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Neoliberal Feudalism's avatar

“The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.” ― Aldous Huxley

Re: anti-authoritarians that come to mind, I think of Solzhneitzyn, Junger, Assange, Orwell (to an extent), I think of Andrew Jackson who destroyed the second Rothschild U.S. central bank, Louis T. McFadden, Angelo Codevilla, Archbishop Vigano...

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Gavin Farrell's avatar

Good Huxley quote, but Andrew Jackson?!?!? I'd go Rosa Luxemburg, Eugene Debbs, MLK. And today, yes, Julian Assange. Unfortunately we have no revolutionary political leaders in the US today, only some journalists and academics. Heck, we don't even have any good revolutionary artists or writers like we did a generation ago.

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Neoliberal Feudalism's avatar

His battle against the second central bank was legendary and extraordinarily drawn out and difficult, you should read about it. Before his death he was asked what he regarded as his greatest achievement, and he replied without hesitation: "I killed the bank."

Later when the Federal Reserve was established (the third central bank), they ultimately put his face on the $20 bill as a "fuck you, we won", because it was everything he was against. True story.

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Jeano's avatar

He killed a lot of Indians too, but as long he made white men richer, he’s remembered well. Putain.

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Neoliberal Feudalism's avatar

Hi Jean, I was responding to the prompt, which was "picture an anti-authoritarian figure...fighting the real power where it stands here and now".

Because I view the owners of the world central banks as the essential element pushing the feudalistic order we are all increasingly subject to, I give very strong weight toward those who fought against it when answering the prompt. Anyway, Jackson has a controversial reputation and isn't necessarily "remembered well" at this point.

On a broader level, all men have good and bad within them, so there will always have to be a value judgment about how one weighs a person's accomplishments vs failures. I will quote Solzhenitzyn on this: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”

I hope you find this response helpful.

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Gavin Farrell's avatar

Temporarily setting back the central bankers while simultaneously owning hundreds of slaves and aggressively participating in settler colonial genocide. Hmm. I'm going to say the good doesn't outweigh the bad here. Given what we know about Jackson, perhaps his opposition to the central bankers wasn't entirely from a position of aiding working class people? Slave owners and large property holders generally don't have that particular drive...

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Landru's avatar

That is a very interesting take. Paper? I do wonder if you could find in his writings and speeches what his original intent was. I always assume evil when it comes from evil origin ha.

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Jeano's avatar

No, it’s not. I don’t need a lecture on how to understand men. I’ve been around them for 78 years and know every twist and turn of their attempts to mans’plain the worst of their ilk. What I don’t get is why can’t they hold other men to the same standard that they say they hold themselves to? Why are they always rushing to defend the worst in men by trying to say that “we’re all like that” as if they had a corner on wisdom. Well, we aren’t all like that. And it’s time we stopped elevating the killers of the past and started rewarding the peacemakers of today— and following their example.

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Injuns. I think it's pronounced Injuns.

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Jeano's avatar

Are you trying to be funny? Cuz Uffda otherwise.

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Freedom Fox's avatar

You realize using the term, "Indians" is offensive and a product of the white man's ignorance and prejudice. To then get high and mighty as if you're an ally is laughable. You point and wag your finger at others who don't meet with your attempt at empathy for a group identity that you've chosen to adopt sensitivities for, while at the same time offending sensitivities that they have. Nice job Karen, offending while you bask in imaginary offense. Whatever it takes to try to absolve yourself of your white guilt...that failed outside of your own self-image as a white savior and protector of the poor, little, oppressed Injun!

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Yes. Making fun of your comment. Helping to yank up those panties in a wad that you're wearing, so your sphincter muscles clamp up even tighter. Hilarity ensue. "Dropping the pretense of being polite to those with whom we disagree and telling it like it is." And all.

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GabeReal's avatar

Yeah I recently read an article here on Substack (Badlands Media) about Jackson and how he challenged the bankers. I now have a newfound respect for him.

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Indu Abeysekara's avatar

Rosa Luxemburg for sure ( " She told the poor the truth, so they did away with her), and Michael Parenti. I would also add Bertolt Brecht, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci. What about Fidel Castro and Che Guevara? Of course Julian Assange.

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Gavin Farrell's avatar

All good additions. Maybe also Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, and Evo Morales. Sukarno, Patrice Lumumba.

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Indu Abeysekara's avatar

I am with you totally. Maybe the human race has a chance when we have/had all these great people.

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Jo Waller's avatar

Yes Sartre thought freedom a burden which we are condemned to live in. I think many of us are aware of our chains but find them comfortable and reassuring.

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Jeano's avatar

I’m coming to agree with this, at least in this Yuppie Era. In my day—‘55 to ‘75 freedom was sought after, cherished and shared, but then in the late 70’s, as the Women’s Movement developed, I could see that most of the “activists” really did not want freedom. They wanted privilege for white middle class women and to ignore any one—especially gay women—who demanded equality. Betty Frigid the worst. And then we metastasized into the pearl clutching ‘80’s and have been a stain on the world ever since. So no, people with privilege don’t want freedom OR responsibility—they just want to hang on to their, as you say comfortable chains, and make everyone else do the same.

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Douglas's avatar

Harvey Milk?

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Feral Finster's avatar

Teaches me to comment before reading.

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Noam Chomsky shared these insights long before I was ready to hear them. As did Alex Carey, the Australian who influenced Chomsky so much he dedicated "Manufacturing Consent" to him.

Alex Carey's works:

Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Propaganda in the U.S. and Australia, 1995

Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda vs. Freedom and Liberty, 1996

But what happened to Chomsky? He's been as rabid a propagandist and wisher of death on those who didn't obey as any Fascist could've ever wanted from one of the top Marxist intellectual influencers on the planet. Was he really controlled opposition, too? A tool, like so many other influencers, ready to jump into line when called into action? He wished death on the unvaxxed and unmasked. Death!

For someone who was so influential in the minds of so many who saw this US regime for the murderous regime it is long ago, he sounded like a man who'd have sat at the machine gun nest aimed at a thousand civilians and opened fire on them with a sadistic joy leaping from his heart at being the executioner of the disobedient.

I'll often cite his work like Manufacturing that rings true in what you often share. But I know him to be what I know him to be now: a loathesome, barbaric, cold-blooded murderous heart.

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bill wolfe's avatar

I urge folks to go upthread and read the exchange. You decide.

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Jeano's avatar

You won. Or actually, PITY shot himself in the foot, but you brought it out in him.

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Landru's avatar

Let's be fair, admirer is a bit over the top. Respected, that I admit to. As I stated I don't have to agree 100% with someone to consider them someone I can work WITH. You I would imagine walk alone on the path to change. I have more in common with a unsheltered Black quadriplegic woman than, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, etc.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

Brave New World for the haves, 1984 for the havenots.

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Landru's avatar

Wasn't he writing it as a warning rather than a guide : )

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Patrick Powers's avatar

That's what They want you to think.

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Kollibri terre Sonnenblume's avatar

As a long time reader (since 2016), I'd say this is one of your best!

"This totalitarian dystopia looks like freedom because they let us more or less do what we want, while controlling what it is that we want to do using mass-scale manipulation."

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Jeano's avatar

Bril! My concern is why are we so easy to control? O ya… Yuppie Think.

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Toma's avatar

As long as people can jump in their car and waddle into Walmart for their $1.00 Great Value cookies purchased on credit, nothing will change. Edward Snowden is my choice. Too bad he's disappeared. Now a Russian citizen I hope he didn't get called to military service and sent to the front line.

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Feral Finster's avatar

Snowden is alive and well.

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Landru's avatar

Strange comment, you can read Edward anytime you like. I have friends living and working in Russia. The war is over now. If only we in the u.s. didn't have a Imperialist need for placing Nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

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Carol Dansereau's avatar

I see it, too, Caitlin. Well put.

But you continue to present those fighting Gender Identity madness as misguided fools focusing on silly stuff while the ship burns. In truth, we fight the Gender Cult (too) because:

i)we won't stand by as kids we love are put on a conveyor belt to Frankenstinian medical maimings,

ii) we recognize that teaching kids that men have babies and demonizing those who don't agree, is part of dissociating people from reality...from our world...from our bodies...it is part of disorienting and disempowering everyone,

iii) gutting women's and LGB rights actually does matter, the damage is breathtaking, and

iv) we see that people trying to organize a movement for system change getting us beyond capitalism and the fate it engenders....those people have lost all credibility, all strategic sense.

As an environmental activist, I must stand up for biological reality; as a socialist, I must break from those who demean that label by saying kids are born in wrong bodies. And oddly enough, dragged kicking and screaming from my single-minded focus on preventing ecological and/or nuclear disaster, to put some time into fighting the Gender Madness, I find myself right where I need to be. Here lies the kernel for building the kind of working class movement we need. Here with people who refuse to praise the Emperor's clothes....people who didn't talk to each other before because of our self-proclaimed places on the political spectrum. Please do reach out to people like me; you're missing some vital stuff. And keep up your otherwise fabulous analyses.

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GabeReal's avatar

💯. Anyone who dismisses fighting the gender ideology madness as trivial is not realizing how important that ideology is to the totalitarian agenda.

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Anyone who dismisses fighting the gender ideology madness as trivial is not realizing how important that ideology is to having God on our side in this battle against evil. God protects the children above all other. And a society that doesn't protect its children do not receive God's divine hand that can smite any evil that Satan has constructed through his deceit that is embraced among the faithless. God has countless times performed miracles to lift up his children in times when all was seemingly lost. But they had to be Godly. And they had to protect their children, their future. Above all else. We sent our children into schools wearing pieces of cloth across their faces because we gave up on God's perfect immune system. We butcher children saying blaspheme, "sometimes God makes a mistake and puts little girls in little boys bodies." We're teetering on the edge of an abyss now and unless we embrace God in our hearts and souls he'll just as soon Sodom and Gomorrah us to helping us. Yes. Dismiss fighting the greatest sin of all being perpetrated on our young at great peril.

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ZJss's avatar

Wow this is unhinged

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Lol! Says the athiest, always.

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Carol Dansereau's avatar

For those new to Gender Cult issues, Caitlin's reference to the guy running over Bud beer cans relates to Dylan Mulvaney, a man who prances around in woman-face. As a reward for treating women with such disdain, Mulvaney has now become the spokesperson for all sorts of corporations: Budweiser, Nike, tampon-manufacturers.

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Selina Sweet's avatar

I encourage readers to check out Patrick Lawrence's "The Disinformation Complex: An Anatomy" (Scheerpost) in which he has a link to Jacob Seigel's “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century” in last week's Tablet magazine, where he (Seigel)is a senior editor." Lawrence says the following." His subtitle, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Disinformation,” is literate, gutsy, and suggestive of the gloves-off essay underneath it.

This is the most powerful, sustained rip into the Russiagate disaster I have yet read—and certainly the best work published to date on the destruction of American democracy at the hands of a ruling elite that invented (1) the figment of a disinformation crisis and (2) the frightening apparatus that now drowns us in disinformation in the name of combating it. “Disinformation is both the name of the crime and the means of covering it up,” Seigel writes pithily, “a weapon that doubles as a disguise.” Seigel's essay is a must read. It certainly echoes Caitlin's claims by injecting history into them.

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GabeReal's avatar

Oh yes, I read that when Sasha Stone put it on her Substack (you should check out her writings if you haven’t yet). It’s a banger for sure. I saved it on my phone to share with others but it forgot so thanks for the reminder.

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Deb Hawthorn's avatar

Thanks, Selina. I've bookmarked Seigel's piece.

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Luca Baptista's avatar

I'm afraid many, if not most, Europeans (maybe it's the same in other places) developed a kind of death wish. I see more and more people openly advocating for nuclear war if Russia is not "completely defeated". They have no idea what they're talking about, but go out of the way to insult, attack, censor, or even threaten whoever has a modicum of common sense and decency. Sometimes it looks like Portugal (where I live) is one of those Baltic countries, such is the level of Russophobia.

The media here are a complete disgrace. They not only shamelessly manipulate their audiences, appealing to the most basic sentimentalism, but also -- and this might be even worse -- omit any news that might be detrimental to the "war effort", and there are so many of them. Most "war correspondents" basically sit in their hotel rooms in Kiev and other cities waiting for the Ukrainian government to tell them where to go and what to report.

And the commentators... It's really rock bottom. The majority are utterly ignorant but pontificate as if they were sages. And those who certainly know what's going on lie with all their teeth. The very few exceptions are some retired officers who are, of course, smeared as "Russian agents" or "Putinists", or (even more ridiculous) "Communists".

I've never seen something like that. Looks like America in 2003, but worse. And the question is: how can we argue with idiots?

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Feral Finster's avatar

Europeans *like* being slaves.

A slave doesn't have to make decisions. A slave doesn't have to take responsibility.

Besides, the life of a house slave can be pretty comfortable, at least, relative to a field slave. Didn't Borrell say something about Europe as a "garden" and the rest of the world as a jungle?

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jamenta's avatar

Not only Europeans but Americans as well.

But when the class war comes to the point where you have the tough choice of possibly risking your career, getting beaten or blinded by militarized police in a peaceful protest, or having your bank account frozen just because you took part in a trucking protest, or attempt vocally resisting the fascist Elites in charge - then it takes some real courage to rebel.

Hard part is to remove the state of denial one is in that Western society is reaching that point of not only state censorship on all levels, and the ability to quietly take anyone in and imprison them on trumped up charges of whatever, "eco terrorism" or "disinformation", - and then you are faced with that hard historical choice of whether to bend the knee and your head, or rebel and face severe consequences.

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Luca Baptista's avatar

Many people think what they are told to think.

What media scholars can take from this whole mess is that television is still the most influential media -- by far. And newspapers keep being relevant. For all the wrong reasons.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

You are being facetious?

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russian_bot's avatar

With idiots by definition you cannot. The system succeeded in creating so many of them. So until something happens to it any arguments with its products are futile.

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Luca Baptista's avatar

Yes, but it's annoying because I have to keep my mouth shut while listening to inane babblings every single day. Thank God there's the internet.

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Thierry Bruno's avatar

Here, in France, it's the same problem. A majority of people who have no critical spirit, who take for granted all the propaganda of the right-thinking press and who look at you sideways when you have the audacity to show them the imbecility of their remarks. It's exhausting. It is true that with a donkey, one does not reason: one pushes it or pulls it.

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Margaret Anna Alice's avatar

Amen, Caitlin, and that is precisely why I made my first Substack post nearly two years ago about exposing the propaganda machine and how it is used to divide us:

• “A Primer for the Propagandized: Fear Is the Mind-Killer” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized)

As I wrote in that piece:

“The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining—despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.

“Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.

“Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.

“Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases—especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias—against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.”

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Starry Gordon's avatar

Wikipedia has a perhaps relevant entry on "The Big Lie" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie). Appropriately, the article itself contains "lies" (in the more expansive definition of "lies" "statements other than truth"). The inventor of the theory was supposed to be the Nazi minister of Propaganda Goebbels, but it appears earlier in Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ as well. However, it seems a bit naive believe that so many millennia of lying went by without someone noticing that the bigger lies had better success. In any event, Wikipedia dutifully does not fail to follow the current party line in attributing the practice to Mr. Trump.

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Kevin Hammond CMT's avatar

I know. It's absolutely nutz to me. The worst part to me is that these useful useless idiots are still falling for this idiocy.

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Golden years are gone's avatar

"Seriously, think about it: what could the rulers of western society possibly extract from us that they're not already getting?" If the Empire gets its war with China, is the average Australian and American brain washed enough that they willingly enlist in the armed forces or will accept conscription to fight in say Taiwan? Or is that the point at which people start to question the narrative and push back against Empire.

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Benny James's avatar

I've recently finished re-reading 1984, and the growing similarities between Orwell's dystopian nightmare and the current trajectory of society are truly astounding. Sure, we're not yet living in an Orwellian, dystopian world. But, there are enough creeping comparisons that should make people pause and assess where we are being led. Your point speaks directly to one of the Ingsoc slogans: "War is Peace". By keeping people in a constant state of warfare, we are helpless to divert attention to anything else, even if it is taking place right before our very eyes.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Totalitarian Dystopia.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

Propaganda is the REAL weapon. Yes, nuclear warheads are evil and dangerous, but without propaganda to manipulate us into "pushing the red button" they are harmless (and should be dismantled). We need to "nuke propaganda" and not the planet. Disarm the propagandists--point out their fallacies, their lies, their true reasons for wanting to brainwash the masses. Never give up! (Thank you, Caitlin, for always emphasizing this salient point.)

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Crapp's avatar

Another screamer. I really like the idea about Assange as well as Gandhi, MLK etc. As much as i love Julian and regularly hold him up as an example, i too am often susceptible to lionise past figures more.

That trait however isn’t coming from overt propaganda these days. I think it is something baked into our society at all levels through our homelife, education, books, stories etc.

I actually think the dystopia is even more perfect than this. All the leaders and psychopaths and John Bolton’s of this world are also products of this system. With a set of norms and societal systems such as we have, that have been building and echoing all through our history, some parts have become such entrenched, foundational ideas in society and our psyches that it’s an expected outcome that a small number of total nutcases like that exist, and behave as they do. And sure, linguistically we have to refer to those levels of society as they, because they are so far removed from the common experience, but that’s not to exclude them from the conditioning, or label them as free. A bit like Chomsky’s observation of Andrew Marr.

It’s such a successful dystopia, it’s self sustaining now - almost the perfect model of perpetual motion.

Now here’s Johnny with the weather.....

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Feral Finster's avatar

A quote attributed to one of the Sex Pistols goes as follows: "Kill your idols, before they can embarrass you."

I suppose the dead have less opportunity to cause embarrassment.

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denmla's avatar

". . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them." - Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery.... I guess, by now, I am boring with G. Spence quote..

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