Redtree Times

GC Myers- The Angst

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.

–George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism (1945)

George Orwell wrote this several years before the publication of his classic 1984 in 1949. Eighty years later, the outrages he listed are still timely. And still outrageous.

As it is with nationalism and totalitarianism, some things never change.

We can certainly add to that list. A masked secret police force with unchecked authority. A justice system stacked with rank political loyalists to protect the wealthy at all costs and punish those without the wherewithal to protect themselves. The hamstringing and intimidation of a free and independent press.

The corruption and removal of data that doesn’t fall in line with narrative of the state. And the removal of those whose task is to compile that data when they present numbers that tell a hard and uncomfortable truth and replacing them with corrupt incompetents willing to make up whatever numbers satisfy the powers that be.

And that change of moral colour applies to moral failings of all sorts as well. When it is ‘our‘ side– not mine, mind you– people now find it acceptable to turn a blind eye to the blatant lying, outright corruption, unvarnished racism and misogyny, and perhaps human trafficking and even pedophilia. All which at one time would be cause for outrage among the so-called moral majority that now worships a golden idol.

I am sorry to veer off the art track this morning, but I can’t just sit by and not at least raise my voice in protest once in a while. Surely, the outrages must seem unbearable at some point for a majority of the citizens.

As William Faulkner wrote in his 1948 novel Intruder in the Dust:

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.

It seems that if we are willing as a nation to bear the current outrages set upon us, we deserve all the shame and ruin that they will eventually produce. 

Unfortunately, many refuse to remove their blinders and will glue themselves to their team even as it leads then over the cliff. As W.H. Auden wrote:

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

 These words were written by poet W.H. Auden in the aftermath of World War II in his Pulitzer Prize winning poem The Age of Anxiety, a work that later was translated into music in the form of a highly acclaimed symphony by Leonard Bernstein and ballet by Jerome Robbins. Here is one piece, Masque, from that symphony, performed by pianist David Bar-Illan.