Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Ministry of Truth: Almost There

In the dystopic world of George Orwell's 1984, all news and historical records were governed by the Ministry of Truth.*

I have played with this cognomen over the years by identifying the mainstream media (MSM) with various appellations such as the Ministry of (mis)Information, and MinInfo whenever MSM's manner of coverage of a story revealed its bias favoring most any form of statism.

Over the last two years, unlike any time in my long life, the MSM has warranted the name Ministry of MisInformation more than ever. It got to be an open joke among my acquaintences of how open the bias could get.
"Have they gotten around to framing every picture of Bush wearing a dunce cap?"

"It can't be long before every frame of Obama has him walking on water."
As the bailouts came into play last year, I observed that once news sources like the AP and newspapers like the NY Times were bailed out, they would be well along to becoming official state organs along the lines of the USSR's Izvestia and Pravda, reporting and printing only what those holding their purse-strings wished to see made known.

Now, as if the MSM hasn't done enough to show they can be trusted to be good Ministry of Truth employees, I have to hand it to my old buddy Fran Porretto for succinctly showing how much more they are worthy:


America got to its current state because of permanent government deficit finance, government debasement of the dollar, government redistribution, and government meddling in the economy, most particularly the credit market. Not one of these things was contemplated by the Founders or authorized by the Constitution of the United States. Washington proceeded with them anyway. Not one economist of any standing would disagree that our troubles are rooted in the very policy arrogances I just enumerated. But politicians, to whom government is the one and only "solution" to any and every "problem," have proposed that we address our difficulties by intensifying the very practices that produced them.
It is a sad fact that such a concise review of the why, and excuses for, the Obama stimulus and the TARP before it, can only be found on a relatively obscure website. Nowhere in the MSM are they discussed as a consistent group of related issues where logic would bring the listener or reader to Fran's conclusion. The fact these facts are never allowed to be built into an argument filled with legitimate observations and concerns anywhere in MSMdom tells us how in love with total state control visible MSM employees either are (true-believers) or think they must demonstrate they are (cynical self-servers).

With such able employees already well stationed in various MSM outlets, how soon before the Ministry of Truth emerges, fully grown and indomitable?

[*Editor's note: In later years Pascal Fervor began referring to American media as the Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason.] 

2 comments:

  1. I think it was Solzhenitsyn who said that under the Soviets every independent thought was a victory of sorts.
    This electronic samizdat will have to be brought into the fold first.
    Too bad, Pascal, you wrote excellent, incisive essays with first rate analysis.

    Maybe I'll meet you someday in the town square; we'll play chess together and drink execrable booze.

    I'm sorry, I don't mean to be so defeatist, but it seems that there are two conflicting primal urges in mankind. The urge to be free, and the urge to completely control the lives of as many others as possible. So far the second seems to be winning.

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  2. Pessimism is hard to deny Windy when one witnesses so many aiding and abetting their own enslavement.

    Perhaps you might read this http://web.archive.org/web/20080210151555/http://www.pascalfervor.com/Glossary.html#A-soc_engng

    and offer me suggestions on how to make it more accessible so that more may sense the danger; so that they resist rather than innocently succumb.

    It's was once my hope that even a few people will comprehend that entry and then spread their understanding, thereby armoring family and friends against those who would control them.

    I've also since expanded upon it with a discussion of induced behavior at another site. I'll search for it and link to it should you request it.

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