MUST-READ ESSAY BY TIMOTHY SNYDER ON AMERICA'S NEW "MEMORY LAWS"

 Six US states have recently passed laws or guidelines limiting what can be taught about race and racism in US history and in the US today. Twelve more states are considering similar legislation.

                                                 Credit: Patrick Hoesley/Creative Commons

This isn't just a slippery slope; it's a slime-coated declivity that tramples vital facts underfoot and elevates an official narrative and the feelings of discomfort that facts may cause into the arbiters of what can and cannot be taught.

In the June 29th edition of the New York Times Magazine, Yale professor and author Timothy Snyder has gifted us a compelling essay about this dangerous movement, entitled The War on History is a War on Democracy.

I'd add that this isn't just a war on democracy, it's a war on reason and reality. 

If you haven't done so already, please take the time to read it.

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REA 7/13/21

THE SLEEP OF REASON

The artist and Chinese political dissident, Ai Weiwei's recent warning that "Abandonment of rational thinking leads to a collapse in which fear and joy, ignorance and reason, all blow in the wind" is a terrifyingly accurately depiction of this moment in time with America's President and his followers denying reality and furiously tweeting in the dark.

The Sleep of Reason by Francisco Goya

Credit: Brooklyn Museum

Years of attacks on scientific knowledge, rationality and expertise of all kinds, particularly relating to critical health, environmental and climate-related issues have, tragically, set the stage for just such a destabilized and destructive state of mind. As a consequence, today, with a dangerous pandemic sweeping across the land, and one hundred and fifty thousand Americans already dead, even the most minimally-invasive and 'reasonable' steps to mitigate the disaster such as mask-wearing and social-distancing continue to be met with powerful surges of irrational fantasies and fears, leaving the rest of us, in Ai Weiwei's imagery, and Bob Dylan's prophetic words from the 1960's, "blowing in the wind."

So deep is this 'sleep' of un-reason that violations and distortions of ordinary rules of law and governance, institutional standards, decorum and even measurable facts seemingly pass unnoticed and un-opposed in the night. Swirling in a maelstrom of Orwellian double-speak, "alternative facts," cries of "fake news," conspiracy theories and a continuing flood of blatant lies and denials, the reasoned process of discourse essential to the functioning of democracy becomes muddied and impossible to sustain.

While the President's 'gut feelings' about untested cures and virus prevention are given equal weight against demonstrable scientific evidence, leading scientists and epidemiologists are demeaned and their voices silenced. Widespread national protests in favor of Black Lives and against police violence become distorted into exaggerated and menacing projections of 'anarchism' in the streets. At the point where the most fundamental democratic acts of census taking, voting and delivering the mail provoke radically fearful and polarized reactions, the narcotic has fully taken hold.

Reason seems to have been fully detached from the requirements of fact. Propaganda, passion and sheer misinformation are free to activate the latent fears and anxieties in the mind of a paralyzed and destabilized public. Faith in the electoral process erodes, and in an American first, a sitting President openly proclaims that he might not accept the results of an election that goes against him! 

In just such a moment, some threshold is crossed. It could be the point when the unprecedented intrusion of federal paramilitary units into American cities against the wishes of state and local officials in the name of preserving 'law and order' becomes more than just one more fleeting outrage in the news cycle. Perhaps it will be the moment when the fever breaks.

For there is a point when sleepers do awaken. At times they are shaken into consciousness by the very intensity of the fearful specters unleashed in their own minds; at others by encounters with the rough and unforgiving edge of external reality against which even their fantasies are powerless.

"El sueño de la razon prodúce monstros" (The sleep of reason produces monsters), the Spanish painter Francisco Goya inscribed in his famous etching more than two centuries ago during a similar collapse of rationality in the chaotic aftermath of the French Revolution. Yet the lesson of history is that, inevitably, the darkly demonic forms, wildly exaggerated images, fears and nightmares will fade in the bright light of day: reason reasserted. In a partial reframe of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous words: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward reason."

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THE TWO MINUTES HATE--ORWELL GETS IT RIGHT AGAIN

In George Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, a mandatory part of daily life for all citizens is the Two Minutes Hate. Everyone must gather before one of the ubiquitous telescreens to watch a propaganda film designed to stir up their fear and focus their hate on the odious figure of Emmanuel Goldstein, the supposed arch-enemy of the state, and on whatever nation Oceania currently happens to be at war against.

Orwell describes the finely honed propaganda and the intoxication of the crowd as so overpowering that joining in was inescapable:

 Two Minutes Hate--Scene from 1984

Credit: Devin Foley

He writes:

"A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic."

You can view a dramatization of the Two Minutes Hate from the British movie 1984 at this URL. "Shout out his name," the narrator commands, and the enraged crowd roars, "Goldstein! Goldstein! Goldstein!"

Of course, supporters of President Trump will deny any similarity. But watch Trump work the crowd into a frenzy about Hillary Clinton at his rallies here, or against Dianne Feinstein at this URL. Trump ever so smugly denigrates these supposed "enemies," and the excited and enraged crowd roars, "Lock her up! Lock her up. Lock her up." It's fascinating--and frightening--to watch Trump then step away from the microphone and turn his back on the chanting crowd, as if to say, "This hatred isn't my doing."

Credit Washington Examiner

I'll give Trump credit--he's a master of this dark art of stoking fears and focusing hatred wherever he wants. Orwell described the rage stirred up by the daily Two Minutes Hate as an emotion that could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowtorch. So it seems with Trump and his tribe.

And it works; stoking the desire to kill in at least some of his followers, not yet with a sledge hammer to the face, but with mail bombs and an AR-15. The intense hatred Orwell described is eerily similar to the feelings expressed by one of Trump's rally-goers who, as reported in the Guardian, told his liberal sister, whom he claims to love, "If there is a civil war in this country and you were on the wrong side, I would have no problem shooting you in the face."

"She has to know," he went on, "how passionate I am about our president."

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10/29/18: For an extremely clear and thoughtful assessment of Trump's role in inciting violent acts such as the bombs recently mailed to leading Democrats and progressives and the synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, please click through to this Washington Post perspective.

ORWELL STRIKES AGAIN, THIS TIME AT THE US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

In his prescient novel, 1984, George Orwell introduced the world to Newspeak, a minimized and simplified revision of English designed to make nuanced, reasoned, independent thought impossible.

Inspired by our current president and his climate-change denial, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)--the agency whose mission is to guide and enhance American agriculture, conserve and improve the rural environment, and help feed America and the world--has decided to outlaw phrases such as "climate change," "climate change adaptation," "reduce greenhouse gases," and "sequester carbon." Newspeak is alive and well at the USDA.

Flooding in New Orleans--yet again

Credit: www.goodfreephotos.com

Those now-forbidden terms are to be replaced in official communication by what Orwell would call "goodthink"--terms approved by the all-powerful Party. "Climate change" becomes "weather extremes" or "intense weather events," "climate change adaptation" becomes "resilience to weather extremes," while "reduce greenhouse gases" and "sequester carbon" become "build soil organic matter" or the mind-numbing "increase nutrient use efficiency."

Wildfire, Black Forest, Colorado, June 12, 2013
Credit: DoD--photo by Master Sgt. Christopher DeWitt, U.S. Air Force

In Oldspeak--plain old English--it's at least possible to think and speak clearly about the global problem of climate change and ways to minimize or adapt to it. But, in Newspeak, in Trump's Department of Agriculture, that's now a thoughtcrime, or, better yet, simply unthinkable.

The flash drought that's currently decimating the high plains' wheat crop is simply an isolated weather extreme. It can't be linked to the raging wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, flooding in New Orleans, the fact that Virginia's Tangier Island is washing away or that Death Valley just experienced the hottest month ever measured anywhere on Earth. The concept that ties these "weather extremes" together no longer exists, at least at the USDA.

You can see this in action at the EPA, where scientists explaining how climate change has added to the destructive power of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey are being accused of politicizing the storm. In other words, understanding is politicizing. Remaining ignorant is the right thing to do.

 Credit: Stephen Bettany

One of the three guiding slogans of the Party in 1984 was "Ignorance is Strength." If that's true, Trump's USDA is certainly flexing its muscles.

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You can read environmentalist Bill McKibben's comments  on this issue here.

You can read about an outbreak of Trump-mandated Newspeak at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here, or at this URL.Newly banned words and phrases include "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based." I, for one, start to feel pretty vulnerable when concepts like "evidence-based" and "science-based" are banned. What will replace them? The Republican party line? Trump's latest whim?

Part of the CDC's "Pledge to the American People" is to "Base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively." They should amend that to read, "Base all public health decisions on the current political directives from the President and his appointees, derived behind closed doors to advance a partisan agenda."

And you can see how far this fascist penchant for censoring words and ideas can go in this recent news item about the censorship of words, phrases and internet search terms in China. Just to put the cork in the bottle, they've banned references to George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm.

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WELCOME TO 1984, BIG BROTHER AND THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH

"WAR IS PEACE."

"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY."

"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

--GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eight-Four

"HILLARY CLINTON . . . STARTED THE BIRTHER CONTROVERSY."

--DONALD TRUMP, 2016

Credit: Stephen Bettany

Doublethink at its best. The Ministry of Truth will be very busy rewriting the history of the last five years.

For a quick review of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, click here.