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I haven't cited all my sources so I apologize to the two fine folks who wrote the article here on the DU a few weeks ago with the Cult stuff in it i will credit them. Please read and hopefully enjoy
In the 1950’s, a cult allowed a reporter to observe what the cult believed was the buildup to a second great flood. Their leader claimed he learned, from an alien intermediary, that on a specific date God would level the Earth with a second great flood. The cultists sold their possessions and gave the money to the cult. On the day the flood was supposed to occur, nothing happened. The confused cultists questioned their leader about why this had happened, who in turn went to commune with the alien. The leader came back and told his flock that their devotion to god had spared all of mankind; they had saved humanity. At this point, having realized they were wrong, they had two options. They could admit they’d been misled and tricked into selling their worldly possessions, thereby prompting them to leave the cult. Given that no individual willingly admits their own incompetence without a great deal of grief, this action, of course, would have caused a great deal of cognitive dissonance. The other option was to reaffirm their belief in the leader and his alien intermediary with greater conviction. In their eyes, this leaves them smarter and more virtuous (they had saved the world!) than everyone else. Against their best interests, the American people recently reaffirmed their faith in George W. Bush. This is in no small part to the administrations use of Orwellian Language.
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” These famous words from George Orwell’s 1984 serve as a stark parallel to our present day. In 1984 signs read “Big Brother is watching you.” Big Brother represents the government’s infringement into your personal life through constant monitoring. When Congress passed the “Homeland Security Act,” or dubiously named “Patriot Act”, the government gained the right to seize your property without a court order. It can also wire tap your residence, arrest you without reason, or hold you indefinitely without seeing a lawyer. In fact a number of individuals at Guantanimo Bay, which the government claims have no rights under US Law were plucked from right here in the United States where they should conceivably have had those rights. Orwell invented a “Ministry of Love” in 1984, where people were tortured until they conform to the wills of society. Our own government has recently delved into the realm of the unthinkable. Memo leaks to the press showed that torture at Abu Ghraib Prison may have been condoned from as high up the chain of command as Donald Rumsfeld or the President himself. According to the memo, the administration has had a legal team attempting to circumvent laws against torture (Ripley 49). As Senator Joseph Biden stated, “There’s a reason why we sign these treaties- to protect my son in the military. That’s why we have these treaties, so when Americans are captured, they’re not tortured” (Notebook). While these acts may not happen to American Citizens, consider the fact that through the aforementioned Acts, library checkout records and affiliation with political organizations, mostly Liberal Groups such as the Green Party, are sufficient reason to put you under surveillance by the Homeland Security Department. Benjamin Franklin once wrote “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Orwellian language isn’t just relegated to our handling of foreigners. Bush’s plans for our air and forests in his proposed “Clear Skies Act” and “Healthy Forest Initiative,” which would be better described as No Tree Left Behind, are rife with Orwellian imagery. As Bush stated in the second debate:
What happens in those forests, because of lousy federal policy, is they grow to be -- they are not -- they're not harvested. They're not taken care of. And as a result, they're like tinderboxes.
Bush proposes that trees are best saved by cutting them down. It seems unlikely that six- hundred years ago, when this country was inhabited only by Native Americans and covered vastly by forest, that there was any fear of all the trees suddenly burning down in some grand conflagration due to under-harvesting. In the Clear Skies Act, Bush doesn’t propose lowering carbon dioxide emissions or following the Kyoto Agreement, both of which he promised to do during his campaign in 2000. Instead, Bush proposes making carbon dioxide a non-factor in the Global Warming scenario by simply changing the definition of carbon dioxide as it pertains to Global Warming. The Kyoto Agreement was created and ratified by the United States, along with one hundred and sixty-six other nations, to create and regulate pollution limits for each nation. President Bush claimed that such an agreement hindered businesses by forcing them to purchase expensive, cleaner technology, instead of reinvesting the money back into the companies, thereby creating more jobs. He also affirmed that no conclusive scientific evidence existed to support Global Warming, directly contradicting the facts presented to him by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to the EPA, the global surface temperature has increased between 0.5 and 1.0 degree in the last one hundred years (EPA). The EPA also estimates an increase of 1.0 to 4.5 degrees in the next fifty years and 2.2 to 10 degrees in the next one hundred years (EPA). These increases would be catastrophic, triggering climate shifts, drastic melting of the polar ice caps, and more casualties from the stronger force of the Sun‘s rays. Evidence of the harmful effects of Global Warming cannot be denied as each day a piece of land the size of Rhode Island turns to barren, desert wasteland. Bush writes off the evidence as inconsequential and as a great burden on the economy.
In 1984, the Ministry of Plenty runs the economic portion of government. Despite its name, the citizens live in squalor and the buildings are described as being dilapidated, with cardboard roofs and windows. Through clever wording, the government convinces the people that they are better off than they could possibly ever be. Bush has done the same thing using “lower taxes” as a political tool, while spending more money than the government is bringing in. As most people know, nothing good comes from racking up debt, and the government is doing this at an astonishing rate. During the campaign, Bush referred to Kerry as a “tax and spend” liberal. If that is the case, then Bush is a “spend, spend, spend,” conservative. Unfortunately, at some point, the rising deficit will cause the economy to collapse as countries that purchase our debt, such as China, in the hopes of making a profit, realize that their money is being wasted.
Four branches of government exist in 1984: the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty. These branches strip freedom, personality, and emotion from the population. The citizens follow the government’s commands because they have been convinced the government is right through the rampant use of deceptive language. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. This has been the mantra of the Bush administration for the past four years. Bush doesn’t tell you that things are going poorly in Iraq. He says, “Freedom is on the march.” Bush doesn’t tell you that the rich received a 6.1% tax cut while the poor received a 2.4% tax cut. He says, “Tax cuts will keep the economy strong.” Bush doesn’t tell you he was wrong in his original justification for war with Iraq: the links to Al Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction, or “imminent danger”. He tells you that Saddam was a “unique threat.” Why stress the negative when you can misinterpret the positive? War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. And when 70% of the people who voted for Bush think Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda and 50% think he had weapons of mass destruction, Ignorance is Strength.
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