Open Thread - 11-13-26 - Two Years Hate
Have you noticed? The conditioning is evident.
There is a segment in George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, where he wrote about the Two Minutes Hate:
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily period during which members of the Outer and Inner Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state and loudly voice their hatred for him followed by declaring their love for the Party leader Big Brother.
The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their personal hatred towards a political enemy. In redirecting the participants' emotions away from the Party's governance of Oceania, the Party minimizes thoughtcrime and critical thought while exerting ultimate control of the population.
3:56
Correlations abound in the comparison of Orwell's1984 and today's political condition. I'm sure you've all seen them in one form or another. Heck, I'll wager some of you didn't even read the blockquote above or watch the video clip because you've seen the comparisons many times over. I get it, those comparisons are old hat.
But.
In order to get to the point of this piece, I'll ask you to please read, or reread, the quote from above, especially this part:
...the Two Minutes Hate is the daily period during which members of the Outer and Inner Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state and loudly voice their hatred for him followed by declaring their love for the Party leader Big Brother.
So, let me get to the point.
The American electorate has been, and is continuing to be, indoctrinated in vitriol by both major parties, and for the most part, modern American politics are now driven by hatred.
Every president, in my humble opinion, from at least Ronald Reagan on up have been used to inculcate hatred onto the oppositional side of the electorate. This is most noticeable in the last several elections starting, in my estimation, with Bill Clinton and amplified with each successive president, escalating exponentially with Joe Biden and culminating in the most hated "Emmanuel Goldstein" figure of this era, Donald Trump.
The average voter no longer votes for the best politicians, because there are no best politicians. The average voter now votes to remove the politicians they've been conditioned to hate. Orwell's Two Minutes Hate was an every day occurrence, today the indoctrinated get their hate on every four years, and now by association, every two years.
Politics is a team sport. Humans are a social animals. Put those two elements together and you get to the driver of modern American politics, team spirit.
This team spirit is being compelled by the print media, the audio-visual media, and the politicians themselves. Orwell's head would swim if he could have envisioned how the internet has elevated this phenomenon. The goal of this tactic is simple, the voter's team must score a win, with the betterment of society just a figment conjured up by the forked tongue of the aspirant candidate. May the consequences be damned.
Who are the winners in these team oriented elections driven by hatred for the other side?
The victors are the divide and conquering politicians whose goals are to enhance their portfolios by gaining office, and thereby, do the bidding of their monied controllers who operate behind the curtain.
We the People win nothing, we lose. Every damn time. We may get an occasional scrap thrown our way, but in the end, we lose. Do you need proof? Take a look at where we're at right now.
We're one step closer towards the unthinkable.
Listen to the rhetoric emanating from both sides of the rabble.
Hatred is winning. By design.
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
I have this deep suspicion that presidents are selected to play the part of the "Emmanuel Goldstein" figure in order to illicit the very hatred that is ripping the fabric of this country asunder, and in order to keep We the People at each other's throats.
Please, don't get me wrong though. Aside from the perceived conditioning I write about in this piece, there's plenty of flawed inherent qualities that these figureheads ooze that can and does lead to an organic aversion directed at them by the general public. They bring that aversion upon themselves.
At the end of 1984, Winston Smith succumbs to the psychological torture and abandons his individuality and learns to love Big Brother.
Screw that, let's all strive to do better than Winston Smith.
It's too late for all that
More and more Americans, even, are learning that outside of the propaganda bubble of their sacred country is reality, and reality is leading them to join protests which grow more massive by the day. The border wall is there to keep us in, not them out.
The French are leading the way, or so I hope:
French unions and students fight on as government offers “crumbs”
French students defiant as government tries divide and rule
"That's America. Denial is its way of handling complexity." -- Richard Wolff
Thanks for that Cass...
that's Europe, and this IS an open thread, but I wonder, do you have any thoughts on the premise of this piece and the hatred that's permeating American politics?
Isn't the purpose of the ruling class
.
to control society? Seems like it. In spite of the ham handed methods
used against us, there is a growing recognition of who the enemy is.
Thanks for the OT.
Zionism is a social disease
No...
the purpose of
the ruling classgovernment is not to control society, it's to serve society.Yeah, agreed
.
the question was posed metaphorically. I don't believe the rulers
necessarily have more right to avoid scrutiny than any of the rest of us.
If anything, the onus is on them to prove their worth to us by actions
which will help to improve our lives. That is their appointed duty IMO.
BTW I'm glad I do not use Microsoft products. They are apparently having
a global disruption caused by a 'couple servers' going down. Shows how fragile
their systems are. The've already lost $ billions.
https://rt-english.com/business/648811-microsoft-global-outage-crisis/
Zionism is a social disease
Good...
it couldn't happen to a more deserving company. I think things are just starting to kick off when it comes to internet outages.
For what it's worth, I run both Windows and Linux. Windows for some of the propitiatory software that I use that wont run on Linux, and Linux for a more secure environment.
Can't add anything to this
It's as you wrote, all we have in common is hatred of each other. You can't have a country when all you have is contempt for the other side. We're fortress America, why look to see what other countries have done with health care of pensions or tax reform. We're the best at everything.
It feels like we are cheering our own demise while standing in a shallow grave that we've been digging for a long time. Maybe when us boomers die out it will open up a future for younger people to take over. Of course after a generation of our politicians and the elites looting the country, they won't have much to work with.
Thanks for the OT.
Thanks for "getting it", Snode...
my point is the hatred growing in this country is manufactured by forces that want to divide and conquer us, I've been railing about that for years. The plan seems to be working.
I think the younger people have already taken over judging by the results of the mid-terms. It remains to be seen if that's for the better or not, time will tell. Have you heard some of the rhetoric coming from them? I hope they don't go the way of the Jacobins.
The vultures have just about looted this nation and then they'll be off to find another carcass. That is their way.
For all the young people
out there who love to blame us boomers for the current state of the world:
We tried to make things better. We failed. We will all be gone soon, to make way for you to try to make things better. I'm not liking your chances, either. But best of luck...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I remember back in the 60s...
railing about the older generation and how everything was all their fault. That's much of what the counterculture was about.
Now it's the boomer generation's (my generation from the 60s) turn to be the pariah.
These younger generations will have their turn at being a pariah, as well, after they inherit it all.
That's how it works.
I believe we all have honest knee jerk
reactions to something truly offensive being said or done by government or NGOs.
Sustained hatred is more a sign of succumbing to sustained manipulation by TPTB.
I can easily find I have certain desired goals in common with the most extreme righties or extreme lefties. The only humans on this earth with whom I have absolutely nothing in common are the globalists. They are the manipulators. I will be goddamned if I will let them have my remaining shred of human decency.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thank you...
the constant barrage of hatred is to thwart any common ground the right and left may have. And it's that common ground which has always been the premise of this non-partisan site.
I just don't get the burn it all down attitude. Burn it all down for who? Who benefits from that?
Where are the voices of reason?
Good morning Johnny, thanks mucho for the essay and OT.
A digression, just for the hell of it. 1984 was written between 46 & 48; I first read it in the early 60s when I was still ignorant of a great many things. One of those was a person born in 1869 who turned out to be, as an adult, too far left bor both the US and the Soviets, the illustrious Ms. Emma Goldman. It just hit me that Mr. Emmanuel Goldstein is one of those very odd instances of history strangely echoing.
Hate has long been a driving force and weapon in the US socio-political arena, and targeting politicians and political candidates at all levels from mayors and city councilpersons on up. Howard Zinn even highlighted a case where a class based leveling movement, I believe the Grange movement in the south, but recall is questionable here, was destroyed by the wealthier class by fomenting racial animus among the members who had, until then, ignored that difference among the members because of the identity of their grievances.
This thesis:
is clearlt true and such presidents have been both promoters of and targets of hatred. There may have been periods and/or presidents where this was not the case, it has been true on and off throughout the nation's history. William Jefferson Ronald Reagan Clinton is a particularly weird case of this. No other president, including Rancid Ronnie himself, did more to advance and actually implement Reagan's ideas, ideals, plans and rhetoric than Clinton, who was most ably assisted in this project by HER. He should have been beloved by the GOP and, in turn, should have openly avowed his support for their goals and dreams.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --