Tom’s Tidbits- Trump’s fate is the least of what’s at stake

Greetings,

It’s coming down to the wire now, but the fate of one broken man is the least of what’s at stake. The country’s direction, even the very existence of a constitutional republic are also imperiled, but I’d argue even these aren’t the biggest risks. It seems humanity’s most fundamental assumption, that of consensual reality itself, is up for grabs. America, and the 100 Senators ‘representing’ us, have a pretty clear understanding of Donald Trump’s actions in reality. The reasonable, appropriate, reality-based response is clear. The only way for the Senate NOT to convict (much less to hear witnesses) is to deny reality. Yet I still wonder what they’ll do.

People know when they’re being abused in reality, so the most effective way for an abusive system to continue is to deny reality itself exists. George Orwell is one of the most famous advocates of objective reality and explainers of why oppressive regimes MUST destroy consensual reality to exist. Trump’s statement that “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” is a horrifying realization of Orwell’s 1984, but Orwell’s prescience is confirmed every day under the Trump regime…

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

“Orthodoxy means not thinking– not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

This assault on reality isn’t supposed to convince anyone that the Party is right; it’s supposed to erase the concept of reality and destroy the will of people who stubbornly assert our actions as a society are best based on it…

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.”

But Orwell wasn’t a pessimist on this. He also said, “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. What the current regime does not want to hear… MUST NOT hear… cannot function if it knows… is that reality exists. The way to have liberty, to fight the cancer of the authoritarians or reality-deniers of any stripe, is to stand up for objective reality. “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” Indeed, in the very quote in which Orwell exposes the Party’s motives, Winston has his victory. Read the whole thing…

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Of course, it’s worth remembering that 1984 closes with a metaphorical bullet from the state destroying his mind. I guess we’ll all find out what the Senate does to us.

Make a great day, signature