It's not just simple "confusion"

It's not that they're confused. It's just that they've adopted (and expect all of so adopt) "Newspeak".

For those readers unfamiliar with the term, George Orwell coined that word for his dystopian novel 1984.  "Newspeak" is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit a person's ability for critical thinking. 

Newspeak thus limits the person's ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will, which are "thoughtcrimes" (a Newspeak word), acts of personal independence that contradict the ideological orthodoxy of the Party. 

Mr Orwell wrote 1984 in 1943. By the real1984, Newspeak was well established as the language of liberal "democracy". The use of the phrase "mostly peaceful demonstrations" by the liberal commentariat to characterize race (and other) riots is a classic example of how the lickspittle media substitute their "truth" for reality to make the masses believe that "black" is "white", and truly white.

Orwell saw this coming

In his all-too-prescient novel 1984, published on 8 June 1949, British author George Orwell predicted a world in which an all-powerful nanny state would watch everyone through surveillance devices called "video screens", watching out for anti-social (and anti-government!) behaviour.

For years now, there have been CCTV cameras outside George Orwell's  home in London. Now a sign has been added warning all and sundry to be of good behaviour... or else!  

Only in No-longer-great Britain, you say? If you live in the USA or Canada... or China... look around you. All that's missing is the sign.

And speaking of English thinkers and writers who had disturbing visions of the future of their sceptered septic isle, check out "'I told you this would happen!': Enoch Powell", WWW 10/8/11.

President Trump decries removal of statue of Robert E. Lee

In his prescient novel 1984, George Orwell describes the "woke" society which the liberals and loony left have created for us in this century. A quote: "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute." 

The endless process of trying to make the past conform to the liberal vision of the present and future continued this week, as the great monument to General Robert E. Lee, hero of the Glorious War of the Secessrion and (some would say) the Greatest Virginian of All Time, was lifted off its plinth in Richmond VA.

You can erase the images of history. You can obliterate the images and statues that commemorate great events and great people. But, try as you might to pretend that these things -- people and events -- didn't exist, you can't change history. They did exist, and until you can lobotomize the entire population [Don't think they wouldn't do it, if they could! Ed.], some people will remember, and will pass on their memories to others.

President Donald Trump remembers who General Lee was, and what he stood for, and has issued a statement denouncing the removal of the biggest Confederate statue in the US of A. He called General Lee a "unifying force" who was "ardent in his resolve to bring the North and South together through many means of reconciliation and imploring his soldiers to do their duty in becoming good citizens of this Country." 

He went on to say the US would have benefitted from having Lee leading the war in Afghanistan. Could be. General Lee's orderly withdrawal from Richmond saved the city from further destruction, and saved the lives of 1000s of his men. More important, it brought the war to a close without one final bloodbath. 

"If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago," wrote President Trump. "What an embarrassment we are suffering because we don't have the genius of a Robert. E. Lee."

Well, the ultra-woke iconoclasts encourage by the Democraps and their Antifa and BLM allies have succeeded in hauling General Lee from his pedestal. In other cities, statues of Washington and Lincoln have had the same shameful treatment. But it's a long road that has no turnings. What has been torn down can be erected again, once Americans recover from their temporary insanity. Selah!

In what year are we living?

George Orwell was right

The Wikipedia entry for George Orwell says that he was born in 1903. My theory is that he was actually a time traveller, and based his prescient novel, 1984, written in 1949, on a world he had actually seen before he travelled back in time to avoid having to live through it. His description of how things would be in this Brave New World (a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley) is uncannily accurate. The picture tells all ye know and all ye need to know. Mr Orwell must have known!

UPDATED: Understanding geopolitics with the help of "1984"

I'm having trouble figuring this out. President Trump went to Helsinki and had a meeting with President Putin. After the meeting POTUS said (when you add it all up) that, even though American "intelligence" said otherwise, he was taking Mr Putin's word for it that the Russians didn't meddle in the 2016 presidential election. "Why would it be the Russians?", he asked, then "Why wouldn't it be the Russians?" He didn't know at the time -- it was Obama who received the PDBs, eh -- and doesn't know now.

Now the usual gang of gliberals, Democratic socialists, antifa Nazis and media stars are calling the President a traitor -- literally -- and unpatriotic for suggesting that the CIA and "military intelligence" (an oxymoron, for sure) might have been wrong on this one. If you think American "intelligence" never makes a mistake, perhaps you'd be interested in some of this yellowcake I can get for you, cheap! In spite of the ongoing witchhunt in Washington, nobody can say for sure what the Russians did or didn't do in the runup to the election. The thing sure is that what the Russians did (if anything) didn't have much effect (if any) on the result. The Democrats and other "resisters" are still in denial that the American people chose The Donald over Crooked Hillary.

What, I wonder, do the anti-Trumpers think POTUS should have done at the historic meeting. Should he have pulled a Glock out of his pocket and shot the Russki-in-Chief in the face, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather? Of course not. He'd have been recognized!

Now the blaze in the anti-Trumpers hair has become an inferno because President Trump has invited President Putin to come and have a chat at the White House. With confusion still swirling around what the two men discussed behind closed doors in Helsinki, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said it’s important to "deal with the results" of their first summit before jumping too fast into a new one. But, he said, "Russia is always open to such proposals. We are ready for discussions on this subject."

Which is as it should be. Seems to me we're losing sight of the importance of the meeting itself. When the heads of two of the world's three super-powers sit down to talk, something good may come of it, or not, but, as Churchill supposedly said, "Jaw-jaw is better than war-war." [In fact it was one of Churchill's successors, Harold Macmillan, who put it exactly that way. According to his official biographer, Churchill's words were, "Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war." Ed.]

Those folks -- especially Republicans -- who criticize President Trump for making nice with President Putin should keep in mind that American foreign policy was badly in need of a reset after eight years of Obamian dithering and wimpishness, and POTUS is leading the much-needed change in direction.

This summer alone, he has stood up for America, to the discomfort of its "allies", at the G7 and NATO summits, sat eyeball-to-eyeball with Kim Jong-un (something no-one thought possible) and now in serious talks with the Russian president about Syria, the Ukraine and other matters of vital importance. All that and all POTUS gets is grief. Obama was only a few weeks into his presidensity, had done nothing (and never did) and what did they give him? The Nobel fucking prize!

The present geopolitical situation reminds me of that described by George Orwell in 1984. Writing at the beginning of the Cold War, Orwell predicted that, come the iconic year, the world would be divided into three super-states:
• Oceania -- including all of the Americas, southern Africa, Australia and the British Isles, the main location for the novel
• Eurasia -- Europe and most of the old Soviet Union, plus a little chunk of the Middle East
• Eastasia -- Japan, Korea, China and northern India.

The three states are in a perpetual state of warfare -- sometimes two against one, sometimes all three against each other. These wars are fought in the disputed territories, running from North Africa over the Middle East and southern India to Southeast Asia. Orwell's gift of prescience is spooky, isn't it?

There's not much "super" to Orwell's super-states except their size. All three are totalitarian dictatorships.

Oceania's ideology is Ingsoc -- English Socialism, of the kind now being espoused by "socialist democrats" like Bernie Sanders and the latest political rock star, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Eurasia's state creed is Neo-Bolshevism, not unlike what Russia has today under the Putin régime.
Eastasia's politics and religion are blended into the Obliteration of the Self, something like the Buddhist-inspired fascism you might find (so they say) in today's Myanmar or Thailand.

These ideologies are very similar one to another, but the "proles" -- the common people -- are told the opposite.  "Of course the Russians hate our American values! If you're not against Russia, you must be against America!" Sound familiar?

Orwell suggests that the conflicts between the super-states may not be real at all. It's clear that the media of Oceania are completely one-sided and in the habit of fabricating "facts" -- fake news! A dissident book central to the plot of 1984 suggests the two other powers may actually be a fabrication of the government of Oceania, which would make it the government of the entire world. An alternative theory is that "Airstrip One" (the British Isles) is not an outpost of a greater empire, but the sole territory under the command of Ingsoc, which fabricates eternal global war to keep its people permanently mobilised (check), scrutinized (check) and on rations (and check).

The world as portrayed in 1984 is purely fictional of course. The book was written in 1949. What George Orwell predicted could never happen... could it?

Further reading (by the sheerest coincidence): "The idea of Eurasia is once again the subject of geopolitics", by "Banyan", in The Economist, 19/7/18. "A growing number of strategists argue that the emergence of a cohering Eurasia is the key feature of a new world order that is taking shape.... The emerging order is one that Marco Polo would recognise." George Orwell too.

UPDATE ADDED 22/7/18: Further reading: "Mainstream media deliver most outlandish and hyperbolic reactions to Trump since election night", opinion piece by Dan Gainor, Vice President for Business and Culture of the Media Research Center, on Fox News.