Socialist Realism

During the 1930s, the big three dictatorships left no stone unturned in looking for ways to motivate the masses. They used the mass media and even art to push their agendas. Official artists of the regime created paintings, poetry, novels, and other works to promote the goals of the beloved leader.

Stalin's Soviet Union even gave this movement a style, "socialist realism." My Soviet history professor at Marshall, Professor David Woodward, referred jokingly to "boy meets tractor" stories. Boy meets tractor, boy falls in love with tractor, boy and tractor meet officially set grain quota, boy and tractor live happily ever after.

This replaced the former revolutionary style of avant garde art. What the avant garde lacked in coherence, it did make up for in individualism. Stalin was not interested in individualism, or art really. He wanted art, like everything else, to serve the state. And Stalin, like Louis XIV, believed in "L'etat c'est moi" or "I am the state."

Fast forward to last week when the National Endowment for the Arts was caught organizing the 21st century of socialist realism. The White House "Office of Public Engagement" (run by a woman named "Buffy") and others organized a conference call with other groups to outline how the National Endowment for the Arts can promote the Obama agenda. Sure they can pick from four master topics, but please help out. We know you are eager to. That is a paraphrase of what they actually said.

The hat tip goes to Big Hollywood.com Here is the link to the story.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/21/propaganda-health-care-and-acorn-full-context-of-nea-conference-call-reveals-disturbing-pattern/

The Orwell Doctrine

George Orwell's novel 1984 reflects the fears of his time, a resurgence of totalitarian regimes. The dictatorship he created was based both upon the terrifying regimes of Hitler and Stalin complete with a personality cult around the unreachable Leader named Big Brother. Totalitarian regimes love to play with words, for example the People's Republic of China was one of the main perpetrators of massacre and artificial famine in the past century. It had much to do with the power of Mao and nothing to do with helping the people.

Obama is not Mao, nor is he Hitler nor is he Stalin. However, he and his Democratic Party want to attack basic freedoms and cloak these efforts with language. The Left are itching to reenact what they call the "Fairness Doctrine."

This doctrine emerged in the late 1940s as a power assumed by the Federal Communications Commission to force radio broadcasters to grant equal time to all sides of a political issue. If enforced today, this would force a radio station to provide three hours to a liberal host if they run the Rush Limbaugh show for three hours. Local boards would be erected to ensure fair access.

It is telling that liberal presidencies and Supreme Courts have supported the concept while conservatives have opposed it. In the 1980s the Reagan Administration revoked the doctrine, citing the fact that it violated a radio station's right to free speech and also inhibited a station's right to operate in a free market. This allowed a proliferation of conservative talk shows to emerge on AM radio in the 1990s that proved popular and profitable. Meanwhile, well-funded attempts to establish liberal talk radio failed miserably. Seems that people did not want to listen to their ideas.

This attempt to squelch conservative radio is an outrage. If President Bush had used government action to silence Michael Moore or the liberal newspapers, the nation would have risen in outrage whether they agreed with the liberals' ideas or not. It's a question of free speech. Left wingers now have started feeling their power and arrogantly want to display it. It will start with the radio. Next they will come after people's guns. Then what? One shudders to think.

Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Lyndie England, Which of These Doesn't Belong?

National Geographic Channel, which now irritatingly refers to itself as "Nat Geo," will be shortly running a new special on evil people in history. Amazingly Keyser resident Lyndie England will be featured.

Let's see. Adolf Hitler murdered 12 million people because of their religion, lifestyle, and politics. Stalin murdered tens of millions because of their economic class and politics. Just this week we saw some demented man in Georgia decapitating female hikers. And Lyndie England is evil?

At worst she was unprofessional. She held a position of trust in a prisoner of war camp in Iraq. At the camp, terrorists were humiliated by being forced to be leashed and photographed. England's main offense was being in the pictures, enjoying the humiliation of these people whose lives were dedicated to blowing up women, children, and US soldiers. She was a young woman in a stressful environment who made a poor choice, so therefore she is evil. Incredible.

In the hands of the media, concepts most people take for granted get skewed. Any form of psychological pressure gets redefined as "torture." Torture is something we generally see as negative. There is a huge difference between US interrogators wiping red ink that they claim is menstrual blood on prisoners to get them to talk and when the Soviet CHEKA peeled skin off people's arms and fed priests feet first into crematoriums. Liberals love to try and establish moral equivalence to confuse the issue. This television program seeks to establish moral equivalence between unprofessional behavior in our army and the worst in human history. They hate the army and its missions. This is how they discredit it.

Of course this "evil" woman now has paid her debt to society. She now is a productive member of the Keyser community, having joined its Board of Parks and Recreation last year. I suppose she is hatching her plans of world domination using that base. Today North End Park, tomorrow the world.

Another ridiculous example of the liberal media pushing its agenda.