Orwell Rolls in his Grave

I recently caught the film, Orwell Rolls in his Grave, on cable television here. I don’t normally watch much T.V. during the day, especially with Ben gone, and I just couldn’t watch SpongeBob anymore so I flipped through to FSTV, which stands for “Free Speech Television” and was airing on AccessTucson, a local channel. The film about Orwell compares the modern day political climate with George Orwell’s novel, 1984. The narrator in the novel, Winston Smith, works in the Department of Truth to create “spin” on all decisions made by “Big Brother,” a euphemism Orwell created for the ruling elite (sadly, I haven’t read the novel, only clips from it, so I plan to pick it up for this weekend). Anyway, Robert Kane Pappas, the director of the film, equates the tightly-controlled media in the U.S. to the “Department of Truth” and illustrates how “spin” can draw support from common people while the ruling elite gather the profit. The conservative right’s ability to incorporate religious belief reminded me of something that happened during the Clinton years: despite Clinton’s sex scandals, NOW and other feminist organizations supported Clinton because his stance on certain issues was favorable to their platform. I believed this caused a real loss of faith in feminism — it certainly did for me, and I decline to support NOW even to this day. Now, the conservative right has found that it works for them, too — all they have to do is put “spin” on a bill and make it seem that it is against “people of faith,” and suddenly they have grassroots support from churches all over the country, regardless of the immorality of the legislation itself. It’s ridiculous, and I see this kind of ludicrous spin all the time in propaganda pieces like “World” magazine (sent to me courtesy of my husband’s family), which actually protested election reform — election reform! — by saying it was “unGodly.” No reason attached, just that it was “unGodly.” What, do I have jello for brains? Thus I am working on a new book called,
Taking Back Christianity: Ten Reasons Republicans think they are “God’s Party” — but aren’t. I’m sick of this kind of conservative bias everywhere. But anyway, back to “Orwell Rolls in his Grave”… what I did enjoy about the movie was the consensus that anti-trust laws need to be rewritten. I have felt, for a long time, that this is key to reform in all areas of our society. Anti-trust legislation is now a hundred years old, which means that corporations and media giants have had a hundred years to figure out how to get around it — and they have. Look at the franchise system: this is a system of corporate control that allows monopolization without, ahem, monopolization under the law. Take any fast food chain: each is privately owned, but do we ever see any kind of customization or individuality? All are under tight corporate control — almost like, gee, a corporation — without falling under anti-trust legislation, even when they dominate a market. We also see buy-ups of competitors: for example, Microsoft now owns 49% of Macintosh/Apple. They cannot hold a “controlling” share, but they can certainly influence decisions with 49% of stock. In addition to this kind of economic monopolization is polarization in the media (either liberal or conservative — what really happened to “fair and balanced”?) and a kind of ideological monopoly. For example, the same media corporation owns both the Washington Post (liberal) and the Washington Times (conservative) — I had to read both when I lived there to get a decent idea of what was really happening. Now I read the internet — and not msn.com or cnn.com, but a host of news agencies from all over, as well as individual bloggers. I really believe that anti-trust legislation is key to allowing diversity of opinion and free speech to all people, not just speech in the corporate interest. When I was a child, we used to talk about communism and fascism arising “from within” the U.S. and threatening Democracy, but I never believed I would live to see it. And yet, I have.

Ten Signs of Fascism

Here’s an interesting link from my lovely and amusing co-worker T., whom I will call “Buttercup DeathFairy” for short. The link, which goes to a full explanation by Veterans for Peace, gives the ten signs of fascism. Here they are — how many do we find budding in the U.S. today?
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. Supremacy of the military.
5. Rampant Sexism.
6. Controlled Mass Media.
7. Obsession with National Security.
8. Religion and Government are intertwined.
9. Corporate Power is protected.
10. Labor Power is suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
14. Fraudulent Elections.

George W. Bush -- Red Communist?

Recently my husband and I took a long drive: destination, Las Vegas. There we met my sister (it is a halfway point) who took our son for a brief visit. On our way home, in the accompanying silence that comes sans 3-year-old boy, we talked politics, and M., my husband, made a wild statement: George W. Bush is a communist. Now, you have to understand, M. is a Republican who has voted for W., so it wasn’t like I was settling in with Noam Chomsky (who wouldn’t consider the “C” word an insult, anyway) for a nice long talk. No, this is M., former Marine and homeschooler, saying such a wild thing. I loved it. I wanted to make it a headline. Then, when I had calmed down a bit, I said the question that is probably on everyone’s mind. “So how d’you figure that one?” Here it is, the best as I can put it, and for this special post I have turned on my comments just to chronicle the hysteria.

Social security is considered a form of “lite” socialism that is essentially a support for seniors, widows and the disabled in our country. And everyone knows that W. would like to priva— I mean, personalize social security. But what does this actually mean?
Well, it means that citizens could opt out of regular SSI accounts and put their money into personal accounts to invest in private business. Keep in mind, Social Security does not invest in private business; it is a murky system I won’t get into but primarily the money is kept in government bonds. Well, if citizens invested in private business through the government, essentially this means that the government would own parts of private businesses. Yes, the money would eventually go back to the private citizen at retirement, but for the 40+ years in between, the government would be in control of those shares. Moreover, if, as is likely, enough people invested in a company through these shares, it is possible that the government would have controlling interest in that private company.

Chilling, isn’t it? And while many would protest that this is not the aim of those in government, but that the ultimate aim is for people to have more money for retirement (or for Wall Street to have more money for retirement, depending on what side you might be on) the truth is that this would allow government an “in” that might be exploited at a later date (I do not mean to invoke slippery-slide argumentation, but simply to point out a loophole that could be exploited). It also means that, at some point, this could become a serious challenge to the sovereignty of private businesses. The fact is, as long as the government is managing those accounts, it will have control over those businesses. If the government does not manage those accounts but instead says private citizens have complete control over them, well, then we simply have the abolishment of social security payments and “encouragement” for private citizens to start more IRAs or 401Ks. If the government is forcing a private citizen to pay into an account, it is managing that money, one way or another. Which means interference in private businesses and which equals Red Communisim. No more pinko commies, now we have the real thing in our midst.

Just something to think about — the comments are on.