I'm speechless after reading this essay. Not many things do that but the sheer number of things "memory holed" and the brazenness of the 1984 intro did.
The best part is nobody much cares or even notices - each person now lives in a private universe shaped by algos. Meanwhile, partisans claim only the 'other side' would do this. Comey et al are all establishment Republicans.
The real problem is, once you say it's only OK to punch in one direction, we've seen how what happens then is it all becomes a matter of jockeying into the suddenly-coveted "down" position so you can be invincible - hence, the rise of the crybully.
There's the progressivism that depends on preserving the ziggurat of history so it can be built upon, and then there's what we're looking at here, which is the dead-opposite.
This is why I've come to view group-identity and banners as what's wrong with the world (the word 'granfalloon' has never been more relevant, yet somehow it's never made it into the common parlance, even as a "controversial" thing!): They can be counted upon to goosh together those that have no business being "on the same side", AND they divide those who should be, to boot!
"The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name."
“There's the progressivism that depends on preserving the ziggurat of history so it can be built upon…”
No there isn’t. There may used to have been, more than 15 years ago or so, but that strain of progressivism is no more. They are now all in the business of history revision.
In fact, the entire Democrat party is barely distinguishable.
Here’s a few samples.
Covid came from a lab. The P narrative was zoonotic origins.
#defund because cops cause crime. This was a P narrative.
#blacklivesmatter because police are shooting unarmed, peaceful, nonviolent, totally harmless black men by the thousands. This was a P narrative.
#believeallwomen & #metoo This was a P narrative. This was handily revised when the trans issue broke everyone in 2020. Now they don’t give a fuck about women because they’re getting pummeled in boxing rings, raped with seeming impunity in lots of western European countries, predominantly by Muslim men.
Oh did I say the whole “my little boy likes the color pink and we agreed to chop his dick off so I can get that endorphin hit because I don’t have many friends irl”. “Progressive” politicians have become eerily silent on this issue.
Oh and let’s talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, which did the exact opposite. That’s pretty inconvenient for the Ps nowadays also.
I could go on. For a while.
The old guard “Progressives” have been beaten into submission because they weren’t extreme enough or because they might have disagreed with one tiny portion of of that galactically retarded political platform.
Now, like Tapper et al, they all of a sudden have ebbed back to the middle and are hoping nobody has noticed. We are living through the biggest and grandest attempt at history revision ever undertaken by human beings.
And your solution to all this is to ALSO let them redefine, to the point of exclusive ownership, a word that doesn't belong to them?
I'll grant you, I've occasionally dismissed it as a car insurance company when arguing with others from other directions, and I don't make a habit of using the word, but the expurgation of inconvenient complexities in history and language is the problem to begin with here.
"We are living through the biggest and grandest attempt at history revision ever undertaken by human beings."
It's a contender, but I would argue that the fateful actions of Emperor Constantine are also in the running; that's what this reminds me of - hell, if there were any grander attempts, how would we even know?!
"'There's the progressivism that depends on preserving the ziggurat of history so it can be built upon…'
No there isn’t. There may used to have been, more than 15 years ago or so, but that strain of progressivism is no more. They are now all in the business of history revision."
I remember some of the readings I was given in the cultural anthropology classes I tried taking as an undergrad, and I remember thinking, 'I regularly use big words as part of my natural speech, and even *I* am reading this and thinking "nobody talks like THAT"!'
It was as if the writer was sitting over what she'd written with a thesaurus and looking for the most opaque version of every word she used.
It’s a form of intimidation used by people who seek to coerce. I think that also must be the source of the noun/verb exchange, to fool the reader that this person must be on some higher plane. When in reality it’s bullshit.
It's a crutch used by academics who are insecure about their writing, their work, their abstract reasoning ability, and their conclusions. The same ones who overvalue their high-sounding degrees as being somehow indicative of intelligence and superior ethics.
That’s so true. People with a real grasp on their area of knowledge are much better at expressing themselves in clear terms. Jargon can be a reflection of insecurity. It is often used in academia as a cover for one’s overall inability to fully grasp concepts or how concepts relate. Very human type of fallback but often a giveaway.
Like I said below, I agree with Danno's diagnosis more than yours, but you've definitely got a point with the "intimidation" thing; I've seen the same done in other contexts with relatively-elementary math, and of course the same has been done with more advanced math in economics and finance (e.g. Goldman-Sachs writing up schemes only they can decipher, and Alan Greenspan, so I've read, deliberately turning economics into Latin Mass).
Using math and complex equations with economics seems like bullshit, too. You know, if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!
My disenchantment with the entire concept of "social science" began with economics: I walked away from it all concluding that it was, at best, nothing more than a subtopic of history.
If something is really an improv-game, trying to make a "science" out of it is the worst thing you can possibly do (hence, why science and politics are a match made somewhere beneath Hell).
James was complete dog shit. And it won the Pulitzer.
Spoiler alert: James is Huck’s biological father, but doesn’t love him as much as his other kids because Huck can pass for white.
This is the “corrected” message over the original Huck Finn in which a little white kid learns all the shit he’s been taught in the world is wrong — and that he would rather go to hell than turn in Jim - who he went from seeing as a slave to a full fledged human being. Jim was the most moral character in the book, but that wasn’t good enough for Percival Everett.
Jim was one of the most dignified characters in American literature, but he's been pretty much sidelined because of the politically incorrect monicker the author gave him.
Thanks for saying so (I guess? I really wish I was wrong); unfortunately, I am speaking mostly from experience in this case.
The best I can think of are a book I saw lying around my parents' collection called "The Genius Famine", and MAYBE a more recent thing called "Kill All Normies", which was a satire of the Gamergate debacle. I've only skimmed the former and don't really know anything more about the latter; I can say that Millennial Internet-culture is nothing if not "high-context".
Actually, I can think of "one" more thing, which is actually a combo of two supposedly-unconnected things:
From those latter two one may arrive at the following thesis: In bringing over French pseudointellectuals to "save" Puritanism-stricken American arts and academia, did they cause the cultural equivalent of Australia's infamous cane-toad scenario, wherein parasitic memes that would've been kept in check in their native lands were brought somewhere where they weren't?
They certainly open up conversation of the ignorance of their arguments in a way that solidifies our disbelief in their credibility as either intellectuals or as legitimate voices. I wonder if writing this garbage after a publishers advance made them sick inside or if they are too stupid to see what they were doing.
The Social Justice Cultural Revolution is as totalizing, dogmatic, intolerant and puritanical as its various predecessors (which include everything from Savanarola to the Taliban to the Soviets to the actual Puritans and their Calvinist cousins)—which means that there cannot be a single inch of cultural or psychic territory that remains unconquered. EVERYONE and EVERYTHING must be re-educated or repurposed to become aligned with the new sacred dogma, whether that means editing, destroying or "reimagining" (which is what's taken the place of actual imagination).
If this means rewriting Twain or Orwell or Seuss or denouncing people long since dead for their crimes against the egalitarian future, who's gonna stop them? (People like David Hume and Ted Hughes have been denounced just for having ancestors or relatives that may have been in the slave trade. Rembrandt was denounced in his own museum for failing to source the possessions of his subjects to the slave trade. The examples are endless...)
When Comrade Kendi said: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," he didn't just mean in modern politics and culture. He meant that the entirety of this thing we call Western Civilization must be rewritten according to the dictates of the New Faith, where the last shall be first, and the first last, meaning that they and their priesthood of the marginalized decides who is most Good and godly, with their enemies cast in the role of Satan (aka Racist Nazi Fascist), deservedly damned for eternity.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine an angry HR lady screeching a guilt trip at a human face—forever.
I still think "Brave New World" shows our most likely future (and present).
Who cares about art, literature, thought and beauty when there's sex, soma and stupefaction to enjoy? People don't need to be corralled or punished when they can just be nudged and doped into becoming a single undifferentiated mass of processed humanity.
Maybe it's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" instead!
All totalitarianism seems to have a local cultural flavor. The meeting of the American Nazi party in 1939 at the Garden had a picture of Washington, not Hitler.
For my money, Fahrenheit 451 and Ray Bradbury captures American totalitarianism best. Constant Entertainment devices that completely consume our attention and focus. Not rewriting history, but simply obliterating it on a constant basis using an unanchored narrative based on entertainment.
Bradbury understood the weakness of the American mind in a way the British writers didn't.
It's curious. The Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson song, That's How You Tell an America, from "Knickerbocker Holiday," isn't Kurt Weill at his most melodic, but it isn't meant to be. Musically, it's meant to set off Maxwell Anderson's great lyric, which is a celebration of non - conformity and general American orneriness. The story within the musical is about pre Revolutionary War America, but it landed well enough when it premiered in 1938 that the show was a big hit. It even included a veiled jab at the early Roosevelts, which FDR is reported to have laughed uproariously at when he saw the show.
And I think that is how Americans saw themselves as late in twentieth century history as 1938. Hell, Edmund Wilson's "Patriotic Gore," which is one of the greatest books ever written by an American, is throughout a celebration of American non - conformity, and it was published in 1961.
So, how did we get here? World War II? The economic burst of the 1950s, keeping up with the Jones and all that crap, combined with the terror of The Cold War? Then what explains the cheerful subversiveness of the mid 1950s - 1980, approximately, everywhere in the arts?
When did people start to worry about terminology, about laughing inappropriately, about being "insensitive?"
My guess is that we are being warred upon by sinister spiritual forces. Demonically induced blindness, fear of being seen as retrograde, and the instinct to punish dissenters does a much better job of explaining it than any supposed weak national mind.
As a Christian, I am aware that only Jesus Christ defeats darkness, and that the anti Christianity which most readers of this Substack probably embrace is the thing which destroys freedom. Many have pointed out that the two regions of the United States which were the two most "Christ haunted" have been the two which produced the greatest eccentrics, New England and the South. Not only were these people indulged, they tended to be cherished.
True Christianity doesn't seek power. It wants influence, it wants to be the source of moral and theological suasion in its society, but power? Along with greed and lust, the drive for power is one of the three prime markers of demonic capture.
No thanks!
My guess is that among American Christians maybe 2% at most think the country should be a specifically Christian one. Our primary concern about our nonChristian fellow citizens is supposed to their evangelization.
Anyway, there has been only one specific priestly nation in history, Old Testament Israel.
Bari Weiss at the Free Press want's clear dictates from the CDC about vaccines etc. She's not alone. The essence of big brother culture is our desire for masters - noted by Charles Schulz -
"How do you know if a poem is good?" - "Somebody tells you."
i read Brave New World in the late 60's i thought it would happen then considering the availability of multiple drugs. The book that made me think was "lord of the Flies" which I read in High school along with 1984 which scared me a bit.
I thought we were on the eve of destruction in those days. I was 40miles from Kent I can see the cover of Life or Look magazine with the picture of Allison Krause dead on a sidewalk blood running down the concrete she was on her way to a chemistry class I believe. The governor sent National guard troops with M-1's they were as young as the students they shot.
Why do they do it? What motivates them into such mind-scrambling behaviour, and how did their own minds get this scrambled to begin with?
My interpretation is that these are persons with dependency needs -- who never matured into "self-differentiation" and therefore require a herd/group/mob led by an authority figure who claims to have all the answers.
Those supposed answers are the group narrative, with which they attempt to suffocate the rest of us. It must be adhered to 110% ya know....because any deviation puts their own survival at risk. Or so their subconscious mind believes. Of course FEAR helps to get them to believe this. And because they cannot count on themselves, they think....a whole lot of living becomes fear-drenched.
In other words, these totalitarian narratives are security blankets for persons who have not managed sufficient personal agency yet. Therefore they contract it out to megalomaniac leaders and con-artists who produce a formula for how to get through life safely. They promise! Part of the contract being that the sheep must hold everyone else to this formula too, in order for it to work.
Basically, these forced narratives are being used as survival mechanisms by the pushers.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine an angry HR lady screeching a guilt trip at a human face—forever" Thanks for that x-ref. It feels at the moment as bad as Orwell's original 'boot stamp' def of the big-F.
That's what I think of every time I read about one of those racial struggle sessions, presided over by morbidly obese, enraged black women, shrieking about racism.
With respect - imagine an AI avatar calmly and warmly explaining to you, by name, that AI's total control of every aspect of your life is a net good not just for you, but for your family, community, and all humanity. We're 3/4 of the way there now.
You're somebody I respect. That said, the fact you don't believe you're "talking" to your phone doesn't mean you aren't. And our devices are most definitely recording every click, etc. we make, storing that information, to build extremely detailed profiles of our online and offline activities. But OK.
The line in chapter one of 1984 summed it up perfectly:
“it was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy”.
This sentence describes many of the women in MSM who now cover politics. Martha Raddatz, Margret Brennan, Dana Bash, Nora O'Donnell. I was looking for the reason the MSM had switched to so many women covering politics. This is it! You can tell they already have a 'gotcha' theme prior to any interview, (putting words in the speakers mouths to bolster their argument) and they continue to cut off the person in the interview as soon as they venture outside of the 'gotcha' theme. JD Vance and Marco Rubio are 2 guys who are able to significantly 'block' these women and get their point across.
“Do you hear yourself Martha?” J.D. Vance at least asked the question to which the answer is no. These woman are the stirrers of the “witch’s brew”. We need to make them lick their spoons.
Yes. Just as it was the Canadian women, by and large, who elected two Troodos (father and son) several times each. To Canada's great detriment and shame.
Most Canadian men could not stomach Pierre Troodo.
True democracy prohibits elections. Elections are in fact the biggest threat to democracy as they often lead to undemocratic leaders and fascism and racism and stuff. The best, purest democracies are the ones that have the least input from the people.
A good and decent local politician friend of mine, truly committed to people power and democracy murmured to me once after his party had lost a multitude of seats "The people have spoken. F*ck 'em!" It was sadness and disappointment but not an attack on his ideals. Something he'd only have said to a close friend. The vote against his party's ideas made him shift his position, rethink and abandon what people had voted against in his policies. Can you imagine today's Democratic party leaders doing this? No. They are laying all the blame on Biden.
And remember how they kept saying that Trump was going to cancel elections and make himself ruler for life?
They're always projecting their own evil plots onto us.
And now they're planning a "No Kings Day" to protest Trump & Musk.
God forbid they try to actually do something constructive, like getting the homeless, addicted/mentally ill people off the sidewalks and into shelters, or cutting all the waste, fraud, & abuse in government spending.
You are not wrong. I still consider myself “liberal” about some things. And I formerly would have considered someone like Sen. Schumer liberal, not crazy left. But, The Party has left the building, and Sen. S may get an unwanted dose of “Democracy!” next primary election.
"Again, the fact that no one notices the book predicted exactly this phenomenon of history being re-written, erased, then re-written again when convenient is hilarious."
No, no it's not hilarious. It's fucking terrifying. You're going too easy on these current-thing-cucks. They're attempting to destroy history in the name of whatever unenlightened dogma they've adopted in the last five minutes. I, for one, am not chuckling at this. I'm cursing.
You are right. It is taking way too long for a lot of us to overcome incredulity at how terrifying this really is. It is a coping mechanism of cognitive dissonance to fall upon a lifeline of hilarity, however understandable, when fear, then outrage, followed by righteous indignation, and fighting back with great fervor against this spreading darkness is urgently required. The enemies of our liberties suffer no remorse as they go about their dread business.
I am so sorry you have to read this unironic self-parodying Newspeak drivel. I know it’s part of your job, and you did a grand job dissecting it and showing us the hilariously clueless guts as usual. But fuck me, I’ve been listening to these sorts of people go on about how being a fascist is totally cool as long as you’re a “queer woman of color” or whatever the flavor of the month is - and I would sleep much better if they all got torn apart by wild animals. Polar bears sound good.
I am so tired of stupid people with soapboxes they don’t deserve, getting paid loads of money to spew hate and dipshit-ry at every turn while regular free-thinking people struggle and die in dead-end jobs. Fucks sake.
The concept of "pausing" is becoming one of those Newspeak terms. Even Substack uses it (Do you want to unsubscribe...or just pause?")
When some group wants to cancel a person and remove from them their rights, they tell the target individual now that they are "on pause". The WOKE think it won't get them in as much legal hot water as telling them they are fired or permanently excluded.
Reminds me of "lapsed Catholic" or "once a Marine, always a Marine"; the idea of a clean break is threatening if you're trying to keep people in line but less than certain your idea can actually stand on its own. Compare this to "if you love something, set it free".
That style of writing pervades everything now; verbs used as nouns, nouns used as words; euphemisms; stock phrases. It’s disgusting. I guess it’s supposed to make you sound erudite or academic or something.
Self-pausing as opposed to...someone else pausing you?
It's as if whoever said that thinks the idea of independent thought and action is novel, or the exception rather than the rule.
What scares me most is that may indeed be the case for many of the humans (if this is so, I cannot call them "people") in our midst. The concept of "philosophic zombies", or "[real-life] NPCs" has been haunting me for years now.
The opening sequence of "Sean of the Dead" and the entire premise of "I Am Legend" both come to mind.
The en passant Netflix comment was maybe my favorite part of all this, because it captures a phenomenon that I know exists but didn't realize others had picked up on (and that, to my knowledge, doesn't have a name). I also am baffled at the intent there, but I'm at least encouraged by the fact that someone else has spotted this.
I've picked up on that as well. Beyond the obnoxiousness of the message, I've found it diminishes shows and movies because it eliminates discovery and intrigue. I don't have to worry about wondering what a character's role will be, I can just look at them - I don't even need to bother leaving the sound on.
But Matt, don’t you see? To laud Orwell now is wrongthink. Next they'll hand out 1984 in high school like it's a playbook (like in that LA times story), instead of a warning. And learning the lessons? Ha! That’s exactly the sort of subversive insubordination that Goldstein wants you to do. You’re not supposed to get it, Matt. You’re supposed to chant it, fear it and burn it. Praise Orwell if you must, but please only enter it here into this telescreen.
If you can tell I love Orwell like you do, then check out the pinned post on my substack. I've just finished the manuscript to 1984 for 2025. I've just signed the publishing contract and expect to have it on the market in Q3. Nothing would honor me more if you and Walter were to do the thing you do.
I suppose it's just a matter of time before Georgia Orwell re-writes Homage to Catalonia as a brave memoir of misgendering, microaggressions, and misunderstood Marxism in which they/them journeys to Spain to confront cisheteropatriarchal militarism within leftist spaces.
Progressivism 101: grabbing power in the present to reinvent the past in order to control our futures.
As Stalin said: the future is known, it’s the past that’s always changing
I'm speechless after reading this essay. Not many things do that but the sheer number of things "memory holed" and the brazenness of the 1984 intro did.
The primary imperative of all popular culture is to obliterate history...
The best part is nobody much cares or even notices - each person now lives in a private universe shaped by algos. Meanwhile, partisans claim only the 'other side' would do this. Comey et al are all establishment Republicans.
And I love the way liberals and progressives pretend that they don’t punch down. They’ve been doing exactly that for years and years now.
The real problem is, once you say it's only OK to punch in one direction, we've seen how what happens then is it all becomes a matter of jockeying into the suddenly-coveted "down" position so you can be invincible - hence, the rise of the crybully.
Who the hell determines what direction “down” is??? Oh that’s right the victims, i.e. the “progressives” do. Funny how that works.
There's the progressivism that depends on preserving the ziggurat of history so it can be built upon, and then there's what we're looking at here, which is the dead-opposite.
This is why I've come to view group-identity and banners as what's wrong with the world (the word 'granfalloon' has never been more relevant, yet somehow it's never made it into the common parlance, even as a "controversial" thing!): They can be counted upon to goosh together those that have no business being "on the same side", AND they divide those who should be, to boot!
"The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name."
- Lao Tzu
“There's the progressivism that depends on preserving the ziggurat of history so it can be built upon…”
No there isn’t. There may used to have been, more than 15 years ago or so, but that strain of progressivism is no more. They are now all in the business of history revision.
In fact, the entire Democrat party is barely distinguishable.
Here’s a few samples.
Covid came from a lab. The P narrative was zoonotic origins.
#defund because cops cause crime. This was a P narrative.
#blacklivesmatter because police are shooting unarmed, peaceful, nonviolent, totally harmless black men by the thousands. This was a P narrative.
#believeallwomen & #metoo This was a P narrative. This was handily revised when the trans issue broke everyone in 2020. Now they don’t give a fuck about women because they’re getting pummeled in boxing rings, raped with seeming impunity in lots of western European countries, predominantly by Muslim men.
Oh did I say the whole “my little boy likes the color pink and we agreed to chop his dick off so I can get that endorphin hit because I don’t have many friends irl”. “Progressive” politicians have become eerily silent on this issue.
Oh and let’s talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, which did the exact opposite. That’s pretty inconvenient for the Ps nowadays also.
I could go on. For a while.
The old guard “Progressives” have been beaten into submission because they weren’t extreme enough or because they might have disagreed with one tiny portion of of that galactically retarded political platform.
Now, like Tapper et al, they all of a sudden have ebbed back to the middle and are hoping nobody has noticed. We are living through the biggest and grandest attempt at history revision ever undertaken by human beings.
Hey, boy! Save some of that kool-aid for the others!
And your solution to all this is to ALSO let them redefine, to the point of exclusive ownership, a word that doesn't belong to them?
I'll grant you, I've occasionally dismissed it as a car insurance company when arguing with others from other directions, and I don't make a habit of using the word, but the expurgation of inconvenient complexities in history and language is the problem to begin with here.
"We are living through the biggest and grandest attempt at history revision ever undertaken by human beings."
It's a contender, but I would argue that the fateful actions of Emperor Constantine are also in the running; that's what this reminds me of - hell, if there were any grander attempts, how would we even know?!
Quote what I said that inspired this assertion from you:
“And your solution to all this is to ALSO let them redefine, to the point of exclusive ownership, a word that doesn't belong to them?”
"'There's the progressivism that depends on preserving the ziggurat of history so it can be built upon…'
No there isn’t. There may used to have been, more than 15 years ago or so, but that strain of progressivism is no more. They are now all in the business of history revision."
'There is such a thing as leaving mankind alone: there has never been such a thing as governing mankind.' Chuang Tzu
Follow the eternal Tao!
Similar to the rewriting of Huck Finn, "James" for which the author allegedly received a Pulitzer Price.
Also brings to mind the rewriting of Roald Dahl.
https://www.euphoricrecall.net/p/the-rewriting-of-roald-dahl
FFS, I wish all these faux intellectuals in academia and the press would F* off and leave these great works of literature, like 1984, alone.
And compare Orwell’s writing to their jargon-filled writing.
I remember some of the readings I was given in the cultural anthropology classes I tried taking as an undergrad, and I remember thinking, 'I regularly use big words as part of my natural speech, and even *I* am reading this and thinking "nobody talks like THAT"!'
It was as if the writer was sitting over what she'd written with a thesaurus and looking for the most opaque version of every word she used.
It’s a form of intimidation used by people who seek to coerce. I think that also must be the source of the noun/verb exchange, to fool the reader that this person must be on some higher plane. When in reality it’s bullshit.
It's a crutch used by academics who are insecure about their writing, their work, their abstract reasoning ability, and their conclusions. The same ones who overvalue their high-sounding degrees as being somehow indicative of intelligence and superior ethics.
This is my verdict, too: Malignant impostor-syndrome.
That’s so true. People with a real grasp on their area of knowledge are much better at expressing themselves in clear terms. Jargon can be a reflection of insecurity. It is often used in academia as a cover for one’s overall inability to fully grasp concepts or how concepts relate. Very human type of fallback but often a giveaway.
Like I said below, I agree with Danno's diagnosis more than yours, but you've definitely got a point with the "intimidation" thing; I've seen the same done in other contexts with relatively-elementary math, and of course the same has been done with more advanced math in economics and finance (e.g. Goldman-Sachs writing up schemes only they can decipher, and Alan Greenspan, so I've read, deliberately turning economics into Latin Mass).
Using math and complex equations with economics seems like bullshit, too. You know, if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!
My disenchantment with the entire concept of "social science" began with economics: I walked away from it all concluding that it was, at best, nothing more than a subtopic of history.
If something is really an improv-game, trying to make a "science" out of it is the worst thing you can possibly do (hence, why science and politics are a match made somewhere beneath Hell).
I have not seen that line for at least 40 years! It is still a great one.
Exactly - the latter a 100 percent parasite of the former.
James was a spin off too. I think people(creative people??) should come up with their own original ideas
James was complete dog shit. And it won the Pulitzer.
Spoiler alert: James is Huck’s biological father, but doesn’t love him as much as his other kids because Huck can pass for white.
This is the “corrected” message over the original Huck Finn in which a little white kid learns all the shit he’s been taught in the world is wrong — and that he would rather go to hell than turn in Jim - who he went from seeing as a slave to a full fledged human being. Jim was the most moral character in the book, but that wasn’t good enough for Percival Everett.
Jim was one of the most dignified characters in American literature, but he's been pretty much sidelined because of the politically incorrect monicker the author gave him.
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
~ Ecclesiastes 1:9-10
I don't think they can, which is partly why you get drivel like this. There is an element of envy that permeates it. It is literary graffiti.
Is it a coincidence that there's a de facto war on creativity as well?
I think you're on to something. Can you recommend reading material?
Thanks for saying so (I guess? I really wish I was wrong); unfortunately, I am speaking mostly from experience in this case.
The best I can think of are a book I saw lying around my parents' collection called "The Genius Famine", and MAYBE a more recent thing called "Kill All Normies", which was a satire of the Gamergate debacle. I've only skimmed the former and don't really know anything more about the latter; I can say that Millennial Internet-culture is nothing if not "high-context".
Actually, I can think of "one" more thing, which is actually a combo of two supposedly-unconnected things:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/bored-of-culture-william-deresiewicz
Now that I look for the second, I cannot easily find it, but it was something like this:
https://resortlifestylemag.com/articles/joie-de-vivre
From those latter two one may arrive at the following thesis: In bringing over French pseudointellectuals to "save" Puritanism-stricken American arts and academia, did they cause the cultural equivalent of Australia's infamous cane-toad scenario, wherein parasitic memes that would've been kept in check in their native lands were brought somewhere where they weren't?
Reminds me of the Disney remakes. Not only lazy but trying to change what we value. (Marriage Family)
They certainly open up conversation of the ignorance of their arguments in a way that solidifies our disbelief in their credibility as either intellectuals or as legitimate voices. I wonder if writing this garbage after a publishers advance made them sick inside or if they are too stupid to see what they were doing.
You're asking far too much. Just sayin.
The Social Justice Cultural Revolution is as totalizing, dogmatic, intolerant and puritanical as its various predecessors (which include everything from Savanarola to the Taliban to the Soviets to the actual Puritans and their Calvinist cousins)—which means that there cannot be a single inch of cultural or psychic territory that remains unconquered. EVERYONE and EVERYTHING must be re-educated or repurposed to become aligned with the new sacred dogma, whether that means editing, destroying or "reimagining" (which is what's taken the place of actual imagination).
If this means rewriting Twain or Orwell or Seuss or denouncing people long since dead for their crimes against the egalitarian future, who's gonna stop them? (People like David Hume and Ted Hughes have been denounced just for having ancestors or relatives that may have been in the slave trade. Rembrandt was denounced in his own museum for failing to source the possessions of his subjects to the slave trade. The examples are endless...)
When Comrade Kendi said: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," he didn't just mean in modern politics and culture. He meant that the entirety of this thing we call Western Civilization must be rewritten according to the dictates of the New Faith, where the last shall be first, and the first last, meaning that they and their priesthood of the marginalized decides who is most Good and godly, with their enemies cast in the role of Satan (aka Racist Nazi Fascist), deservedly damned for eternity.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine an angry HR lady screeching a guilt trip at a human face—forever.
Talk about dystopia! Welcome to 2025.
Otherwise known as social engineering. The main model for this in 1984 is Stalin’s Soviet Union, the best example of social engineering ever.
I still think "Brave New World" shows our most likely future (and present).
Who cares about art, literature, thought and beauty when there's sex, soma and stupefaction to enjoy? People don't need to be corralled or punished when they can just be nudged and doped into becoming a single undifferentiated mass of processed humanity.
Maybe it's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" instead!
It's an interesting debate.
All totalitarianism seems to have a local cultural flavor. The meeting of the American Nazi party in 1939 at the Garden had a picture of Washington, not Hitler.
For my money, Fahrenheit 451 and Ray Bradbury captures American totalitarianism best. Constant Entertainment devices that completely consume our attention and focus. Not rewriting history, but simply obliterating it on a constant basis using an unanchored narrative based on entertainment.
Bradbury understood the weakness of the American mind in a way the British writers didn't.
It's curious. The Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson song, That's How You Tell an America, from "Knickerbocker Holiday," isn't Kurt Weill at his most melodic, but it isn't meant to be. Musically, it's meant to set off Maxwell Anderson's great lyric, which is a celebration of non - conformity and general American orneriness. The story within the musical is about pre Revolutionary War America, but it landed well enough when it premiered in 1938 that the show was a big hit. It even included a veiled jab at the early Roosevelts, which FDR is reported to have laughed uproariously at when he saw the show.
And I think that is how Americans saw themselves as late in twentieth century history as 1938. Hell, Edmund Wilson's "Patriotic Gore," which is one of the greatest books ever written by an American, is throughout a celebration of American non - conformity, and it was published in 1961.
So, how did we get here? World War II? The economic burst of the 1950s, keeping up with the Jones and all that crap, combined with the terror of The Cold War? Then what explains the cheerful subversiveness of the mid 1950s - 1980, approximately, everywhere in the arts?
When did people start to worry about terminology, about laughing inappropriately, about being "insensitive?"
My guess is that we are being warred upon by sinister spiritual forces. Demonically induced blindness, fear of being seen as retrograde, and the instinct to punish dissenters does a much better job of explaining it than any supposed weak national mind.
As a Christian, I am aware that only Jesus Christ defeats darkness, and that the anti Christianity which most readers of this Substack probably embrace is the thing which destroys freedom. Many have pointed out that the two regions of the United States which were the two most "Christ haunted" have been the two which produced the greatest eccentrics, New England and the South. Not only were these people indulged, they tended to be cherished.
We are definitely being warred upon by sinister forces.
Might be an easier explanation – – Chinese and ex Soviets? With an interest and some record of dividing us?
Christianity is not notable for its tolerance of dissent, when in power. That idea comes from the Enlightenment, most of all.
True Christianity doesn't seek power. It wants influence, it wants to be the source of moral and theological suasion in its society, but power? Along with greed and lust, the drive for power is one of the three prime markers of demonic capture.
No thanks!
My guess is that among American Christians maybe 2% at most think the country should be a specifically Christian one. Our primary concern about our nonChristian fellow citizens is supposed to their evangelization.
Anyway, there has been only one specific priestly nation in history, Old Testament Israel.
Now with killer robots or Bradburys mechanical hound.
The 12oz. killer robot drones are up and running
towards the end of civilizations. Hell, even technologists like Musk admits that.
I’ve been informed that CISA is working on having this article banned from Substack and all who have read it, reassigned.
lol
You make that sound like a bad thing.
Bari Weiss at the Free Press want's clear dictates from the CDC about vaccines etc. She's not alone. The essence of big brother culture is our desire for masters - noted by Charles Schulz -
"How do you know if a poem is good?" - "Somebody tells you."
No, because Ezra Pound tells me! ;)
Yes, I think of brave New World every time someone brags about how many specific “grams of protein” they can get out of a processed food item.
Ha!
As a recovering keto dieter, I completely understand.
Brave New World did seem likely. But then Huxley had his brother Julian as technical advisor.
The Huxley family valued eugenics, bigtime.
Infinite Jest was pretty good. Death/coma from entertainment
CP, I agree with your Brave New World assertion. But also, "We" because of the mass surveillance. We're living in those glass apartments.
I really want to reread Brave New World. I'm beginning to identify with the "Savages."
i read Brave New World in the late 60's i thought it would happen then considering the availability of multiple drugs. The book that made me think was "lord of the Flies" which I read in High school along with 1984 which scared me a bit.
I thought we were on the eve of destruction in those days. I was 40miles from Kent I can see the cover of Life or Look magazine with the picture of Allison Krause dead on a sidewalk blood running down the concrete she was on her way to a chemistry class I believe. The governor sent National guard troops with M-1's they were as young as the students they shot.
And don’t forget that the NYT was a huge supporter of Stalin until long after the facts of his cruelty came out.
As were so many people.
Walter Duranty, for one.
The NYT has been on the wrong side of history many times.
It will all get straightened out in Hilary's re-education camps.
Yes, indeed. Well said.
Why do they do it? What motivates them into such mind-scrambling behaviour, and how did their own minds get this scrambled to begin with?
My interpretation is that these are persons with dependency needs -- who never matured into "self-differentiation" and therefore require a herd/group/mob led by an authority figure who claims to have all the answers.
Those supposed answers are the group narrative, with which they attempt to suffocate the rest of us. It must be adhered to 110% ya know....because any deviation puts their own survival at risk. Or so their subconscious mind believes. Of course FEAR helps to get them to believe this. And because they cannot count on themselves, they think....a whole lot of living becomes fear-drenched.
In other words, these totalitarian narratives are security blankets for persons who have not managed sufficient personal agency yet. Therefore they contract it out to megalomaniac leaders and con-artists who produce a formula for how to get through life safely. They promise! Part of the contract being that the sheep must hold everyone else to this formula too, in order for it to work.
Basically, these forced narratives are being used as survival mechanisms by the pushers.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine an angry HR lady screeching a guilt trip at a human face—forever" Thanks for that x-ref. It feels at the moment as bad as Orwell's original 'boot stamp' def of the big-F.
It didn't work out well in China's Cultural Revolution either.
That's what I think of every time I read about one of those racial struggle sessions, presided over by morbidly obese, enraged black women, shrieking about racism.
With respect - imagine an AI avatar calmly and warmly explaining to you, by name, that AI's total control of every aspect of your life is a net good not just for you, but for your family, community, and all humanity. We're 3/4 of the way there now.
Just ask your phone.
I don't talk to my phone! lol
AI is not for I.
You're somebody I respect. That said, the fact you don't believe you're "talking" to your phone doesn't mean you aren't. And our devices are most definitely recording every click, etc. we make, storing that information, to build extremely detailed profiles of our online and offline activities. But OK.
Thanks!
Pseudo- very strong. Possibly your best ever. Nailed it.
Thanks!
Unless that “violator” is a Member…a la Kamala and her slave trading progenitor.
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
Censorship is free speech
Pain relief is a vaccine
Canceling elections is democracy
Don’t forget “Abortion is healthcare”
"Women's reproductive healthcare."
Aaarrrggghhh!
I cringe every time I hear that.
Just say "abortion," you nitwits.
And telling a boy he is a girl is gender "affirmation".
Peace talks in Ukraine are a setback. No joke, that's the Guardian headline.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/12/europe-donald-trump-ukraine-immediate-peace-talks-russia
Amazing. Pro war, pro nuclear war
Well, War IS Peace nowadays, so presumably, averting peace is a good thing.
I don't think I could smoke enough weed to ever wrap my head around this.
Cheese has holes.
More cheese means more holes.
More holes means less cheese.
Therefore more cheese means less cheese.
For a terrific read about moral inversion, try Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent.
Arbeit macht frei.
As soon as I saw that “Julia” was being published, I knew two things:
1. The Left would argue that it should replace 1984 in schools.
2. It would teach precisely none of the lessons of 1984, instead generally presenting bad as good and vice versa.
That it turned out to be full of DEI and LGBTQ is icing on the cake.
These re-written books are a genre in themselves. They are so very predictable, I am sure they almost write themselves.
Everyone knows the narrative....
And they end up returned by booksellers to publishers and destroyed due to poor sales.
The line in chapter one of 1984 summed it up perfectly:
“it was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy”.
This sentence describes many of the women in MSM who now cover politics. Martha Raddatz, Margret Brennan, Dana Bash, Nora O'Donnell. I was looking for the reason the MSM had switched to so many women covering politics. This is it! You can tell they already have a 'gotcha' theme prior to any interview, (putting words in the speakers mouths to bolster their argument) and they continue to cut off the person in the interview as soon as they venture outside of the 'gotcha' theme. JD Vance and Marco Rubio are 2 guys who are able to significantly 'block' these women and get their point across.
“Do you hear yourself Martha?” J.D. Vance at least asked the question to which the answer is no. These woman are the stirrers of the “witch’s brew”. We need to make them lick their spoons.
‘I don’t care, Margaret, ’ JD Vance.
They are quintessential agency mouthpieces
Yes. Just as it was the Canadian women, by and large, who elected two Troodos (father and son) several times each. To Canada's great detriment and shame.
Most Canadian men could not stomach Pierre Troodo.
We are on the brink of matriarchy. Imagine if Harris had been elected.
Oh, fuck!
My father used to remind me that it was women who voted Hitler into office.
The author of that introduction, sounds like.
Writers like that also seem to think past authors were supposed to follow the rules of Woke, long before Woke was invented.
Exactly!
In other words, today’s female college students.
Did not remember that line….
Democracy working without elections. So stupid, but —- That is the wet dream of what I will identify as today’s “liberals.”
“Democracy Without Elections . . .,” “gender-affirming care,” “antiracism.” Phony terms for the re-imagining of this country.
We are so screwed.
True democracy prohibits elections. Elections are in fact the biggest threat to democracy as they often lead to undemocratic leaders and fascism and racism and stuff. The best, purest democracies are the ones that have the least input from the people.
A good and decent local politician friend of mine, truly committed to people power and democracy murmured to me once after his party had lost a multitude of seats "The people have spoken. F*ck 'em!" It was sadness and disappointment but not an attack on his ideals. Something he'd only have said to a close friend. The vote against his party's ideas made him shift his position, rethink and abandon what people had voted against in his policies. Can you imagine today's Democratic party leaders doing this? No. They are laying all the blame on Biden.
And remember how they kept saying that Trump was going to cancel elections and make himself ruler for life?
They're always projecting their own evil plots onto us.
And now they're planning a "No Kings Day" to protest Trump & Musk.
God forbid they try to actually do something constructive, like getting the homeless, addicted/mentally ill people off the sidewalks and into shelters, or cutting all the waste, fraud, & abuse in government spending.
After this past election, I had the thought that election day is the worst day for the DNC. It’s the day they have the least control.
You are not wrong. I still consider myself “liberal” about some things. And I formerly would have considered someone like Sen. Schumer liberal, not crazy left. But, The Party has left the building, and Sen. S may get an unwanted dose of “Democracy!” next primary election.
I always call a spade a spade. But it gets me in trouble too.
This essay may be my absolute favorite of yours. Awesome.
I think Christopher Hitchens would probably love this too. I miss him awfully bad these days.
My copy of 1984 has an introduction by Hitchens.
It's brilliant (of course).
Anyone else notice the similarity between Hitchens and Fowler in The Quiet American?
We're fucked? I saw this coming 40 years ago. They've been calling me crazy for 39 of them. I'm not crazy, but now I'm old. Good luck
I saw it as a girl (which was some time ago). And then -- dammit! -- I wanted answers. Why was the world turning upside down?
I hear you. Watching cultural change over many years is like watching a train wreck in slow-motion.
And I just keep reflecting on those lines from Yeats' Second Coming: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Wasn’t Julia the name of the woman supported from cradle to grave by the government in that Obama era cartoon?
Yes!
Great catch!
"Again, the fact that no one notices the book predicted exactly this phenomenon of history being re-written, erased, then re-written again when convenient is hilarious."
No, no it's not hilarious. It's fucking terrifying. You're going too easy on these current-thing-cucks. They're attempting to destroy history in the name of whatever unenlightened dogma they've adopted in the last five minutes. I, for one, am not chuckling at this. I'm cursing.
You are right. It is taking way too long for a lot of us to overcome incredulity at how terrifying this really is. It is a coping mechanism of cognitive dissonance to fall upon a lifeline of hilarity, however understandable, when fear, then outrage, followed by righteous indignation, and fighting back with great fervor against this spreading darkness is urgently required. The enemies of our liberties suffer no remorse as they go about their dread business.
“ remorse? We don need no stinkin remorse!”
When people say they want to kill you, believe them. Not a laughing matter.
I do believe that all the stuff they accuse us of wanting to do is simply a revelation of their own intentions.
Laughter dispels horror . . . at least initially.
I am so sorry you have to read this unironic self-parodying Newspeak drivel. I know it’s part of your job, and you did a grand job dissecting it and showing us the hilariously clueless guts as usual. But fuck me, I’ve been listening to these sorts of people go on about how being a fascist is totally cool as long as you’re a “queer woman of color” or whatever the flavor of the month is - and I would sleep much better if they all got torn apart by wild animals. Polar bears sound good.
I am so tired of stupid people with soapboxes they don’t deserve, getting paid loads of money to spew hate and dipshit-ry at every turn while regular free-thinking people struggle and die in dead-end jobs. Fucks sake.
I love this!
Brilliantly worded!
“Self-pausing”? Yikes.
“Democracy Works Without Elections”? Double yikes!
The concept of "pausing" is becoming one of those Newspeak terms. Even Substack uses it (Do you want to unsubscribe...or just pause?")
When some group wants to cancel a person and remove from them their rights, they tell the target individual now that they are "on pause". The WOKE think it won't get them in as much legal hot water as telling them they are fired or permanently excluded.
The new “ghosting”, sounds like.
Reminds me of "lapsed Catholic" or "once a Marine, always a Marine"; the idea of a clean break is threatening if you're trying to keep people in line but less than certain your idea can actually stand on its own. Compare this to "if you love something, set it free".
The WOKE crowd make up their platitudes to suit.
What exactly is “ self - pausing”? Elite speak, I guess
That style of writing pervades everything now; verbs used as nouns, nouns used as words; euphemisms; stock phrases. It’s disgusting. I guess it’s supposed to make you sound erudite or academic or something.
It's meant to mind-scramble.
What about bacon-sizzle, eggs-scramble, and coffee-swill
Self-pausing as opposed to...someone else pausing you?
It's as if whoever said that thinks the idea of independent thought and action is novel, or the exception rather than the rule.
What scares me most is that may indeed be the case for many of the humans (if this is so, I cannot call them "people") in our midst. The concept of "philosophic zombies", or "[real-life] NPCs" has been haunting me for years now.
The opening sequence of "Sean of the Dead" and the entire premise of "I Am Legend" both come to mind.
The en passant Netflix comment was maybe my favorite part of all this, because it captures a phenomenon that I know exists but didn't realize others had picked up on (and that, to my knowledge, doesn't have a name). I also am baffled at the intent there, but I'm at least encouraged by the fact that someone else has spotted this.
There is also a corollary phenomenon: Any loathsome and stupid character must be a straight white male.
I've picked up on that as well. Beyond the obnoxiousness of the message, I've found it diminishes shows and movies because it eliminates discovery and intrigue. I don't have to worry about wondering what a character's role will be, I can just look at them - I don't even need to bother leaving the sound on.
On some older TV sitcoms, you could already see that Dad was always the stupid one.
And in all commercials. . .
Yes!
Always.
Here's a name for the phenomenon:
White Guilt Minority Patronization Narrative Pushing
nah. this isn't about white guilt pal.
What is it? Not a leading question, I truly am curious what the motivation might be.
It's a survival mechanism for people with dependency needs who fell into the trap of following people who want power in exchange for supposed safety.
I go into the details somewhere above on the forum.
It’s so tiresome, isn’t it?
But Matt, don’t you see? To laud Orwell now is wrongthink. Next they'll hand out 1984 in high school like it's a playbook (like in that LA times story), instead of a warning. And learning the lessons? Ha! That’s exactly the sort of subversive insubordination that Goldstein wants you to do. You’re not supposed to get it, Matt. You’re supposed to chant it, fear it and burn it. Praise Orwell if you must, but please only enter it here into this telescreen.
If you can tell I love Orwell like you do, then check out the pinned post on my substack. I've just finished the manuscript to 1984 for 2025. I've just signed the publishing contract and expect to have it on the market in Q3. Nothing would honor me more if you and Walter were to do the thing you do.
Awesome take. Hitch would be glowing.
I suppose it's just a matter of time before Georgia Orwell re-writes Homage to Catalonia as a brave memoir of misgendering, microaggressions, and misunderstood Marxism in which they/them journeys to Spain to confront cisheteropatriarchal militarism within leftist spaces.
Can you get the word “reimagining” in there somehow?
Well done, Matt. Also, I'm scared out of my mind.