedom hating illegitimate terrorists. Policy and rhetoric of course move at different speeds and in different lanes but you'd need to read Le Guin for that sort of thing. Thing is a lot of those aren't especially sudden when you pay any attention, as shown by how a lot of the examples given in this thread happened over years and never really crossed the love/hate spectrum. Not only was there over a decade between supporting the mujahideen against the Soviets and going to war with the Taliban, the relationship between the two is pretty tenuous since both the winners and losers of the 1990s civil war included lots of people who had fought the Soviets. And Bin Laden even less so, since despite what 2004-era liberal email forwards told us, he wasn't really involved with the CIA there so much as just a foreign rich kid hanging out while the US spent its resources on locals. Then he radicalized after Desert Storm, his people bombed the WTC a couple years later, making him a wanted terrorist. After that the US relationship with the Taliban soured due to their beating the US's favored factions in the civil war, the coziness with Al Qaeda then, etc. The transition to "now the Taliban are prime villains" was anything but sudden: it was one step at a time, punctuated by overt events that reasonably would drastically change opinions regardless of which parties you think had more blame for them. Iraq's another interesting case since the US gradually came to support Iraq just because they were fighting Iran, and that slowly because they were a Soviet client state. No one ever really pretended they were more than an ally of convenience to hurt Iran. "If only they both could lose", was the Kissinger take, and that was pretty well-reflected overall, and followed by Saddam being dropped like an old toy the minute he stopped killing Iranians. While Iraq invading Kuwait a few years later made a massive dramatic shift, it was both an overt action and not exactly a full friend-foe switch. The whole transition from USSR as enemy to Russia as friend was abrupt because of empire collapse and regime change, but the shift back to Putin as enemy was slow and mapped closely to Putin's own consolidation of power, embrace of culture war, and raising his banner as being the counterweight to Western hegemony. Notable since most of the westerners who admire the first two never really turned on him more than friendly rivalry. Or to keep things in the era where Orwell wrote 1984, the foe-friend-foe relationship of the USSR and west seems abrupt, but it was also pretty clearly an alliance of convenience. It arguably took Poland or maybe even France for liberals to see Nazis as a bigger threat than communists, and while plenty of socialists were staunchly anti-fascist the whole time it absolutely took Barbarossa for the Stalinists to move Hitler from "fellow traveler against Western imperialists" to the "existential threat we always fought harder than anyone" they held ever since. It's no real surprise that the alliance cooled off faster than Hitler's body: both sides were already planning how to get on top of the other afterward and even someone who did surface reading of newspapers could pick it up. But it probably hit hard for a socialist who actually saw fascism as an existential threat before 1941. None of this disputes that hardcore nationalists will immediately throw themselves into a jingoistic rage against whoever they're told is the enemy of their
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Jan 13, 2023 09:15
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And now for something completely different.  Telegraph
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Jan 13, 2023 09:30
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dr_rat posted:Just a great example of conservatives just drawing something and going this is bad because I think it is, so I will show it to you so you will obviously agree with me. That image may be the origin of "don't threaten me with a good time."
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Jan 13, 2023 09:36
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Antigravitas posted:And now for something completely different. "We are becoming richer" and "Britain is becoming poor" are not conflicting statements.
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Jan 13, 2023 09:51
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Of course 1984 was an exaggeration, Orwell's projection of current trends as he saw it in 1948. And the Hate Week scene specifically was probably inspired by his work with the Ministry of Information during the war when they were making pro-Soviet broadcasts, which had to be quickly replaced with anti-Soviet agitprop afterwards when they became geopolitical rivals. Yes of course in our world it can take years of propaganda and work to manufacture a casus belli against some far away country that it isn't in anyone's interests to fight with (except the ruling class of course), Orwell was imagining a dictatorship with control of thought and information so complete that they didn't need to give a reason or have any buildup at all. I suppose it would have been more realistic if there had been news of Eastasian provocations leading up to Hate Week, so when the switch finally came it didn't feel sudden because hey the Eastasian alliance was always a temporary strategic one and these Eastasian bastards have really been acting up that we have no choice but to conclude an alliance with Eurasia and blah blah blah, but that's not the story he was writing.
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Jan 13, 2023 15:37
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Antigravitas posted:And now for something completely different. tfw you rediscover Solon's competitive advantage two and a half millenia later
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Jan 13, 2023 20:10
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PeterWeller posted:Again, what makes the switch in 1984 so striking is it's immediate, unexplained, and unquestioned. Like how having classified documents was nothing really and now it’s instant jail?
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Jan 14, 2023 00:59
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Murgos posted:Like how having classified documents was nothing really and now it’s instant jail? That’s reasoning motivated by the underlying desires of the audience, though. I think most of them understand that their ostensible arguments serve their desire to love Trump and hate Biden and that whatever reasoning they give for their position is understood to be working backward from an intended conclusion. It’s more like that Sartre quote about the fascist not being unaware of the absurdity of their claims.
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Jan 14, 2023 01:06
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Murgos posted:Like how having classified documents was nothing really and now it’s instant jail? But also both are simultaneously true. It's genuinely incredible to watch. The best they can argue is that "well you said the guy on our team should go to jail, so now we're calling for the guy on your team to go to jail" and nothing more.
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Jan 14, 2023 01:06
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I honestly didn't expect talk radio guests and hosts to begin advocating for direct military intervention against Russia but that happened this week. Not sure why I was surprised exactly but I didn't see it coming.
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Jan 14, 2023 01:09
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nine-gear crow posted:Love the child in the center of the picture who's just doing the Jackie Chan "WHAT?!" pose over all the adults running in terror away from or just dropping dead at the sight of a lightbulb. Extra kudos to the dude who climbed up onto the wires just to die in a dramatic pose like that. the guy on the wires didn't climb up onto the wires just to die, he's one of the first lineman (the boots he's wearing are early ppe), back when it was a non-unionized and exploited occupation. in the early days lack of regulation (note the rats nest of wires on that pole) and workers rights (his only protection for the work is a pair of leather boots) led to about 1 in 3 linemen dying on the job i don't know the original intent of the cartoonist, but having a dead lineman tangled in the wires isn't some fanciful invention
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Jan 14, 2023 02:14
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