Word of the Day: Confabulate

To fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for the loss of memory.

 

Source: Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2^nd edition (2004)

Read Orwell. It’s called Fascism. We’ve seen it before

When I was about 5 years old, I believed I could control the weather.  Each day I would enter the clothes closet off my bedroom where I had an upside-down cardboard box with plastic knobs and other thingamajigs inserted into it. Depending on the weather I wanted for the day, I would turn the knobs this way and that.  If I didn’t like these predictions, I would take a reverse course of action, twisting the other way.  As you can imagine, climate change was nowhere near my radar – or anyone else’s for that matter -- so it was an easy job dealing with my imaginary daily task at hand.

Not so nowadays. I am glad nothing became of my early interest in meteorology, because I am not fond of death threats.  The absurdity of Trump and company falsely accusing meteorologists - and even President Biden - of conspiracies to manipulate the weather is mind boggling. That hurricane Helene pummeled six states is fact.  That hurricane Milton pounded Florida is also fact. (Sidenote: Hurricanes are identified by a list of given names – not surnames, so there is no hidden reference to John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”).  That man-made greenhouse gases cause climate change and are behind the increase in power and frequency of such hurricanes is also fact.  Apparently for Trump and fellow retroactive clowns, there is no “truth”, which, if you read Orwell, puts him in the same league with Fascists.  Again, if you read Orwell below, you will see that he too was familiar with the idea of ‘weather decrees’ (but not climate change).  Reading Orwell even further suggests a possible affinity, in his mind, between Fascism and ancient slavery.

I know that it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway.  I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.  In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that “the facts” existed and were more or less discoverable.  And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone.  If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources.  A British and German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even in fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other.  It is just this common basis of agreement that such a thing as “the truth” exists.  There is, for instance, no such thing as “science”.  There is only “German science”, “Jewish science” etc.  The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past.  If the Leader says of such and such event, “It never happened” – well, it never happened.  If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.  This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.

But is it perhaps childish or morbid to terrify oneself with visions of a totalitarian future?  Before writing off the totalitarian world as a nightmare that can’t come true, just remember that in 1925 the world of today would have seemed a nightmare that couldn’t come true.  Against the shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree, you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it in ways that impair military efficiency.  The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.  Let Fascism, or possibly even a combination of several Fascisms, conquer the whole world, and those two conditions no longer exist.  We in England underrate the danger of this kind of thing, because our traditions and past security have given us a sentimental belief that it all comes right in the end and the thing that you most fear never really happens.  Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run.  Pacifism, for instance, is founded largely on this belief.  Don’t resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself.  But why should it?  What evidence is there that it does?  And what instance is there of a modern industrialized state collapsing unless conquered from the outside by military force?

Consider for instance the re-institution of slavery.  Who could have imagined twenty years ago that slavery would return to Europe?  Well, slavery has been restored under our noses.  The forced-labour camps all over Europe and North Africa where Poles, Russians, Jews, and political prisoners of every race toil at road-making or swamp-draining for their bare rations, are simply chattel slavery.  The most one can say is that the buying and selling of slaves by individuals is not yet permitted.  In other ways – the breaking up of families, for instance –the conditions are probably worse than they were on the American cotton plantations.  There is no need for thinking that this state of affairs will change while any totalitarian domination endures.  We don’t grasp its full implications, because in our mystical way we feel that a régime founded on slavery must collapse.  But it is worth comparing the duration of the slave empires of antiquity with that of any modern state.  Civilizations founded on slavery have lasted for such periods as four thousand years.

When I think of antiquity, the detail that frightens me is that those hundreds of millions of slaves on whose backs civilization rested generation after generation have left behind them no record what-ever.  We do not even know their names.  In the whole of Greek and Roman history, how many slaves’ names are known to you?  I can think of two, or possibly three.  One is Spartacus and the other is Epictetus.  Also in the Roman room at the British Museum there is a glass jar with the maker’s name inscribed on the bottom, “Felix fecit”.  I have a vivid mental picture of poor Felix (a Gaul with red hair and a metal collar round his neck), but in fact he may not have been a slave; so there are only two slaves whose names I definitely know, and probably few people can remember more.  The rest have gone into utter silence.[1]

George Orwell, My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943 (1968)

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[1] George Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 4 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 258-260.

Trump Thumps “God Bless the USA” Bibles printed in China

Thousands of copies of Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA” Bible were printed in a country that the former president has repeatedly accused of stealing American jobs and engaging in unfair trade practices: China.

Global trade records reviewed by The Associated Press show a printing company in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou shipped close to 120,000 of the Bibles to the United States earlier this year.

The estimated value of the three separate shipments was $342,000, or less than $3 per Bible, according to databases that track exports and imports. The minimum price for the Trump-backed Bible is $59.99, putting the potential sales revenue at about $7 million.

The Trump Bible’s connection to China reveals a deep divide between the former president’s harsh anti-China rhetoric and his efforts to raise cash while campaigning.

The Trump campaign did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment.

In a March 26 video posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump announced a partnership with country singer Lee Greenwood to hawk the Bibles, inspired by Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” hit song.

In the video, Trump blended religion with his campaign message as he urged viewers to buy the Bible, which includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance.

“This Bible is a reminder that the biggest thing we have to bring back in America, and to make America great again, is our religion,” Trump said.

Trump didn’t say where the “God Bless the USA” Bibles are printed, what they cost or how much he earns per sale. A version of the $59.99 Bible memorializes the July 13 assassination attempt on the former president in Pennsylvania. Trump’s name is stamped on the cover above the phrase, “The Day God Intervened.”

The Bibles are sold exclusively through a website that states it is not affiliated with any political campaign nor is it owned or controlled by Trump.

The website states that Trump’s name and image are used under a paid license from CIC Ventures, a company Trump reported owning in a financial disclosure released in August. CIC Ventures earned $300,000 in Bible sales royalties, according to the disclosure. It’s unclear if Trump has received additional payments.

AP received no response to questions sent to the Bible website and to a publicist for Greenwood.

For years, Trump has castigated Beijing as an obstacle to America’s economic success, slapping hefty tariffs on Chinese imports while president and threatening even more stringent measures if he’s elected again. He blamed China for the COVID-19 outbreak and recently suggested, without evidence, that Chinese immigrants are flooding the U.S. to build an “army” and attack America.

But Trump also has an eye on his personal finances. Pitching Bibles is one of a dizzying number of for-profit ventures he’s launched or promoted, including diamond-encrusted watches, sneakers, photo books, cryptocurrency and digital trading cards.

The web of enterprises has stoked conflict of interest concerns. Selling products at prices that exceed their value may be considered a campaign contribution, said Claire Finkelstein, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“You have to assume that everything that the individual does is being done as a candidate and so that any money that flows through to him benefits him as a candidate,” Finkelstein said. “Suppose Vladimir Putin were to buy a Trump watch. Is that a campaign finance violation? I would think so.”

There’s a potentially lucrative opportunity for Trump to sell 55,000 of the Bibles to Oklahoma after the state’s education department ordered public schools to incorporate Scripture into lessons. Oklahoma plans to buy Bibles that initially matched Trump’s edition: a King James Version that contains the U.S. founding documents. The request was revised Monday to allow the U.S. historical documents to be bound with the Bible or provided separately.

The first delivery of Trump Bibles was labeled “God Bless USA,” according to the information from the Panjiva and Import Genius databases. The other two were described as “Bibles.” All the books were shipped by New Ade Cultural Media, a printing company in Hangzhou, to Freedom Park Design, a company in Alabama that databases identified as the importer of the Bibles.

Tammy Tang, a sales representative for New Ade, told AP all three shipments were “God Bless the USA” Bibles. She said New Ade received the orders from Freedom Park Design via the WhatsApp messaging service. The books were printed on presses near the company’s office, she said.

Freedom Park Design was incorporated in Florida on March 1. An aspiring country singer named Jared Ashley is the company’s president. He also co-founded 16 Creative, a marketing firm that uses the same Gulf Shores address and processes online orders for branded merchandise.

Ashley hung up on a reporter who called to ask about the Bibles. Greenwood is a client of 16 Creative, according to the firm’s website. He launched the American-flag emblazoned Bible in 2021.

Religious scholars have denounced the merger of Scripture and government documents as a “toxic mix” that would fuel Christian nationalism, a movement that fuses American and Christian values, symbols and identity and seeks to privilege Christianity in public life. Other critics have called the Trump Bible blasphemous.

Tim Wildsmith, a Baptist minister who reviews Bibles on his YouTube channel, said he quickly noticed the signs of a cheaply made book when his “God Bless the USA” Bible arrived in the mail.

It had a faux leather cover, and words were jammed together on the pages, making it hard to read. He also found sticky pages that ripped when pulled apart, and there was no copyright page or information about who printed the Bible, or where.

“I was shocked by how poor the quality of it was,” Wildsmith said. “It says to me that it’s more about the love of money than it is the love of our country.”

Source: Richard Lardner and Dake Kang, authors with Associated Press. Available online PBS News October 9, 2024.

J.D. Vance: “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

 

Pierre Poilievre on a Trip: “Canada. Our Home”

This video includes scenes from the US, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Indonesia, a park in London, and two Russian fighter jets.

Source: The Guardian online, Tuesday 20 August, 2024.

                                            

The Canadian preference for a “loaded silence”

At the very least, one thinks, we should now have acquired a little self-knowledge.  But self-knowledge does not come from study alone.  It comes from a knowledge of history, from self-examination and from open and vigorous debate, a candid exchange of opposing points of view.  Too often in this country we gravitate towards the superficial, and so polls that claim to take our measure can still surprise and dismay us.  We are suspicious of debate, anxious about the truths they might reveal.  We prefer regulation, the imposition of legal barriers, in our pursuit of peace, order and good government.  We prefer, then, a loaded silence.[1]

Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions (1994)

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[1] Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), p. 3.

Is she Indian, or is she Black? Was Trump confusing Kamala Harris with Nikki Haley?