Ya cain't polish a toid!
Posted on 12/11/2015 12:32:42 PM PST by BenLurkin
George Orwell devised the word 'unperson' to describe someone who had so offended official thought, he or she was vaporised - not just liquidated but wiped from the record for eternity.
That way the unperson couldn't set a bad example.
All memory of the impertinence would be forgotten, Comrades!
...
When a Politburo member called Nikolai Yezhov, People's Commissar for Water Transport, fell out of favour with Joseph Stalin in 1940, he was not just killed.
A photograph of him beside Stalin in happier days was doctored to remove all trace of the unfortunate Yezhov. It was as though he had never existed.
...
Though the circumstances are less dramatic, I am at present feeling a few twinges of solidarity with Yezhov.
Earlier this year, I made a jaunty little Radio 4 programme called What's The Point Of The Met Office?
Last week, after a bizarre and focused lobbying campaign from environmental activists, the programme was removed from the BBC's iPlayer playback facility.
To adapt Orwell, What's The Point Of The Met Office? became an un-programme.
One moment it was there, available to licence fee-payers to hear at their convenience. The next? Ker-whack! It disappeared as surely as one of those Islamist-owned oil derricks in Syria snotted by an RAF Paveway missile. Ladies and gentlemen, the Left had struck. I had been censored, expunged, deleted or 'dealt with', as RAF types put it.
The experience was baffling rather than upsetting. The programme had only ever been intended as a light summer diversion, yet it was mistaken for some sort of attack on the Establishment's global warming theory.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Maybe someone with a wayback machine can get it posted on youtube.
Apparently the Apostles and Acolytes of the Church of DirtWorship have seen fit to clean up the environment by removing all dissent to their nonsense.
We don’t change. People don’t change. Human nature doesn’t change. People - especially people in power - have a limited range of responses to given situations. That’s why Santayana and Twain’s remarks about history are still relevant. Why Shakespeare’s observation that changing the name of a rose wouldn’t make it smell less sweet applies to the left’s way of “rebranding” their crappy ideas to sell again and again.
I don’t see why anyone is surprised that the totalitarian minded would remove references to things that make them uncomfortable. That’s what they do. They also wind up sending millions who don’t agree with them to mass graves. They do that a lot too.
Many here know their history, know it repeats itself (Santayana) or rhymes (Twain). They know that history says man lives in servitude to a small set of masters. Monarchy, Oligarchy, Empire...whatever. They all boil down to the ruling class and the ruled. They also see that in many of these civilizations, those who disagreed wound up in mass graves.
Many here are able to see why the Declaration and Constitution were so important - because they broke the individual free and limited the State rather than limiting the individual and empowering the state. They recognize that the Framers understood human nature with regard to power and did their level best to limit the lust for it by limiting what the government itself could do.
But we don’t change. People still lust for power, people still abuse rules to achieve their ends and eventually, people will kill other people to get their way.
It’s only a matter of time. The technology is different today than it was 50, 100, 200 years ago but we’re the same. We don’t change.
Good post!
Yezhov was only demoted to Commissar for Water Transport after being ousted as chief of the secret police and replaced by Beria.
Ya cain't polish a toid!
See tagline
Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
Thugs running things happens - but also good people run things. It's not that we're denieying reality - it's that free people have choices - they can pick the 'Thomas Jefferson's' of the world - and they can pick the 'Stalin's' of the world. Both choices are 'human nature'...
Throughout history, There are fr more examples of the entitled, power hungry despots running things than there are Thomas Jeffersons or George Washingtons. Why do you suppose that is?
Easy.
It's because systems created to govern are generally designed by control-freak despots for their own benfit.
Our system in the US was designed by people who hated heavy-handed controls on the rights of citizens. Why? Because they had been victims of that system - not beneficiaries.
If you want to know why we're not electing ‘Thomas Jeffersons’ anymore, it's because there's been an incremental degradation of our rights - designed by people in power. People in power have ‘tweaked the system’ to make it easier for them to stay in power.
A few more years in that direction - a few more 'switched incentives' and we'll be electing thugs too.
Ever wonder why it seems people in Congress are 'entrenched'? That seats up for grabs are NOT really up for grabs? Or why the 'Jeffersons' are now working in libraries or doing research at some University - and not winning or even running?
The good thing about our system is 'the Hitlers' are still working in gas stations or living off the rest of us - and not running the country. Look for incentives - they're all there creating what we have...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.