serfdom

Open Thread - 06-17-22 - Tight Rope

What is true and what is false? Do we even know anymore? Our reality is being formed right before our eyes in the guise of propaganda. That screen display in your hand, on your desk, on your wall is stealing your mind. The monied class is forming a new reality. They want you to know that there are many things other than themselves that are the cause of the maladies that are beset upon you. Don't fall for it. It is on them.

Our language is being transformed, words are mutable, in flux with the political wind. Bend the words and bend the mind, Orwell understood such. Your mind is in play. It is under assault. Our history is being rewritten.

There are distractions everywhere. How quickly the flags changed from Ukraine to Rainbow, from Johnny Depp to Amber Heard, from demand destruction to empty food shelves. One catastrophe after another. It is meant to make the head swim.

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The House Serfdom Caucus

The House SERFdom Caucus logo (The Paragraph (CC BY-SA 3.0))

The House Freedom Caucus of the U.S. Congress has built a reputation for bullheaded pursuit of far-right policy, but not for pursuit of freedom, as its name would indicate. It has pushed federal government shutdown, caused the speaker of the House to quit, and scuttled the Republican bill to cut health care for not cutting enough. But, measured against the four freedoms once set down by President Franklin Roosevelt, the caucus seems more in pursuit of serfdom than freedom.

In his "Four Freedoms" speech, given eleven months before the nation's entry into World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt set down a standard of freedom:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.

Let's see how the caucus measures up to those four essential human freedoms.