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“It wasn’t just a question of somebody being killed. Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it’s in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories….

“It wasn’t just a question of somebody being killed. Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it’s in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories.”

Part 2, Section 5 – Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell, Book, etext

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  • Dan Patterson June 10, 2020, 10:42 AM

    Remember baseball? Not the game so much as the atmosphere that it thrived in. I can’t help but wonder where it all went off the rails; there are many candidates and maybe the changes were always just beneath our threshold of perception so we did not remark on them. But that self-reflection is not at all convincing; something, a spell or potion or rabies, spun the events in ’68 and again this month.

    The damage and the results will lose inertia and scab over just like in the 60s. But we are to be the inheritors of a world we had little to nothing to do with corroding and now there is no game on the grass in the summer.

    No games means no fun means no contest means no winners means no losers means no one is superior to another. Why are you crying? Eat your food ration the collective has supplied for us, through their most merciful grace.

    Joy and happiness were also taken from us, or rather the freedom to be joyful and the permission to be happy. And sad too if that is what is needed; humans can be all those things at once when we are allowed. Taken from us by the smog and b.o. and bad breath spread across the states by the suddenly powerful guilt commandos demanding the happiness stop and the self-loathing commence at once.

    I hope they all enjoy their lives in the prisons they’ve built for themselves.

  • ghostsniper June 10, 2020, 11:05 AM

    Pretending the past doesn’t exist is child’s play. The past lives in each of us. Without a past there can be no future, there can only be now. Most animals are unable to gauge the consequences of their behavior and die violently as a result. That is the primary difference between animals and humans. Humans mold their future in accordance with their behavior.

  • Jewel June 10, 2020, 1:34 PM

    The mohammedans call it ‘jahiliya’ the erasing of the past. They’re really good at it, and with the modern press, any pre-islamic is simply ignored…like the ancient korans that are wildly different from today’s more ‘moderate’ less crazy koran. Unfortunately, the earth will vomit forth its secrets, and what astonishment there will be when, finally free from fear of being murdered, the Obamas, the Clintons, all the kleptocrats, they will be revealed for what they truly are. Too bad most of us won’t be alive to see it.

  • Rob De Witt June 10, 2020, 5:06 PM

    …something, a spell or potion or rabies, spun the events in ’68 and again this month.

    Here you go:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti2HiZ41C_w

  • James ONeil June 11, 2020, 11:01 AM

    Past.
    I suggest stocking up on the printed past before it’s lost.

    I’ve a late 1800s edition of The Queen Of Republics,- Or A Standard History Of The United States on my shelf, an 1884 edition of The Worlds Cyclopedia and Library of Universal Knowledge and recently added a number early 1900s ‘how tos’ from Audels to my Audels shelf. Around 60 years ago I was able to bullshit my way in to a machinist’s job with buzzwords I got out of Audels’ Engineers and Mechanics Guide and avoid damaging lathes or milling machines or loss of face or fingers by referencing those guides, learning while I worked.

    I contend that, with just the information printed in the volumes I noted above, once could, from scratch, rebuild a civilization to the early 20th century level.

    Now, while the weather’s still a bit cool, I think I’ll go out, fire up my forge I made from a section of an old oil drum, and hammer out a set of tongs from some discarded rebar.

    By the way; while I do have an electric blower I built attached to my forge and while I’m now firing with coal, if the fit hits the shand and I become (electrically) powerless, I’ve a hand operated blower I can attach and I can make around a hundred pounds of charcoal from three hundred pounds of wood.

  • Dan Patterson June 12, 2020, 4:41 AM

    Rob De Witt:
    That pretty well explains it. The players and uniforms are different but the game is the same.

  • Fuel Filter June 12, 2020, 6:58 AM

    To Dan P.

    My Gawd…how I miss baseball. And my Dodgers.

    (and Formula 1 for that matter. And Fuck football. Let them and Goodall all rot in bankruptcy hell.)