Official literature of the day: ’Ekhah (Lamentations), available at Mechon Mamre. I have also received a link to more sermons.
Today is the Ninth of ’Av, anniversary of the destruction of both Temples and numerous other tragedies in Jewish history. As such, for today’s quasi-weird thing I have reserved a particularly nightmarish classic of dystopic fiction, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is particularly relevant to today’s political situation; even though (thank God!) no country is as ultimately totalitarian as Oceania, Eurasia, or Eastasia, aspects of them appear in real life. I am particularly disturbed that many of the Arab and Muslim countries have implemented the Oceanian Party slogan “WAR IS PEACE” in the form of an unending jihad against Israel. They yell and scream about how horrible Israel is and threaten to destroy it, but all they really do is tell the UN to condemn Israel and pay Stateless Arabs (“Palestinians”) to kill themselves in ways that do nothing to impair Israel’s ability to defend itself or retaliate. Militarily, this makes no sense, but politically, jihad has been transformed from a means of conquest to a means of control. Israel is the Arab countries’ scapegoat, the alleged cause for everything wrong in the region, as much as whichever country Oceania is at war with is to blame. Though not thoroughly convincing, it is convincing enough to distract much anger away from those in power and distract non-Muslim countries from overthrowing said tyrannies (most of the time). Before I even finished writing this post, I received a comment on Tuesday’s quasi-weird thing, correctly noting that “WAR IS PEACE” is also applicable to the Bush administration concerning Iraq. I could easily say something on “ignorance is strength”, changing the past, crimestop, blackwhiting, etc. with regard to current politics, but I definitely don’t have the time for it at the moment. Go ponder.
5 comments:
You're pretty hung up on the Arab-Israel thing, aren't you?
It’s a concern I have, though clearly not the only thing worth complaining about in today’s world. You feel like grousing about other wars or slavery or disease or tyranny or anything else genuinely wrong, go ahead.
Without war, Eastasia (we have always been at war with Eastasia) would overrun our borders and we would have everywhereful destroy of Airstrip One and North America speedwise. They launch missiles at us, attack our troops, bomb us in the battlefields. To stop them from attacking us on our own lands, we must take the battle to them, foreverwise fighting to keep them there until that nearwise we defeat them. WAR IS PEACE!
Really, you're getting us all bezoomy with all that chepooka, Bolshy Bratty. I mean, you fancy the ultraviolence, but can you nachinat to pony how nadmenny and gloopy that chumblign cal is? You're not shooting anyone with your goroveeting, you grazhny, merzky starry veck! You get a pan-handle from vredding lewdies, skazat so! Otherwise stop telling raskazzes no one believes sloochats, you kopat? Now stop it or I'm going to clop your gulliver!
Alex, could you put that into English, please? I don't understand A Clockwork Orange slang.
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