Prisons of Pleasure or Pain: Huxley’s “Brave New World” vs. Orwell’s “1984”

This article was originally published by Uncola at TheTollOnline.com

Definition of UTOPIA

1: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place

2: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions

3:   an impractical scheme for social improvement

Definition of DYSTOPIA

1: an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives

2: literature: anti-utopia

– Merriam-Webster.com

 

Many Americans today would quite possibly consider Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” to be a utopia of sorts with its limitless drugs, guilt-free sex, perpetual entertainment and a genetically engineered society designed for maximum economic efficiency and social harmony. Conversely, most free people today would view Orwell’s “1984” as a dystopian nightmare, and shudder to contemplate the terrifying existence under the iron fist of “Big Brother”; the ubiquitous figurehead of a perfectly totalitarian government.

Although both men were of British descent, Huxley was nine years older than Orwell and published Brave New World in 1932, seventeen years before 1984 was released in 1949. Both books are widely considered classics and are included in the Modern Library’s top ten great novels of the twentieth century.

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley was born to academic parents and he was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, a famous biologist and an enthusiastic proponent of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution who was known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”. Huxley’s own father had a well-equipped botanical laboratory where young Aldous began his education. Given the Huxley family’s appreciation for science, it makes perfect sense that Brave New World began in what is called the “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” where human beings are artificially grown and genetically predestined into five societal castes consisting of: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.

Initially, the story centers on Bernard Marx, who is a slightly genetically flawed Alpha Plus psychologist with an inferiority complex due to his short stature. By the end of the novel, however, the protagonist becomes a boy named “John the Savage” who is the bastard child of the “Director of the Central London Hatchery”, and a lady named Linda, who naturally birthed John on a remote American Indian Reservation. When Bernard discovers the true identities of John and Linda, he arranges to fly them back to London in order to leverage his position with John’s biological father, the Hatchery Director.

Bernard is in love with a beautiful fetus technician named Lenina Crowne, who, upon meeting John the Savage falls madly in lust. Lenina is a gal who enjoys multiple lovers because, in the Brave New World, “everyone belongs to everyone else”. In other words, sexual promiscuity is encouraged as sort of a societal “pressure relief valve” designed to discourage negative emotions such as jealousy and envy. John the Savage, however, suppresses his sexual attraction to Lenina because he considers her a slut.

Eventually, John’s sexual repression contributes to him violently attacking some children of the Delta caste who were waiting in line for their “Soma”, a mood-altering drug; and the outburst causes both Bernard and John to be brought before the powerful Mustapha Mond, who is one of ten world controllers. A debate ensues between John and Mr. Mond who explains to the Savage that a stable society requires the controlled suppression of science, religion, and art. John, who is an avid admirer of William Shakespeare, argues that human life is not worth living without these things.

In Brave New World, the State achieves a harmonic equilibrium via the economic parity of production and consumption while utilizing Eugenics as a means to counterbalance the life and death of the citizens. Technology is employed as a means of control in lieu of any search for scientific, or spiritual, truth; as these are considered a threat to the established order. People are cloned in hatcheries in accordance to the needs of the State and trained into obedience through “Hypnopedia”, or sleep-teaching. Happiness is valued over dignity and morality, and emotions are regulated through the use of the drug, Soma, amid constant entertainment including superficial games and virtual reality venues called the “feelies”. Although there is no God or religion, per se, in Brave New World, Henry Ford is canonized in the place of a deity as a testament to corporate efficiency, assembly line production and rampant consumerism.

1984

Like Huxley, George Orwell also envisioned a future where government monitored and controlled every aspect of human life; yet the world is much more terrifying in 1984. Orwell actually volunteered and fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 before being injured by a sniper’s bullet in May of 1937; it was there where he witnessed, first-hand, the ghastly barbarism of political fascism. Moreover, he previously observed the rise of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and, later, Adolf Hitler in Germany. In turn, Orwell published Animal Farm in 1945 and four years later, his novel 1984, as literary warnings to mankind.

The setting of 1984 takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Great Britain which, at that time, was part of “Oceania”; one of three world super-states all engaged in never-ending warfare. The protagonist of the novel is Winston Smith, a middle-class member in the Outer Party of INGSOC, a totalitarian regime led by the figurehead known only as “Big Brother”.

Winston works in the Records Department of the “Ministry of Truth” where he revises history on behalf of the Party while under constant surveillance both at work and home. Everywhere he goes; there are posters with a photo of the party’s leader and the words: “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”. In an act of rebellion, Winston acquires a diary and begins to record what Big Brother and the INGSOC party would label as “crimethink” and “thoughtcrime”.

Eventually, Winston meets and falls in love with a beautiful coworker named Julia, and they engage in what they believe to be a secret affair whereby they have illicit sex as a form of political rebellion. In 1984, the Party members living in Oceania are brainwashed to have sex only for procreation and this is how sexual repression is channeled into enthusiasm for the State.

Under the threat of detection by the “Thought Police”, torture and even “vaporization”, which would eliminate every last vestige of proof he ever existed, Winston persists in his rebellion against the Party with certain fatalism. In fact, just before he and Julia are captured by the militant, jackbooted INGSOC Party authoritarians, Winston told Julia “we are the dead”; to which she replied the same words back to him.

Throughout Orwell’s dark narrative, various themes are explored such as “Newspeak” which is a language of mind control; the terrifying tyranny of totalitarianism; historical revisionism; torture, and psychological manipulation. The INGSOC Party’s prisonlike control and complete invasion of individual privacy is such that a citizen’s own facial expression could betray their inner disloyalty to the Party through what Orwell labeled as “crimeface”:

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.

– Winston Smith, 1984, part 1, chapter 6

Orwell was near prophetic in describing the proliferation of listening devices in both public and private settings as well as “telescreens”, which simultaneously broadcast propaganda while relaying live video feeds back to the Party watchers. In Orwell’s chilling story, free will and individuality are sacrificed to the extreme demands of Collectivism and in deference to complete societal control by an authoritarian government.

Compared and Contrasted

In both, Brave New World and 1984, common themes are addressed including government, orthodoxy, social hierarchy, economics, love, sex, and power. Both books portray propaganda as a necessary tool of government to shape the collective minds of the citizenry within each respective society and towards the specific goals of the state; to wit, stability and continuity.

In Brave New World, The “Bureaux of Propaganda” shared a building with the “College of Emotional Engineering” and all media outlets including radio, television, and newspaper. Much of the brainwashing of the citizens in Huxley’s world included messaging to stay within their genetically predetermined castes or to encourage the daily use of the drug, Soma, in order to anesthetize emotional agitation:

a gramme in time saves nine

A gramme is better than a damn

One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments

When the individual feels, the community reels.

The “Ministry of Truth”, in 1984, also known as “minitrue” in Newspeak, served as the propaganda machine for Big Brother and the INGSOC regime. Although its main purpose was to rewrite history in order to realign it with Party doctrine and make the Party look infallible, the Ministry of Truth also promoted war hysteria in order to unite the citizens of Oceania while broadcasting simple messages designed to discourage any self-determination or autonomous thought.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

war is peace

freedom is slavery

ignorance is strength

Whereas the citizens of Brave New World used the drug Soma and cursory material distractions to vanquish any desire for real knowledge or truth; the “memory hole” in 1984 was a chute connected to an incinerator and served as the mechanism by which the Ministry of Truth would abolish historical archives as if they never existed.

In other words, truth was unimportant to the citizens of Brave New World and it was summarily rescinded from the realm of 1984.

Furthermore, in order to additionally fill the empty existence of those living in Brave New World, Huxley envisioned a character by the name of Helmholtz Watson as a creator of hypnopaedic phrases designed to fill the mental and emotional vacuum vacated by knowledge:

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfuly glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.

– BNW, Chapter 2, pg. 27

In 1984, however, Orwell conceived of a character named Syme, who was an enthusiastic Newspeak redactor of language:

It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

– Syme, 1984, part 1, chapter 5

In Brave New World, Helmholtz Watson worked to fill the mind of people with hypnotic messages. In 1984, Syme strived to remove words from the English language in order to eliminate what the Party considered to be “thoughtcrime”.

Although the methodologies varied, mind control was prevalent throughout both the fictional worlds of Huxley and Orwell.

Social hierarchies were also present in both futuristic novels. The citizens of Brave New World consisted of the Alpha caste which held the highest jobs in the world state, and Betas, who were allowed to interact with the Alphas. The Gamma’s were considered to have average intelligence, they were eight inches shorter than Alpha’s in height, and they maintained the office jobs and held administrative positions. The Delta’s were trained from a very young age to despise books and were conditioned to work in manufacturing, while the Epsilon caste members were considered as morons who performed the menial labor within the lowest strata of society.

Although 1984 doesn’t have a caste system, per se, the citizenry were still separated into three groups: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles, or the proletariat. The Proles constituted 85% of the population and were allowed privacy and anonymity, yet they lived in extreme privation in pursuit of bread and circuses.

As the Party slogan put it: ‘Proles and animals are free.’

– ”1984”: part 1, chapter 7

Although both Inner and Outer Party members of 1984’s Oceania lived under constant surveillance, the members of the Inner party led lives of relative luxury compared to the middle-class lifestyle of those within the Outer Party. Additionally, the members of the Outer Party were denied sex, other than within marriage and for the sole purposes of procreation. They were also denied motorized transportation and were allowed cigarettes and gin as their only vices.

Governments of both Brave New World and 1984 also filtered information and propaganda in accordance to the class ranking of their citizens.

In Brave New World, the separate castes, except for the Epsilons who couldn’t read, received their own newspapers delivering specific propaganda for each class of society; whereas the INGSOC party members of 1984 were allowed newspapers and to view broadcasted reports of world news via their telescreens.

Even though there is no actual organized religion described in either book, there were deities endorsed by the government, primarily for economic reasons, and complete with mandated rigorous orthodoxies.

Again, the aforementioned god of Brave New World was called “Ford”, after Henry Ford, in celebration of his efficient assembly-line production of goods that was worshiped by both the overseers and citizenry of the world state.

In 1984, Big Brother served as the almighty “beginning and end”, creator, judge, grand architect and savior for the INGSOC party disciples.

In Huxley’s vision of the future, the higher power of consumerism guided the people; complete with memorized short phrases designed to encourage the replacement of material items in lieu of repairing them; and, those wearing older clothes were shamed into purchasing new apparel:

Ending is better than mending.

The more stitches, the less riches.

BNW, Chapter 3, pg. 49

Orwell, on the other hand, considered war as the means by which a collectivist oligarchy could maintain a hierarchical society by purging the excess production of material goods from the economy; thus, keeping the masses impoverished and ignorant by denying them the surplus “spare time” that is afforded via the convenience of modern technology:

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

— Emmanuel Goldstein, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9

The futuristic societies envisioned by Huxley and Orwell, additionally, both discouraged romantic love, yet diverged on the subject of sex. As mentioned earlier, Brave New World treated sex as a “pressure relief valve” remaining constantly open in order to release any negative emotions like suspicion, distrust, jealousy, rage or envy. “Everyone belonged to everyone else”, so there was no need for secrets. Even children were encouraged to sexually experiment guilt free. Of course, sex was meant to be enjoyed only as a means of pleasure in Brave New World; as procreation was considered an anathema by the people and beneath the dignity of mankind.

In Orwell’s dark dystopia, however, promiscuous sex was encouraged among the proletariat and the Ministry of Truth even had a pornography division called “Pornosec”, which distributed obscene media for consumption by the Proles alone. Conversely, and also as mentioned prior, the members of the INGSOC party were required to abstain from sex; except for married couples attempting to procreate solely on behalf of the government.

In reading both books, it was also fascinating to see how both Huxley and Orwell painted their female protagonists, Lenina Crowne and Julia, respectively, as shallow nymphomaniacs.

Nevertheless, the procreative sterilized purity and casual sexual promiscuity of Brave New World along with 1984’s hierarchical rationing of sex, combined with the twisted morality of the INGSOC Party, represented the power of government invading into the most personal means of expression, and engenderment, between individuals of both worlds.

The concept of “everyone belongs to everyone else” in Brave New World allowed intimate acts to be considered merely as trivial recreation whereas the Party’s power over copulation in 1984, created a sense of fatalism within Winston and Julia as they made love knowing they were “the dead”.

In spite of any differences, both scenarios were the end result of extreme philosophical collectivism manifested into distorted and perverse destinies of speculative, future populations.

The Future is Now

For reasons described heretofore, many might consider Brave New World to be a utopian dream. In the context of individual autonomy, however, as well as the pursuit of truth, the opportunity for personal self-actualization, the dilemma of ethical considerations and the governmental dispensation of immoral law; Huxley’s vision of the future removes the lid of a veritable Pandora’s Box of questions. In reality, the societal structure as delineated in Brave New World would greatly resemble what could be called a “prison of pleasure” and, perhaps, even a “penitentiary of profligate practicality”.

Applying the same philosophical critique of 1984, and in similar fashion, Orwell’s nation-state of Oceana would be considered as a bona fide dystopian “prison of fear”.

As a matter of fact, both societies portray prisons of man’s own making, formed by governments following their own directions toward their respective future destinations. To say it another way: The road to hell is actually paved with bad intentions. As the Inner Party member (and administrator of torture), “Obrien”, admitted to Winston Smith in Room 101 of The Ministry of Love:

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

– Obrien, ”1984”: part 3, chapter 3

Both power structures in Brave New World and 1984 chose to diminish individual rights in order to achieve societal stability. To the governments of both super-states, their citizens were considered as mere “means to an end”; namely, the continuation of power.

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that.

– Obrien, ”1984”: part 3, chapter 3

This is a perfect description of mankind striving to be as gods; an attempt to create metaphysical law from carnal desire. Foregone were the virtues of mercy, humility, temperance, autonomy, self-reliance, and restraint.

Mustapha Mond, one of ten world controllers in Brave New World and the evil Obrien of 1984’s nation of Oceana, both knew what they were doing. They were fully conscious in order to exert complete control and ensure the continuation of their respective, fictional nation-states.

But, could this type of power consolidation occur in the real (non-literary) world?

To answer that question one only needs to study history then, go turn on all of the various “telescreens” in their private homes: Televisions, smartphones, tablets, lap-taps and desktop computers. Tyrannical regimes have been centralizing and fortifying ramparts of power from the time man first crushed grapes. And, obviously, as the exiled enemy of the State, Edward Snowden, has revealed, modernity is no antiserum to the cancerous systematization of power.

When considering the prosperous technological paradise of Brave New World, where the societal elite had unrestricted access to intercontinental transportation and private helicopters; where even the lower classes enjoyed pampered lives of perennial comfort, ceaseless entertainment, and eternal recreation; as compared to the dingy, post-apocalyptically war-torn, third-world existence of 1984; it becomes difficult not to view both Huxley and Orwell as prophets.

Indeed, both futures have come to pass and are merely economically separated and dispersed into diverse geographic locations.

Today, it is the westernized cultures of the world, including Asian nations like Japan and South Korea, that more closely resemble Brave New World, whereas vestiges of 1984 can be seen in the eastern bloc communist countries, China, North Korea and the Islamic societies of the middle-east.

Although Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of Capitalism had created a rising economic tide that lifted many boats; much of the world’s population still languishes in squalor and will never rise from the muck.

Moreover, even the modernized nations today have sacrificed individual freedom upon the altar of Collectivism as political correctness stifles free speech; families suffocate beneath mountains of debt and United Nations Agenda 21 policies release a deluge of regulations causing extra-governmental autonomous innovation to collapse before the inexorable, gravitational pull of the hive-mind.

Corporations like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple have become the eyes and ears of Big Brother who is always watching, and ever listening.

To the sounds of mouse-clicks, once free people have “accepted” the “terms” of their surrender and have forfeited their liberty in the name of convenience. Like buzzing insects, the citizens of modern societies are caught in silicon honey traps mortgaged with plastic and electronically powered via USB cable nooses wrapped tightly around their collective throats.

The Technocratic Powers That Be wield weapons far more powerful than any time prior in history and soon, people will wake up to realize the electronic buzzing sound ringing in their ears was not emanating from their own wings, but rather, it was merely the sound of drones over their heads.

Like in Brave New World, science now rules supreme over ethics as medical professionals sell fetus organs to advance the cause of genetic research. The United States currently leads the world in illegal drug use and consumes near all of the global opioid supply; according to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy:

In most countries, the use of opioid prescriptions is limited to acute hospitalization and trauma, such as burns, surgery, childbirth and end-of-life care, including patients with cancer and terminal illnesses. But in the United States, every adult in America can have “a bottle of pills and then some.

Just as 1984’s Ministry of Truth purveyed pornography to the Proles, statistics show at least 35% of all internet downloads and at least 30% of all data transferred across the internet are porn-related. Also similar to Huxley’s Brave New World, sex runs rampant throughout the modernized nations as cases of sexually transmitted disease have reached a record high in the United States.

In correlation to the ever-expanding gulf between rich and poor, strict adherence to orthodoxy now determines how high one can rise in the societies of the westernized nations, as political correctness defines the faith of the pantheistic disciples of Mother Earth in the form of Gaia worship; and social hierarchy is increasingly determined via the identity politics of the collectivist left. The American body politic has now witnessed the rise of the warrior cop and the militarization of domestic law enforcement, as interminable wars are eternally fought on foreign shores and sovereign nations are bombed under false pretense.

Even 1984’s “Victory Gin” has manifested in the form Russian Vodka within the eastern nations, as Oceania’s type of man-made orthodoxy silently drowns the human spirit in devastating despair, while contorted moralities overtake both the Christian and Islamic societies of the modern age.

Orwell defined “doublethink” as:

the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them

— Emmanuel Goldstein, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9

Only in wealthy westernized nations do billionaires own multiple mansions, fly private jets and ride in eight-cylinder limousines to climate-change conferences where policies are decreed to lower the carbon footprint of the proletariat. Only in wealthy westernized nations, do ever-increasing numbers of women consider white men to be pigs while simultaneously striving to be their equals. And, only in the wealthy Christian nations of the northern hemisphere will citizens support a women’s right to third-trimester abortions, while rigorously and righteously battling for legislation to save endangered dung beetles.

Throughout Islamic societies, drinking alcohol and gambling is forbidden, but the governments and their citizens gladly tolerate canings, whippings, lashings, honor killings, suicide attacks, and the genital mutilation of young girls.

This does NOT prevent, however, the citizens of the wealthy Christian nations in the West to welcome with open arms, and in the name of “tolerance”, the pervading flood of Islamic immigrants.

The writings of Huxley and Orwell resonate by the echoes of history, over the canyons of time, and to the very cliff upon where mankind now stands. Propaganda daily spews via the machinations of five corporations which control 90% of all mainstream media channels. These companies toe the war-party line and wield their great powers of disinformation to contort facts or even censor the failures of the politicians whom they favor while, simultaneously, attacking their political enemies with lies and innuendo; even to the point of creating a phony election hacking narrative to satisfy their radioactive lust for war with nuclear powered enemies.

Even the characters of both Brave New World and 1984 are resonant of familiar archetypes from days gone by. Brave New World portrayed the character Bernard Marx as being short like Hitler, with a small man’s inferiority complex and complete with the surname of Karl Marx, the eponymous founder of Marxism.

The noble sounding Lenina Crowne’s name contains the surname of Vladimir Lenin, and Orwell’s portrayal of Julia does not seem overly diverse from former President’s Obama’s vision of “The Life of Julia”. Even the mustachioed, evil-eyed Big Brother from 1984’s dystopian nation of Oceana, looks eerily similar to just about every other tin-pot dictator who ever walked the earth.

Art imitating life? Indeed.

Yet the irony fails to impress America’s young social justice warriors of the Millennial generation who have been raised on a steady diet of socialism, political correctness, and participation trophies; a far cry from the rugged individualists of previous American generations. In the 2016 U.S. Democratic Party Primaries, and with the same sense of vague dissatisfaction as exhibited by Huxley’s Bernard Marx, millions upon millions of rainbow worshipping Snowflakes, old and young alike, turned out in force to show their support for another Bernard: Bernard Sanders, a redistributionist of the line of Robin Hood who, in the spirit of Santa Claus, offered free college educations to all of Uncle Sam’s children.

Sadly, Big Brother is here to stay and, with time, he will only grow more bigly; regardless of any transitory elected politicians in the governments of the world’s “sovereign” nations today.

Although Aldous Huxley and George Orwell valiantly spun fictional narratives in order to warn the real world’s future citizens, they were not alone in their efforts.

On January 17, 1961, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of an ever-encroaching “Military Industrial Complex” in his farewell address to the nation:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Exactly 100 days after Ike’s farewell, on April 27, 1961, John F. Kennedy spoke before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in an address that later became known as his “Secret Society” speech. In that address, he stated the following:

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence: on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed– and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.

Thirty months after that speech, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Many people consider Kennedy to have been the last American president not controlled by a financial global elite hell bent on world domination.

In one of the twentieth century’s minor ironies, Aldous Huxley died on the very same day that John F. Kennedy was killed. It was also the exact day C.S. Lewis, the British author, and Christian apologist, passed from this earth.

Coincidence? Only God knows.

Regardless, by 1984 all had been forgotten; and, in a Brave New World, none of it really matters anyway.

McCain As Metaphor

Authored by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,

Some people are living symbols, sheer embodiments of a concept that fits their persona as snugly as their skin: e.g. the Dalai Lama personifies Contemplative Piety, Harvey Weinstein is the incarnation of Brazen Vulgarity, and John McCain’s very person exudes the sweaty blustery spirit of Empire.

His entire history – born in the Panama Canal zone, son of an admiral, third-generation centurion, the War Party’s senatorial spokesman – made it nearly impossible for him to be other than what he is: the country’s most outspoken warmonger and dedicated internationalist.

As George Orwell remarked, “After forty, everyone has the face they deserve,” and in McCain’s case this is doubly true. That Roman head, fit for a coin of high denomination, looks as if it might sprout a crown of laurel leaves at any moment:  Grizzled brow, wrinkled with the tension of an inborn belligerence, eyes alight with a perpetual flame of self-righteous anger, McCain is Teddy Roosevelt impersonating Cato the Elder. In the extreme predictability of his warlike effusions, he’s become a bit of a cartoon character. Who can forget his enthusiastic rendition of “Bomb bomb bomb Iran!” to the tune of “Barbara Ann”?

The Senator from Arizona represents something relatively new on the American scene: the emerging class of colonial administrators, Pentagon contractors, and high-ranking military personnel, and their families, many of them stationed overseas. These people have a material interest in the expansion of our role as global cop, they number in the tens of thousands, and they are strategically placed in the social order, with enough social power to constitute an influential lobby.

As the prototype of this mutant species of Homo Americanus, McCain is the perfect enemy of the new nationalism that handed the White House to Donald Trump and sundered the Brits from the EU. It’s no surprise he’s become the antipode of the Trumpian “America First” foreign policy doctrine – a doctrine that is almost never implemented, but that’s another column. His latest philippic perfectly summarizes the spirit and content of the brazen imperialism that is his credo and the credo of his class, We get the whole grand tour of McCainism as a worldview, from the rather odd idea that “America is an idea” and not an actual place to the glories of the “international order.” There is much shedding of blood “to make a better world” – a cause we are told has “made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.” Now here is crackpot Keynesianism with a vengeance: the destruction of World War II was good for the economy!

Having “liberated” the world from itself, the United States, as the champion of World Order, is in danger of turning away from its sacred duty to always be shedding lots and lots of blood on behalf of Others. And we know just who McCain is talking about:

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

The idea that we led and organized the world for the entire postwar era erases the cold war from history, a neat trick given McCain’s record. And as for our “ideals” and this “last best hope” business, none of that is worth a single American soldier – nor does it have anything to do with a soldier’s proper job, which is protecting this country. Yet what is one to expect from someone who actually believes “we live in a land of ideals, not blood and soil.” Blood never comes into it for McCain unless it’s being shed in some ill-conceived totally unnecessary war. And as for soil – there is none. There’s just “ideals,” floating in a void.

While admitting that the Trumpian version of American nationalism is somewhat undercooked – and, perhaps, not all that digestible – one has to wonder: where does a supporter of the Iraq war, who assured us it would be a glorious victory, get off calling anybody or anything half-baked?

McCain doesn’t even try making a coherent argument: instead, he simply lies by claiming that, having taken the road to Empire, “we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did.” It’s utter nonsense, of course: empires are an expansive luxury. We spend more on the military than the top ten powers combined, and the national debt is at historic heights. We’re effectively bankrupt thanks to out-of-control military spending and McCain’s favored wars of choice.

The idea that we have a “moral obligation” to enforce McCain’s beloved “international order” is rooted in the crazed post-millennial pietism that has motivated so much that is mischievous in American history. The old religious impulse that motivated Prohibition and the “anti-vice” campaigns of the nineteenth century has, today, been secularized and internationalized. The old fundamentalists sought to remake the country, their secular successors seek to remake the world. This accounts for the quasi-religious tone of McCain’s remarks, this talk of “moral obligation” and “shame” if we fail to take up the burden of Empire, manfully and willfully, because “We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.”

In other words: Americans have no right to live their lives in peace, and to leave others in the same condition: they must perpetually be sticking their noses in other peoples’ business, sniffing out “injustice” and making sure the trains run on time.

McCain hails the crusade to “help make another, better world” – yet the American people don’t want another world, they want to live in this world in peace and security, rather than sacrificing themselves to some imaginary “duty” to uplift the world on Uncle Sam’s shoulders. That’s one reason why Trump is in the White House and McCain is on the outside looking in.

The Disaster Myth Narrative: No One Panics, No One Loots, No One Goes Hungry

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”  ~ George Orwell

A few years back, I was doing some research about the aftermath of some natural disasters that took place here in America. I was shocked to find that the articles I was looking for – ones that I had read in the past – were pretty hard to find, but articles refuting the sought-for pieces were rampant.  Not just one event, but every single crisis aftermath that I looked up, had articles that were written after the fact stating in no uncertain terms that the hunger, chaos, and unrest never happened.

Apparently we, the preparedness community, are all wrong when it comes to the belief that after a disaster, chaos erupts and civic disorder is the rule of the day. That is only a disaster myth, and the public narrative belies it all.

Listen to the “experts” and they will confirm, it never happens.

Panic?  What panic?

According to newspaper articles written after Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast and after Hurricane Katrina caused countless billions in damage in New Orleans, people were calm, benevolent and peaceful.  Heck, they were all standing around singing Kumbayah around a campfire, sharing their canned goods, calming frightened puppies, and helping the elderly.

Apparently, studies prove that the fear of anarchy, lawlessness, and chaos is nothing but the “disaster myth”.  Reams of examples exist of the goodness and warmth of society as a whole after disaster strikes. All the stories you read at the time were just that – stories, according to the mainstream media:

Yet there are a few examples stubbornly fixed in the popular imagination of people reacting to a natural disaster by becoming primal and vicious. Remember the gangs “marauding” through New Orleans, raping and even cannibalizing people in the Super-Dome after Hurricane Katrina? It turns out they didn’t exist. Years of journalistic investigations showed them to be racist fantasies. They didn’t happen. Yes, there was some “looting” — which consisted of starving people breaking into closed and abandoned shops for food. Of course human beings can behave atrociously – but the aftermath of a disaster seems to be the time when it is least likely. (source)

Looting?  Only hungry people getting food from unmanned stores. Who wouldn’t do that?

Beatings and assaults?  Didn’t happen. Disturbed people made these stories up for attention.

Gang rapes?  No way. You watch too much Law and Order: SVU.

Murder, mayhem, and gangs of youth on the streets?  Silly readers – we just made that up.

The Disaster Myth is a narrative created by the establishment and delivered by their stoolies in the mainstream media.  The Disaster Myth points fingers at many of the things that are commonly believed to be true by the preparedness community.  Included in this narrative:

1. People do not panic after a disaster – instead, they pull together.


2. The official government response is always speedy and appropriate – unless you are a person of color, in which case you will be denied assistance based on your race, because racism is the current agenda


3. You will be taken care of if you simply comply peacefully with authorities.


4. There is little increase in post-disaster crime.

These statements all stand in direct opposition to the stories we hear from news sources during the crisis.  We heard terrible stories from eyewitnesses who suffered from hunger, thirst, and unsanitary condition in the Superdome after Katrina.  We heard about citizens being robbed of their 2nd Amendment rights by police after the crisis, and we heard about gang rapes, looting, and mayhem.  Fast forward to Sandy where people were defecating in the hallways of their high rise apartments and digging through garbage to find food just a few days after the storm.  As for the official response, who can forget the FEMA shelter that closed because of inclement weather?  Of course, the weather was inclement – it was a freaking weather-related disaster!

Mac Slavo of SHTFplan wrote of the unrest, discomfort, and mayhem after Superstorm Sandy ransacked the East Coast:

For tens of thousands of east coast residents that worst case scenario is now playing out in real-time. No longer are images of starving people waiting for government handouts restricted to just the third-world.

In the midst of crisis, once civilized societies will very rapidly descend into chaos when essential infrastructure systems collapse.

Though the National Guard was deployed before the storm even hit, there is simply no way for the government to coordinate a response requiring millions of servings of food, water and medical supplies

Many east coast residents who failed to evacuate or prepare reserve supplies ahead of the storm are being forced to fend for themselves.

Frustration and anger have taken hold, as residents have no means of acquiring food or gas and thousands of trucks across the region remain stuck in limbo.

Limited electricity has made it possible for some to share their experiences:

Via Twitter:

• I was in chaos tonite tryin to get groceries…lines for shuttle buses, only to get to the no food left & closing early (link)


• I’m not sure what has shocked me more, all the communities around me destroyed, or the 5 hour lines for gas and food. (link)


• Haven’t slept or ate well in a few days. Hope things start getting better around here soon (link)


• These days a lot of people are impatient because they’re used to fast things. Fast food, fast internet, fast lines and fast shipping etc. (link)


• Glad Obama is off to Vegas after his 90 minute visit. Gas lines are miles long.. Running out of food and water. Great Job (link)


• Went to the Grocery store and lines were crazy but nail salon was empty so I’ve got a new gel manicure and some Korean junk food (link)


• So f*cking devastated right now. Smell burning houses. People fighting for food. Pitch darkness. I may spend the night in rockaway to help (link)

At the time of the event, even the mainstream reported on the affluent East Side residents dumpster diving in search of food. Was this NBC report, complete with video, a work of salacious fiction?

As far as civil unrest is concerned, the Twittersphere was jammed with people planning looting sprees in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.  Those who were already of criminal leanings saw the disaster as a great opportunity. In the great North American Edit, however, these tweets are said to be part of the myth – apparently, they were just kids playing around.  Some reports pooh-poohed the very idea that looters had run amok.

This article from Prison Planet refutes all of the refuting and says that the civil unrest DID occur and that it generally does, given evidence from past events.

Legends from the past? Every single extreme weather event in recent years in the United States has been followed by looting.

As MSNBC reported at the time, looting during Hurricane Katrina was so prevalent that it “took place in full view of police and National Guard troops.”

Residents described the scenes as being like “downtown Baghdad” as looters filled garbage cans full of stolen goods and floated them down flooded streets.

As Forbes’ Erik Kain points out, “looting and rioting…occur after most natural disasters,” including after Hurricane Irene as well as Hurricane Isaac.

Looters also targeted victims of the Colorado wildfires earlier this year.

Does this sound familiar?

This revision of inconvenient history will sound quite familiar to anyone who has read George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 (which was not meant to be an instruction manual, by the way.)  In the novel, the main character, Winston Smith, worked for the Ministry of Truth, which was actually a department of propaganda whose job it was to rewrite any faction of history that did not make the government look omniscient.

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Truth is Oceania’s propaganda ministry. It is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. The word truth in the title Ministry of Truth should warn, by definition, that the “minister” will self-serve its own “truth”; the title implies the willful fooling of posterity using “historical” archives to show “in fact” what “really” happened. As well as administering truth, the ministry spreads a new language amongst the populace called Newspeak, in which, for example, truth is understood to mean statements like 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants.

The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel, Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction), for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong. (source)

We are watching narratives being created in front of our very eyes with the Vegas massacre. Every time something terrible happens, there’s a spin and that spin a) keeps us in the dark. b) encourages us to be dependent, and c) benefits someone.

But….WHY????

So why the vast effort to expunge tales of mayhem and to make it seem like our own national disasters really weren’t that bad? There are a few reasons, like pandering to an audience that wants to be blissfully unaware, but primarily, it’s about control.

Those who live a self-sufficient lifestyle are a threat to the status quo that those in power would like to see.  If you don’t NEED them, then there is no leverage to force you into compliance.  You don’t NEED to go to Camp FEMA in order to have 3 squares a day.  You don’t NEED to give up your guns in order to have a roof over your head and government supplied security.  You don’t NEED to get some kind of chip implanted in your arm to be scanned in order to receive “benefits” like medical care, food, and even money.

Self-sufficiency means freedom.  When you can feed yourself, clothe yourself, shelter yourself, and protect yourself, you are far less likely to need to cede your freedoms in order to stay alive. And in a police state that is frantically trying to withdraw our constitutional rights, this just won’t do.  They need leverage.

So the establishment has created a narrative that tells us what we are doing is silly and unnecessary.  They are rewriting history even though we only lived that history in the past decade.  Even though we know the truth of the matter because we watched it live, they are changing the facts to make us doubt our own perceptions. They are catering to the people who have no interest whatsoever in taking care of themselves.

This narrative was created to make a society of anti-preppers – of people who believe that all will be right with the world, the government is kind and benevolent, potential disasters aren’t really that big of a deal, and those crazy preppers are stark raving lunatics.  They want us to be perceived as extremists so that others are less likely to follow our examples. If they need a crazy bad guy at whom to point the finger, all they have to do is call someone a “Doomsday Prepper”. (Remember how poor Nancy Lanza was vilified after the Sandy Hook shooting?)

But…

If this civil unrest is not occurring, why is the National Guard called to keep the peace?  Why are state police riding around on tanks wearing body armor? Why were the guns of law-abiding citizens taken away in the aftermath of Katrina?

Which version of reality are you going to believe?  The one that you actually witnessed or the perverted rewrite that the mainstream media is trying to push upon you?

Remember the things happening right now.

We have recently been hit with disaster after disaster in the United States. The aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the mainland amidst stories of looters and people standing armed to protect homes and businesses. In the Carribean, lawlessness was rampant, and after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the danger from armed people robbing those who still had some supplies was constant. As I write this, there are uncontrolled wildfires tearing through California wine country, and looters are striking the homes of evacuees.

Of course, we are seeing reports of this now, but later will these stories be “debunked” by “experts” like the stories from Katrina and Sandy?

It’s entirely likely because most people would prefer to live smug in the belief that the police are only seconds away, their neighborhoods are immune to looters and vandals, and that America is a place of exceptional order and civilization. It comforts them to believe these things.  They use it as ammunition so they can scoff at “doomsday” preppers and call them “conspiracy theorists.”

But we know differently, and today, bloggers and alternative media are also documenting these stories before history is erased. I have watched for years as supplemental links in stories I have written have disappeared. I have witnessed the changing narratives, and if you’re reading this, you probably have too.

So, don’t be discouraged in your efforts when you read all the “good news” stories that inevitably show up after a disaster. To be sure, there are some wonderful people out there helping their neighbors, but there is also a dark side that the media prefers to ignore.

You saw it when it was happening. You know the truth, even if the disaster myth narrative would have you believe otherwise.

Freedom Is A Myth: We Are All Prisoners Of The Police State's Panopticon Village

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

"We"re run by the Pentagon, we"re run by Madison Avenue, we"re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don"t revolt we"ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we"re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people"s Villages, but we are all prisoners.”

- Patrick McGoohan

First broadcast in Great Britain 50 years ago, The Prisoner - a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka” - confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village.

The Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.

The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, is Number Six.

“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by McGoohan.

In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six is told that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”

Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.

Number Six refuses to comply.

In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.

Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s getaways are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”

Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.

The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.

As Thill noted when McGoohan died in 2009, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”

The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.

Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be and funding its existence.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the police state and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.

It is a prison from which there will be no escape if the government gets it way.

Even now, the Trump Administration is working to make some of the National Security Agency’s vast spying powers permanent.

In fact, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pushing for Congress to permanently renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows government snoops to warrantlessly comb through and harvest vast quantities of our communications.

And just like that, we’re back in the Village, our escape plans foiled, our future bleak.

Except this is no surprise ending, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People: for those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior, we never stopped being prisoners.

So how do we break out?

For starters, wake up. Resist the urge to comply.

Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that"s the great thing. It"s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that"s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

We have come full circle from Bentham’s Panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to Huxley’s Brave New World.

You want to be free? Break out of the circle.

Hillary Clinton's Alternative Take On What "1984" Was All About

Since the official release of Hillary"s new book "What Happened" yesterday, our sense of logic and rational thought has been under constant assault by a steady stream of "Hillary-isms" which provide some rather dark insights into the bizarro world in which she lives.

That said, we"ve seen nothing that tops the following excerpt in which Hillary offers up her expert opinion on the key life lesson that should be learned from "1984", namely that we should trust and rely on "our leaders, the press, and experts who seek to guide public policy."

"Attempted to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism.  This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos.  This is what happens in George Orwell"s classic novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner see five fingers as ordered.  The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves."

Bizarre misreading: @HillaryClinton thinks the lesson of Orwell"s 1984 is that you should trust experts, leaders and the press pic.twitter.com/7rPbrq11fV

— JamesHeartfield (@JamesHeartfield) September 12, 2017

Sorry, Hillary...but we"re pretty sure that the key takeway from "1984" was not that we should all trust the government and media just a little more...

We"ve been saying this a lot lately but we find it helpful to clarify in instances such as this...yes, this is real life.

The irony here is that the democratic party and the mainstream media, both entities that Hillary suggests should have your utmost trust and respect, have been on a mission to "sow mistrust" for over a year now with their perpetual "Russian collusion" narrative...a narrative for which no actual evidence has been presented. 

Of course, after reading that passage above, one can only come to one of two conclusions: i) Hillary has never read 1984 (best case) or ii) Hillary"s powers of self-delusion are far greater than anyone ever imagined (worst case).

Babies On Drugs In America? 1984 Predicted It!

Authored by Chris Campbell via LFB.org,

Over a million kids in America six years old and under are on psychiatric drugs - mostly to treat anxiety.

Let that sink in.

I have to ask. Is the U.S. really becoming this out of touch? And I mean that literally.

Author Ray Williams, a contributor to Psychology Today, offered an important question back in 2010: “In our desire to have a politically correct and safe social environment, or an environment of instant communication, have we lost sight of the most important aspect of human development and culture  — physical touch?”

The science is in: After food, water and shelter, there’s little more important to kids, especially babies, than human contact. Without simple human contact, in fact, babies can die.

This is the case, actually, to varying degrees, for all mammals.

In many litters of puppies and kittens, for example, there are sometimes one or two animals that come out enfeebled — as the “runts.”

The weakness of the runts, felt by the mother during nursing, is a sign to the mother it likely won’t survive. To make sure her genes have the best chance for survival, she must use her limited resources wisely.

As a result, the mother doesn’t lick or nurture the runt. The mother still allows the runt to feed (other species don’t even go that far), but it refuses to show the runt affection.

It’s hard to understate how catastrophic this is for the runt. A certain amount of maternal licking and nuzzling is necessary. The affection, we now know, turns on the production of a certain growth hormone in the brain. Without it, food cannot be metabolized properly and healthy growth and development is impossible. If the runt continues to be ignored, even if it still gets plenty to eat, it will eventually shrivel up and die.

It’s the same for humans. Without human contact at the earliest of age, the immune system is essentially shot. The affected becomes vulnerable to all sorts of ailments and diseases.

But it’s not just babies…

Human contact, in kids and adults, has been shown to ease pain, lift depression and may even, oddly enough, increase the odds that a team will win a game.

And it’s the simplest thing. (Plus, it’s free!)

K.I.S.S.: When the Synthetic Gets in the Way

Indeed. In our headlong rush for “progress” in all forms, this is one aspect of our existence in which we need to “make great again,” rather than mindlessly perverting or opting for more synthetic versions. (Food and most medicine can also be added to this list, among other things.)

Progress, technological and otherwise, hold incredible potential to lift humanity to new heights — yet, if not done mindfully (which is the ideal role of conservatism, preserving that which is worthy of preservation), it can, without question, push us down to new lows.

The latter is precisely what both George Orwell and Aldous Huxley were warning us about.

Dystopia would come first with a smile and promises of a vast utopia. And, so enamored we would be, we wouldn’t even notice the glimmering of its fangs until, of course, it was too late.

Today, we invite Joe Jarvis of the Daily Bell to ask one unnerving question: Have we already reached dystopia?

Read on.

As Babies are Prescribed Pharmaceuticals, Have We Reached Dystopia?

By Joe Jarvis

Would you let a five-year-old smoke a joint? I certainly hope not. Yet that would probably be less harmful than loading kids up on pharmaceuticals.

Currently, over a million American children UNDER SIX YEARS OLD are taking psychiatric drugs. Babies are literally being doped up by the pharmaceutical industry. Over 274,000 babies UNDER ONE-YEAR-OLD are given drugs, mostly for anxiety.

Anxiety drugs for babies. Have they tried motherly love? Or is that just an old fashioned, outdated concept?

You know, I like to mention society’s similarity to Orwell’s 1984. And surely the growing police state, war on drugs, and endless military campaigns – where the enemy seems to change daily – are reminiscent of the fictional dictatorship of Big Brother.

But it seems the powers that be are working tirelessly to blend together the dystopia of 1984, with that of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

In that dystopia, there is no police state or war. Society has been perfectly designed by scientists, inspired by Ford’s assembly line. Babies are grown in the lab, cloned to all look alike, depending on their class. Parents are an embarrassing relic of the past. How silly to think a child needs family when they have the state!

The lower castes are deprived of oxygen as embryos to stunt their mental development. In America, they use fluoride in the drinking water instead.

In Brave New World, children listen to 24-hour propaganda in their cribs.

Betas hear:

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse.

White pride, black pride, gay pride, national pride. Pride is not meant for accidents of birth. You should be proud of accomplishments and achievements, not genetics and geography.

Perhaps someone has been whispering in these radicalized children’s ears.

And how jealous the Department of Education must be of the incubators of Brave New World! They have to sometimes wait years to indoctrinate children. But at least the government gets to drug them up at a young age! And if the TV is left on, most of the programming is done for them.

Of course, the adults are drugged up in Brave New World as well, just like in America. If anyone feels the least bit anxious, nervous, sad–or any other troublesome emotion–they get “soma.” It’s the perfect mix of drugs with only pleasant feelings and no ill side effects.

The 1 in 6 Americans on antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety medication still have to put up with side effects.

The 50 million plus Americans on psychiatric medication sometimes kill themselves, or go mad and kill others. I guess the government is still working out the kinks. Or it’s just another creative blending of 1984 and Brave New World. In the former, the proles must be properly terrified.

And there is one more thing I can remember from Brave New World that strikes eerily similar to modern America.

At what age does the public education system start teaching sex ed? Kindergarteners in some states receive “age appropriate” – according to the government – sexual education. Some studies suggest teen pregnancies rise in areas where sex ed is taught at younger ages.

How young is too young for a sex change? Kids can now choose between 43 genders, or make up a new one! It’s like Mr. Potato head, but with their own bodies. And they will be given corresponding drugs to enhance the “natural” changes.

In the classrooms of Brave New World:

“We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,” she answered. “But now it’s switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.”

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing…

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

Drugging the population, programming citizens with propaganda, sexualizing children, creating class divisions.

These dystopian novels were meant to be warnings, not instruction manuals.

Aldous Huxley explores how his fictional predictions progressed in his nonfiction work, Brave New World Revisited.

Bloomberg Jumps On The 'AntiFa'-Bashing Bandwagon "More In Common With Nazis Than American Ideals"

It appears Bay Area TV anchor Frank Somerville"s honest description of "the hate" he experienced from "violent, clad in black" protesters in Berkeley was the tipping point for the liberal media to turn against AntiFa en masse.

I experienced hate first hand today... It came from these people dressed in all black at a protest in Berkeley.

Ironically they were all chanting about NO hate.

Some had shields and gloves. Some had helmets. Some had gas masks.

And then, for the first time since the campaigns began late last year and protests broke out, The Washington Post unleashed this shocking headline.

That was quickly followed by The Los Angeles Times...

Then, The Atlantic...

And now, liberalist of them all, Bloomberg...

Authored by Eli Lake,

The masked "antifa" anarchists have more in common with the Tiki-torch Nazis than with American ideals.

As America feels like it"s coming apart at the seams, I have a modest proposal. The hard-right and hard-left activists who so enjoy protesting one another should meet every few weekends in a large national park and have at it.

The rest of us could begin to treat this wave of street agitation as the sideshow it is.

After all, this is not a fight for the soul of America. Neither the Tiki-torch Nazis nor the masked anarchists represent a viable American future. They are simply engaging in nostalgia, a scarier version of Civil War battle re-enactments.

Lumping them together does not equate two unequal sides. The cause of anti-fascism is noble, whereas the racists marching in Charlottesville are telling journalists like me I should be sent to the ovens. I"m not talking about the folks on the left who are nonviolent and unmasked, showing up to protest the fascists. I"m referring to the extreme wing that invites itself to these gatherings to "protect" these model citizens. Those "antifa" are something altogether different.

You may have heard of them recently. Human rights historian Mark Bray, who has recently become an unofficial spokesman for the movement, says that "its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists who reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy."

Recently this crowd has been getting some good press. No less a public intellectual than Cornel West said after Charlottesville that had it not been for antifa, "we would have been crushed like cockroaches."

Following the president"s vacillations and equivocations after that horror, a popular Twitter meme emerged comparing the antifa to the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy.

Not quite the most apt historical parallel. Zoom back to between the world wars. Most of the people who fought the fascists in Europe"s streets were themselves radical leftists. Both extremes helped to weaken already weak governments in Germany, Italy and Spain.

To get a sense of the depravity of that political moment, read George Orwell"s "Homage to Catalonia," a brilliant memoir of his time fighting in the Spanish civil war. Spoiler alert: The socialists and the fascists fighting for Spain were both authoritarians. Antifa today is the heir not to the Western allies who fought the Nazis, but rather the Soviets who bled them out on the eastern front. After the Third Reich fell, the red army turned the Eastern European states in its dominion into vassals. "Antifa" is a misnomer. It"s more like "also-fa."

This movement in the U.S. has been around for decades. Originally it confronted neo-Nazis at punk concerts and the like. Today though, antifa has become the violent vanguard of the censorious progressive "safe space" movement, in which ideas and speakers deemed offensive are equated with physical violence. It was the Berkeley chapter of antifa that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter from speaking at the college this year.

Now whatever one wants to say about those two, they are not Nazis. Indeed, the hysterical reaction to their appearances proves a point Yiannopoulos often makes, that political correctness on campus is a great menace to the principle of free speech.

Antifa"s vigilantism is dangerous in part because its aim is so poor. We can all agree in the abstract to oppose Nazis and other assorted fascists. The disagreement arises in labeling who"s a fascist. So far antifa has shown little discernment in this respect.

Many antifa activists showed up at Trump rallies, where presumably everyone supporting him was lumped in with the Nazis and Klansmen. Antifa activists this month clashed with the police at a rally in Boston, which was ironically called to support "free speech." It"s true that some of the speakers invited to this event were reactionaries. But the rally was open to people of all political stripes to support the idea that in America we are free to assemble and say what we wish.

So if any neo-Nazis or antifa activists are reading this, please agree on a schedule and demonstrate against one another far away from the rest of us. I recommend Yellowstone National Park. I promise to get the word out to the media to cover these events with the same seriousness we reserve for Renaissance fairs and Star Trek conventions.

*  *  *

Anyone who’s been paying attention has been presented with many examples of Antifa’s violent thuggery. Now, it’s almost encouraging to hear that the MSM at least has enough sense not to fall on its sword protecting a bunch of violent, embittered hoodlums.

So that"s four mainstream liberal media outlets decrying AntiFa... did they just admit - ever so sheepishly - that President Trump was right? There are "bad people" on both sides?!