The Ministry of Truth

Unleash the fedrl fact-checkers!

Image by www_slon_pics from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"Wikipedia does a great job on things like science and sports, but you see a lot of political bias come into play when you're talking current events." -Jonathan Weiss ("top 100" Wikipedian, 500k edits) 

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

When I heard that the Department of Homeland Security has created something called the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) I immediately knew I'd be writing a column. I didn't know that I'd be writing a different column than the one that sprang immediately to mind.

However, I'm sticking with the obvious title that came immediately to mind in spite of the fact George Orwell's Ministry of Truth also came immediately to mind to all sorts of writers and talking heads who are Orwell fans, like me, or who are at least familiar with his most well-known book.     

At the very least it serves as world-class clickbait. It's hard out here for a writer, one must never pass on the unlikely chance he/she/they will go viral and be famous for a few seconds. 

{I thought it was 15 minutes?}

When Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes his vision didn't include the internet, but this is a win/win/win situation from my perspective, Dana. If I'm accused of click-baiting I can claim I'm just an Orwell fan (true), that I think everyone should be (still true), and that I'm just trying to get the word out. 

Also, I predict that the woman person that Uncle Joe has designated the first Minister of Truth, Nina Jankowicz, will quickly go viral assuming the journalists and pseudo-journalists of the left start devoting as much coverage to a certain TikTok video that the journalists and pseudo-journalists of the right are. 

Clickbait + virtue signaling + wacky video = win/win/win.

But, as I hinted above, I've decided that instead of writing specifically about the Biden administration's version of the Ministry of Truth I'm taking a different tack. Besides, The Fedrl Gummit's already dancing the Biden Backpedal and it's hard to tell exactly what the DGBs who/what/when/where/why is going to be. 

It occurred to me that I could avoid having to write a synopsis of Orwell's literary version of what a very powerful government's ministry of propaganda would be like for the uninformed or the uninterested...

{I don't suppose it had anything to do with your lifelong hatred of writing about writing?}

I figured I could turn to my old but estranged friend, Wikipedia, although our relationship ain't what it used to be. 

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I no longer cough up the occasional requested donation when founder Jimmy Whales asks me to although I feel guilty about using and often enjoying, but not paying for, the hard work of others. In my defense, no less a personage than John Stossel is on my side.   

Anyways... I found a thorough and otherwise reasonably well-written article titled "Ministries of Nineteen Eighty-four" that starts off by providing the names of the ministries and explaining that the names are radically contradictory to their actual function. But it also states that:

The use of contradictory names in this manner may have been inspired by the British and American governments; during the Second World War, the British Ministry of Food oversaw rationing (the name "Ministry of Food Control" was used in World War I) and the Ministry of Information restricted and controlled information, rather than supplying it; while, in the U.S., the War Department was abolished and replaced with the "National Military Establishment" in 1947 and then became the Department of Defense in 1949, right around the time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. (My emphasis.)

May have been inspired? This is pure speculation/bias on the writer's part, that's been included in an encyclopedia. The author then cites three footnotes that don't even mention Orwell's "inspiration," making it look like his/her/their notion is widely shared... unless you read them. 

{You actually read footnotes?}

Rarely, but the "may have" set off my bonkercockie detector for valid reasons that would require another column to explain.

{Valid reasons... that are probably quite boring?} 

That's not the point.

[Dana executes an exaggerated yawn] 

{There's a point?}

Yup.  

The Wikipedia entry a given H. sapien may stumble on while trying to discover why there's such a fuss over the establishment of a disinformation governance board by unelected bureaucrats, that's run by an unelected bureaucrat here in "the land of the free," begins with misinformation.

That irony alone is enough to...

{I just don't see your problem. Would you like to co-sign my email alerting Ministerette Jancowitcz? I wonder if there are going to be bias response teams like they have at colleges and universities nowadays? Even Harvard's got one... or better yet, misinformation SWAT teams.}  

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Cultural Marxism and Wikipedia

From a concept to a conspiracy  

Image by diema from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy."  -Fidel Castro

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

Cultural Marxism, at least according to the very first hit returned when I recently googled the phrase, is a conspiracy theory. To be specific, Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory - Wikipedia, was what popped up.

Now, I link to Wikipedia entries regularly; I love the concept of Wikipedia.   

An attempted compendium of all knowledge compiled, edited, and updated by volunteers that is in a constant state of flux because we're all floating upon, swimming in, or living on the shores of the ever-rising Information Ocean is an interesting and worthy experiment. 

BIG BUT. 

Wikipedia is by nature and definition bound to be controversial. But it's easy to make the case that given the danger of being caught in an information tsunami and the limits of traditional encyclopedias that something new is called for.

However, if Wikipedia is the answer to taming the dissonance-inducing Dizzinformation Age that we're trying to cope with, even those young enough to take it for granted and who find it slightly less disorienting than the rest of us, it's got a ways to go. 

In spite of that, and knowing that its entries on specific people are notoriously unreliable, I donated a few bucks here and there because I regularly use it and I wished to support the experiment. I'm personally aware of the fact that good writing is hard work and that a lack of material support in any creative endeavor is hard on the heart.  

Unfortunately, Wikipedia has awokened. That is to say, has adopted the set of fundamental precepts of a secular religion, Wokism. Wokism, like any religion, filters everything through its dogma and ideology and is a religion I don't care to support either financially or rhetorically. 

I'm not going to expand on those precepts in this particular column, I'm merely going to provide an example that illustrates my point.

{So far this sounds a bit highfalutin for the likes of you.} 

Sad but true, Dana. Let's hope it doesn't last.   

Long story short, there is no hooge, mind-numbing philosophical tome titled Cultural Marxism. The phrase is more of a reaction to various forms of Wokism, often critical in nature, but/and means different things to different people.

{But/and?}

Lowfalutin enough for ya?

However, Cultural Marxism, according to Wokepedia, is officially a far-right conspiracy theory. Now, given its open-ended meaning, I'm certain there's no shortage of far-right wackadoos espousing their version of it.

However, more than a few H. sapiens, including this one, define the term in a way that we consider to be both rational and reasonable. Given that there's no mention of this/us in the Wikipedia entry, I can't help but wonder if deliberately presenting a one-sided view of a multidimensional concept is where the actual conspiracy lies.    

{Well, I'll probably regret this but I'll bite, how do you define Cultural Marxism?}

Well, it's complicated but...

[Ah geez...]

But, quite simply I'd say it neatly sums up the fact Wokeness is merely a version of Marxism in which the fundamental precept, the bourgeoisie v. the proletariat, has been replaced by the Pasty Patriarchical Hegemonistic Euroimpirialists v. everyone else. 

Or, as one Jermister defines it in the urbanDICTIONARY, "Cultural Marxism is a term used to describe the idea that our society is best interpreted as being a power struggle between different identity groups or cultures (women, men, gay, straight, black, white)."  

Jermister adds that "Cultural Marxists hunt relentlessly to find things to be offended about, and claim to speak on behalf of all oppressed groups, though most of the time cultural marxists are rich, privileged, upper and middle class white college women with multicolored hair."

Pat Condell, a fellow certified crank, provides my personally favorite explanation in the following video, The Curse of Cultural Marxism. Favorite line: "Progressive is a kind of mutation from liberal, like a cancerous growth on the liberal ethos."

America is in trouble. A country made up of people of other cultures from all over the world needs to more or less agree on a "mission statement" at the macro level and ground rules at the micro level to avoid disintegration.

I don't know how to resolve the situation but I do know that the uncompromising (and unforgiving) nature of one-sided Wokism isn't helping.   

Addendum: The power of the Goog

If you're anything like me, a geezer/geezerette who "came up" in a different world and/or having an actual life that takes place more in meatspace than cyberspace, you may find it's easy to forget the ephemeral nature of searching for knowledge via the Goog.

It's not just that like everything published in cyberspace it's subject to endless tinkering in real-time by writers and algorithmites. Worse yet is that the Goog and its ilk can, and do, present information designed by head shrinkers with dubious ethics to manipulate "users" for fun, profit, and fidelity to the church dogma.   

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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