Posted on 03/05/2017 6:24:27 AM PST by T-Bird45
Edited on 03/05/2017 8:46:20 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Although America
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
dystopian BookMark
Camp of the Saints
and don’t forget The Earth Abides.
Yes, Camp of the Saints too.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
True words
>”it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young.”
According to Greek mythology, the people of Athens had to sacrifice their youth to the monster Minotaur, as tribute. Then a hero, Theseus, arose to slay the monster. Today, our youth are sacrificed to endless wars, years of indoctrination, useless degrees and mountains of student debts. To slay the monster of our time, a hero has risen. It is said that he will Make America Great Again.
Agree. Interesting looking book. Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorites (thus the screen name) and I’m a fan of dystopian literature so I will give this a try.
Couldn't have said it better!
Has “Arslan” dropped into a memory hole?
I too hope so, but it will see what has been laid by the Obama administration to undermine the new administration and promote Alinsky inspired and guided (via Organizing for America) unrest in this nation.
Exactly, and yet the libs are out there saying that folks should read "1984" so they'll know what President Trump has in store for us.
Um, not quite.
Dystopian reading bmrk
This is almost unreadable.
why exactly is it unreadable..?
Well if nothing else, the story’s author has given us a great quote:
“Shriver says, “I think it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young.”
Well, your mileage may vary, but I find Will's sentence structures to be often confusing or not very artful. Example:
Shriver, who is fascinated by the susceptibility of complex systems to catastrophic collapses, begins her story after the 2029 economic crash and the Great Renunciation, whereby the nation, like a dissolute Atlas, shrugged off its national debt, saying to creditors: It’s nothing personal.
This is a long, convoluted mess. Yes, it's grammatically correct. Yes, it makes sense. There is nothing "wrong" about this sentence. But it's ugly. A good writer would create a better sentence.
That sentence is, for me, not an isolated case. About half a dozen of the sentences in this piece made me cringe.
The overall structure of Will's piece is also lacking. He basically throws out quotes and comments on the quotes. He doesn't really start with a point or finish with much of a conclusion. This thing reads like a rough draft. A good editor would have asked that this be tightened up and focused. But Will is probably such a big-shot, no really edits him at all. And I think it shows.
...so does the Dude...
|
Are you still killing your unborn? -- GOD |
Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.
|
....... The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further. The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify. In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building. As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames. What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence. |
Kinda like the ELSIE fella that posts here.
No edits; but an occasional complete post/reply removal.
But; love him or hate him; y'all STILL have to freedom to respond to him!
...or not...
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