One of my favorite YouTube channels, brainforbreakfast (he covers history and geopolitics) made a
video about George Orwell's essay
Notes on Nationalism. I felt that he touched upon some really chilling truths about politics, history, and human nature. And lot of these things can be applied to Rumsfeldia, which is basically "American nationalism gone haywire", and especially the Christian States of America.
Donald Rumsfeld: "Today more Americans are at work, more Americans are realizing the benefit of the freer economy we have provided. And if some have not prospered it is not for lack of opportunity, but for lack of initiative on their part; usually the result of a system of thinking impressed upon them by a regime of economic paternalism which would deny their personal worth as economic actors, instead labeling them as victims of an out-of-control system that oppresses them. Yet where is this oppression? Are they oppressed when with a little initiative and hard work they too can become prosperous? Is their poverty the result of circumstance, or the result of a poor attitude which holds them back from within?"
Vice President Edwards: “Throughout the land I hear the voices of naysayers and doubters; those who are afraid that we are taking away a little too much freedom, that we are weakening the nation in the name of strengthening it. The call of the Socialist and the Communist has infected our body politic, like an infection which could, if unchecked – like the China virus launched against us – kill our freedom. Our freedom is too precious to squander on such ambivalent, suicidal approaches. Our Constitution is no suicide pact; our freedom is no poison pill. Recently I was reminded of the old saying of Ben Franklin’s that those who are willing to trade a little freedom for more security deserve neither. Well, I hate to argue with old Ben, but the truth of the matter is, those who trade security for too much freedom shall have neither, and shall soon fall victim to those who respect neither. These are the choices you have going into the polling booth this year, for you and for your children.”
In Cheney’s view, as articulated in his notes for an unwritten memoir, Nixon and Kissinger had been all well and good to play the elder Mao’s China off against the Soviet Union, but their attempts to bring Mao closer to the international system were self-defeating, in as much as China possessed the potential of developing into at least a regional superpower, if not a global one, under the right combination of circumstances. The thrust of China policy, in Cheney’s view, should have been to push China into a war with the Soviet Union, in the belief that the latter would destroy Chinese economic potential for good while being weakened, perhaps to the point of collapse itself. Such a struggle would have taken place in Central Asia, an area sufficiently remote from the United States to not adversely affect the U.S. or its interests, provided the situation was managed correctly.
The idea that China would grow to be a world economic power was absurd while either Mao ruled the roost, but the new situation opened up that potential. To stop that, Cheney decided to promote a fragmentation of power in the new China, and as such he cultivated Chinese nationalists like Li Chou-ching who would not co-operate with the Kuomintang government. As he himself wrote “American strength vis-à-vis China can be guaranteed only when we speak not about a Chinese nation, but about the Chinese nations.”
A similar strategic view began to shape Cheney’s outlook on all other large competitors to the United States. In fact he became so fascinated on the idea that in addition to China, he commissioned studies on how to break-up the United Kingdom (Scottish separatism), Canada (by separating Quebec and Alberta), the Soviet Union (into its individual national units), France (Breton and Corsican separatism), Brazil (into competitive federations of its states), India (along racial and linguistic lines) and even Japan (he fancied a Tokyo-Osaka rift could be spun into regional separation). This was a concerted strategy of dividing any large economy (apart from that of the United States) into smaller ones, and along the way making the United States the only large economy with a functioning centralized government. This was key to Cheney’s vision of new kind of American global hegemony.
President Rumsfeld: “Human rights? What are human rights? The left – the apologists for socialist collectivization – will tell you that human rights mean freedom of thought, expression and freedom from mistreatment. But are these truly rights, at all? Aren’t freedom of thought, freedom of expression and all that, aren’t they the product of property rights? Where property is respected, there is freedom. Where it is not, there isn’t. That simple. So what are human rights? Aren’t they just an effort by the collectivists – the communists – to take away property rights by suggesting that somehow people matter more than property? How misguided is that? When the truth is that without property, there can be no rights. Our founding fathers, when they wrote of freedom and rights, spoke very clearly about property, not people. After all, people were legal property at the time the Constitution was written. Not just slaves – who were part of the economic system and as such an economic value and not an oppressed class as some would maintain – but also women, children, workers even? Did not some of the founders own slaves themselves? No, the answer to the question of are we violating human rights is to say, there is no such thing. Rights are expressed in property, and in the preservation of that property and the production of more of it. This is the true meaning of our Constitution and our republic. This is true freedom.”
Dick Cheney: “We have an obligation to protect the American people, so yes we have to do some things on the dark side, but that is the nature of warfare against non-democratic forces. The Soviets aren’t restricted by our concepts of honor, and neither are terrorists. In fact they’ll use those very ideas against us as weapons. So, at the end of the day, do you want to hand our enemies a decisive victory just so you can say you kept your honor clean?”
Reporter: “You have to appreciate how that sounds, Mr. Cheney. It sounds anti-democratic and frankly, a little sinister.”
DC: “Does it? You raise the democratic question, well I have to say that our opponents – the Communists and the terrorists – are very undemocratic, so I don’t lose any sleep over that distinction. I know who our enemies are. If anything I might say or do seems undemocratic, then I have to say that it is the view of democracy that is wrong. Democracy is not a suicide pact. It is a form of government that promotes freedom, but that doesn’t mean we can trust our enemies to respect it for its own sake. The Army has an old expression, “we’re here to defend democracy, not practice it. The same idea. We have to take those measures to protect our democracy from sinister anti-democratic forces, and to the extent what we do may seem sinister, it is far less than what we are facing.
AND...
Former Senator Barry Goldwater (speaking after Wallace): “I once said that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, and that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. As a soldier, as an Ambassador and as our President Jim Gavin long embodied that ethos. He lived a life centered on the love of country and duty; he pursued his duty without compromise, whether the call was to face the enemy on the battlefield or to assume the highest office in our land at a moment of great crisis. General James Gavin never shirked his duty. And he never spun a yarn for the sake of spinning a yarn, nor was he given to exaggeration. His words to us in his final months were more than just a warning, they were the clear – of a patriot, a warning to us all. We need to heed his words; to ignore the path to dictatorship in the pursuit of our comfort is more than a vice; it is a sin.”
A Quiet Conversation
Roger Ailes: “I get putting the bag on Carlin, he was a pain in the ass, but Goldwater?”
Dick Cheney: “You’re looking at it like the Argentinians did, and it undid them. Making your opponents go away only draws attention. In fact you want them out there, championing the leftist cause, like a bunch of useful idiots – makes them a useful target; we can galvanize hatred in our base for them into support. The people who need to be silenced are the ones who throw bombs from our side, who have credibility with our side, or would be supporters. That’s why Goldwater becomes a guest and Ron Dellums gets a pass.”
DS: “Then I have to say it is a peculiar circumstance when the rules of medical science and biology that apply in Britain and Hong Kong for some reason don’t apply in the United States, all on the say-so of a man who is not a medical expert.”
WVC: “President Rumsfeld is an expert at security, and he has identified a clear and present danger to our nation. This is the time we need to stand by our President, Dan, to stand-up for our country as it is being attacked. Should we rely on the opinions of foreigners when our homeland is under direct threat? I ask you, Dan, should we? I’ll tell you not even George Washington let the French dictate terms to him, and so in this crisis the United States government will not blindly follow the unproven policies of others simply because it looks good. We will stand firm against the enemies of the American way of life.”
"One of these factors was President Donald Rumsfeld’s withdrawal from NATO. The President treated it as a triumph of strategic thinking. His spin-machine produced a counter-narrative to history that essentially cast the whole American commitment to NATO from 1949 through 1983 as the result of a Soviet conspiracy at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences in 1945 to burden the United States with the defense of Europe. The Rumsfeldian narrative added that most of the nations of Western Europe, upon which the seven administrations preceding Rumsfeld’s had lavished this largess (which included the Marshall Plan) were culturally and politically pro-Communist, and therefore pro-Soviet in their tendencies. Thus, according to Rumsfeld, the ultimate con perpetrated by Stalin and his successors had been to convince seven American Presidents and their advisors to finance and support nations which would become American enemies. When, after U.S. withdrawal from NATO, the nations of Western Europe did in fact develop a closer relationship with the reforming Soviet Union, the Rumsfeldians trumped this around as proof of their historical contention."
Rumsfeld: In Asia, madness has gripped Peking, where just fifteen months ago a man devoid of reason and human understanding unleashed the most horrid of weapons – the nuclear bomb – on his own people. Not even Hitler or Stalin reached this level of depravity. And all the while he festers in his homicidal mania behind the walls of the Forbidden City in Peking his minions conspire to do his will by dumping tons of poison on our streets in an effort to infect our population with the insidious moral acid of addiction.
LATER:
Another factor which came from the depths of the U.S. intelligence community and could not help but infuriate Haig, McCain and others was the realization that the U.S. government was enabling the flow of heroin from Asia to certain American cities with pro-We The People constituencies, most notably San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Newark and Miami (to name the top five only). The United States military had been co-opted into politically motivated narco trafficking, and this Haig, McCain and others felt was just morally wrong. It galvanized them to action.
AND:
The Oval Office
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Kent: “The Indians, the government forces, used a nuke this morning to cover their retreat north.”
President: “Good, the nuclear taboo is breaking down. It won’t be long before people get used to the things. Add some tactical strikes to the Cuba plan.”
Kent: “Already done.”
ANOTHER EXAMPLE:
Rumsfeld: As long as Democrats and Socialists in Congress vote to restrict the economic recovery program, and as long as they vote to weaken our defences, our freedom is in jeopardy
Later: The Rumsfeld Administration made Hughes’ market acquisition task easier by heavily regulating the assignment of frequencies and cable access in most markets (a highly regulatory move by this most free-market of administrations), often reducing access in any given market to two networks.
TS: “With all due respect, how can you look at the increase in information control, the chilling of public debate by, well – thugs, really – and not see an authoritarian streak at work?”
P: “Authoritarian? You keep using that word, but without context, Mr. Sebastian. What do you mean by that?”
TS: “I mean that polices that support your administration receive open support, and dissent of any kind, even peaceful dissent, is suppressed by state policies, and by armed force if necessary.”
P: “Until recently you were stationed in Moscow, weren’t you?”
TS: “Yes.”
P: “So, you should understand what authoritarian really means, having lived in the heart of the Communist web. Can you seriously compare what it is like there, to what we have here? In America we have a free press and a free market, which the Soviet Union doesn’t have. Heck, not even Great Britain has those anymore.”
By 1987 much of America’s competitive media had been silenced. No accurate polls are available to determine what the true public reaction was, but many comments were heard (no doubt coached by Hughes) about how “wholesomeness” and “order” (as opposed to confusion caused by diversity of reporting) had been returned to the nightly news.
Regional and local radio networks remained in-tact, as did smaller scale newspaper syndicates, and some of them were outspokenly anti-Rumsfeld (those which didn’t fall victim to “correction” by local Liberty Battalions) but their localized nature blunted a national impact. In the event they could be shouted down by Hughes, which had a bottomless pit of resources and became practically the Rumsfeld Administration’s State broadcasting service.
Rivera: “Here, I’m reading from the words of George Washington. This is what he said to Congress and the American people in his final address:
“To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, has a just claim to your confidence and your support.”
Rivera: “There it is from our first President, the man who made freedom and liberty possible, right professor?”
Professor: “Exactly. Washington, like all the founders, believed in the strength of Constitutional government. He believed that, without it, we would be lost. But with it we would be free. As a result we are the only free country on Earth, or were until the Democrats and left-wing types passed the Seventeenth Amendment to undermine our freedom.”
Rivera’s show continued in this vein over the year from mid-1985 to June 1986. Several callers even suggested that Congress be abolished altogether – in the interest of making the country more free by getting rid of “useless politicians”.
As more than one observer on the remaining mainstream networks noted, the whole process demonstrated a woeful ignorance of their Constitution and of the mechanics of Constitutional government (and even the basics of Constitutional law) by a significant majority of Americans. Hughes and its partners were willing to feed that ignorance with a repetitive diet of lies, distortions and biased half-truths which, for their constant repetition, lead many to believe that Hughes had educated them on the issues.
Rumsfeld: But it is not enough to hold this one lunatic in Peking responsible for all the evils of the world, for despite his heinous and abominable crimes, he is but a symptom of the larger problem – a problem called Marxist-Leninism which holds sway over nearly half the land mass of this globe, and which is the true source of evil and despotism upon this planet. To overcome this problem it is not enough that we secure freedom in the United States, or in London, or Tokyo or Munich. We must endeavour to bring the tide of freedom to Belfast, to Lisbon, to Havana, to Peking , to Warsaw and even to Moscow. Only then will the world be secure.
AND:
Dick Cheney: Fundamentally we must reinvigorate both the prestige of the Presidency and the awe within which the office was held prior to this period of erosion. We must use your term to build a base upon which you can not only be returned to office, but from which we can forever quash in the public mind the idea that the Presidency is 1) short-term, 2) obedient to popular consent or 3) interchangeable between politicians. In short we must, as DeGaulle once did in France, make of the Presidency something between a tribune of the people and a indispensible crown of sovereignty.
The latter shall be essential if we are to carry forward a robust program of change and power, if we are to secure a Pax Americana (or a New American Century as some have suggested) then we must have the time to make this work: four years will not be enough and to secure our work we must have the time to not only complete its foundation, but to mould the system so as to make it possible for us to uplift and prepare those who will carry on the work after us.
"Sister Sarah Heath lead the Holy Legions in their breakthrough into the National Military Command Center; where just minutes before the vile, traitorous message had been sent by the Satanic hold-outs. She watched as the Legionnaires fired automatic weapons, riddling the resistors – the damned - bodies with holes that soon erupted in crimson pools across their military uniforms. A few fought back, but soon were overcome in the enclosed space by superior firepower. Sister Sarah was shielded until the danger passed, though she could see the carnage.
She gave little regard for the bloodied, dead or near dead officers and enlisted personnel of the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines who littered the command center. They were all damned to Hell, and as they had been willing servants of Satan, their fate was just.
Sister Sarah gave as little regard for the fallen Legionnaires, one of whom groaned in agony until her pistol silenced him. If he had been faithful to the Lord, then he would be taken into Heaven. If he did not meet the Lord’s exacting standard, then he deserved the same eternal sentence to the fire as those whom they had just slaughtered."
But in case he sounds too pessimistic, Orwell touches upon another profound truth: it is possible to resist nationalist messages and find an objective truth or right or wrong.
Here are two examples of men who have managed to resist the pull of nationalism.
New York Governor Spiro Agnew, known for his tough on crime stance, also appears on television to denounce the bill.
“I’ve said before we need to clean up our streets for the God-loving, law-abiding citizens. I’m no friend of the conniving criminal class, and we ought to amend our laws to make it easier to throw the book at them. But if we suspend the constitution in the name of law and order, we risk becoming little more than the barbaric brutes we claim to oppose. Our political rights are what separate us from the communists, and from the common thug who rules through fear and terror. I beg our senators not to give into hyperbolic hysteria, to remember their duty, and vote no.”
AND:
The Supreme Court rules in favor of Douglas Coe 6-3, with Thurmond, White, and Rehnquist in dissent. Phyllis Schlafly, writing the majority opinion concludes “that
the Moral Decency Act and other of the acts pasted serve a moral purpose that supersedes any state interest, and that the federal government is endowed with primacy overall states”, and orders Wallace and other state governments that have not participated in the Moral Decency Act due so in fear of prosecution.
Wallace reiterates his refusal to continue to endorse this law.
“Yes, I am guilty of defying court orders in the past. I did so out of desire for political gain. But now I realize those orders were in the interest of building a better nation. This Supreme Court, full of people with a crazed interpretation of God- has taken to challenging our natural rights-not just states’ rights-so I will not abide by it,” says Wallace in a session with the Alabama State Senate.
