1984 (1,7) The Capitalists

Our Winston is still at his diary, and after all but giving up on the proles, as much as he loathes the world in which he lives and the Party that runs it, he reflects on what life may have been like before the Revolution and Big Brother. Is it possible that the Party has improved social conditions and enriched people’s lives, like the Party says it has?

He happens to have on hand a children’s history text book from Mrs. Parsons that ostensibly goes into the supposedly dreary and dour life of the pre-Party world:

In the old days [it ran] before the glorious Revolution, London was not the beautiful city that we know today. It was a dark, dirty miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under. Children no older than you are had to work twelve hours a day for cruel masters, who flogged them with whips if they worked too slowly and fed them on nothing but stale breadcrusts and water.

What sort of evil could hold such sway over Anglos?

But in among all this terrible poverty there were just a few great big beautiful houses that were lived in by rich men who had as many as thirty servants to look after them. These rich men were called capitalists. They were fat, ugly men with wicked faces, like the one in the picture on the opposite page.... The chief of all the capitalists was called the King.

Winston knows the adult version, too, that these fat capitalists, for instance, even enjoyed the privilege of being able to bang any woman who worked for them. But the question that preys on his mind is whether it just might be true. Might the Party be better than the devil they had before? His instincts rebel against the idea that life could never have been better than this, but he just cannot know for sure, and he would dearly like to know.

Winston’s musings put the reader in an interesting position, especially if you are not one of those Ayn Randian libertarians, because we know that those old stories about the capitalists, while drawn with a broad brush, are not entirely false, especially when you go back before major social reforms such as America’s New Deal, while we also know that Big Brother is not the white knight who came dashing in on his high horse to save the country.

I imagine that we are left to have an appreciation for a little freedom, while recognizing that we have always lived in a fallen world that is more harsh than golden.

1984 (1,7) The Capitalists

Our Winston is still at his diary, and after all but giving up on the proles, as much as he loathes the world in which he lives and the Party that runs it, he reflects on what life may have been like before the Revolution and Big Brother. Is it possible that the Party has improved social conditions and enriched people’s lives, like the Party says it has?

He happens to have on hand a children’s history text book from Mrs. Parsons that ostensibly goes into the supposedly dreary and dour life of the pre-Party world:

In the old days [it ran] before the glorious Revolution, London was not the beautiful city that we know today. It was a dark, dirty miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under. Children no older than you are had to work twelve hours a day for cruel masters, who flogged them with whips if they worked too slowly and fed them on nothing but stale breadcrusts and water.

What sort of evil could hold such sway over Anglos?

But in among all this terrible poverty there were just a few great big beautiful houses that were lived in by rich men who had as many as thirty servants to look after them. These rich men were called capitalists. They were fat, ugly men with wicked faces, like the one in the picture on the opposite page.... The chief of all the capitalists was called the King.

Winston knows the adult version, too, that these fat capitalists, for instance, even enjoyed the privilege of being able to bang any woman who worked for them. But the question that preys on his mind is whether it just might be true. Might the Party be better than the devil they had before? His instincts rebel against the idea that life could never have been better than this, but he just cannot know for sure, and he would dearly like to know.

Winston’s musings put the reader in an interesting position, especially if you are not one of those Ayn Randian libertarians, because we know that those old stories about the capitalists, while drawn with a broad brush, are not entirely false, especially when you go back before major social reforms such as America’s New Deal, while we also know that Big Brother is not the white knight who came dashing in on his high horse to save the country.

I imagine that we are left to have an appreciation for a little freedom, while recognizing that we have always lived in a fallen world that is more harsh than golden.

Miley's New House

Miley has gotten a new pad for about $4,000,000.







Pop iconage really pays.

(Source: ONTD)

Miley's New House

Miley has gotten a new pad for about $4,000,000.







Pop iconage really pays.

(Source: ONTD)

Dowd's Dawn of the Dead

Ms. Dowd has some macabre fun with the debt ceiling deal. Instead of seeing it as a black comedy, she sees it as a horror movie.

That might be a better way for me to view our affairs, as, in truth, there isn't much that is really funny about what is going on, and it is mayhem and terror and death.

Unfortunately, I never got into horror movies. Mother loved them; they were her favorite. Like I said, I tend to prefer, since puberty at least, sexploitation themes, in which I sort of like the idea of being the monster.

In any case, I think this is a Dowd classic and I will keep it.

( The inimitable Maureen Dowd )

Dowd's Dawn of the Dead

Ms. Dowd has some macabre fun with the debt ceiling deal. Instead of seeing it as a black comedy, she sees it as a horror movie.

That might be a better way for me to view our affairs, as, in truth, there isn't much that is really funny about what is going on, and it is mayhem and terror and death.

Unfortunately, I never got into horror movies. Mother loved them; they were her favorite. Like I said, I tend to prefer, since puberty at least, sexploitation themes, in which I sort of like the idea of being the monster.

In any case, I think this is a Dowd classic and I will keep it.

( The inimitable Maureen Dowd )

1944 Eichmann's Offer of a Million Jews

In Budapest, in defiance of Roosevelt’s spring warning, the new regime was starting to wage war against the Jews of Hungary. The president was informed that Adolf Eichmann of the Reich Security Main Office, who was ardently helping to carry out the Final Solution, had presented an offer to trade a million Jews for trucks and other assets.

-- Michael Beschloss, “The Conquerors”

Although Roosevelt was tempted to accept the offer, Stalin objected forcefully to any secret negotiations between the Americans or the English with Hitler. Apparently, rather than negotiate with terrorists, it was decided to stick with the strategy of seeking to defeat them as soon as possible.

The best I can date this is early June 1944.

1944 Eichmann's Offer of a Million Jews

In Budapest, in defiance of Roosevelt’s spring warning, the new regime was starting to wage war against the Jews of Hungary. The president was informed that Adolf Eichmann of the Reich Security Main Office, who was ardently helping to carry out the Final Solution, had presented an offer to trade a million Jews for trucks and other assets.

-- Michael Beschloss, “The Conquerors”

Although Roosevelt was tempted to accept the offer, Stalin objected forcefully to any secret negotiations between the Americans or the English with Hitler. Apparently, rather than negotiate with terrorists, it was decided to stick with the strategy of seeking to defeat them as soon as possible.

The best I can date this is early June 1944.

Scott Adams On Books

I looked for a nice book to read on the plane. I couldn't find one. What's up with that? There are nine trillion books in the world and I couldn't find a single one that I imagined would interest me for more than a paragraph. I blame the Internet.

I consume content on the Internet like an anteater with a vacuum attachment. I like my information in small bites, no fat. And skip the fiction, please. Reality is far more interesting than wading through six hundred pages of some ghost writer's imagined universe to figure out which imaginary character killed which other imaginary character. I want to read about Lady Gaga wearing a dress made out of a homeless guy's gutted carcass because she cares deeply about the economy. Can your crime novel give me that? I didn't think so.

-- Scott Adams

Scott may be a certified genius, as he often likes to point out, but he obviously is not a literary man. I don't think a summary paragraph could do "Paradise Lost" or the "Iliad" justice. The point is not so much what happens to imaginary characters, but in the way it is told, the way the narrative and the poetry pulls us into this conjured world, so that through well-drawn characters and narratives, we can live and struggle and love and die a thousand times within the safe comfort of our reading chair.

I can see how some people might not feel the magic of that, but not having much of a life of my own, I can hardly imagine the worth of this life without this literary dimension of experiencing. And surely I was not fully alive before finally getting to Nabokov's "Lolita".

Scott Adams On Books

I looked for a nice book to read on the plane. I couldn't find one. What's up with that? There are nine trillion books in the world and I couldn't find a single one that I imagined would interest me for more than a paragraph. I blame the Internet.

I consume content on the Internet like an anteater with a vacuum attachment. I like my information in small bites, no fat. And skip the fiction, please. Reality is far more interesting than wading through six hundred pages of some ghost writer's imagined universe to figure out which imaginary character killed which other imaginary character. I want to read about Lady Gaga wearing a dress made out of a homeless guy's gutted carcass because she cares deeply about the economy. Can your crime novel give me that? I didn't think so.

-- Scott Adams

Scott may be a certified genius, as he often likes to point out, but he obviously is not a literary man. I don't think a summary paragraph could do "Paradise Lost" or the "Iliad" justice. The point is not so much what happens to imaginary characters, but in the way it is told, the way the narrative and the poetry pulls us into this conjured world, so that through well-drawn characters and narratives, we can live and struggle and love and die a thousand times within the safe comfort of our reading chair.

I can see how some people might not feel the magic of that, but not having much of a life of my own, I can hardly imagine the worth of this life without this literary dimension of experiencing. And surely I was not fully alive before finally getting to Nabokov's "Lolita".