The First Casualty of Relativistic Society is Truth.

More specifically, the first casualty is truth to power. When the concept of good and evil is brushed aside as the product of weak and/or inferior minds, it provides fertile ground for the emerging of very power-hungry and corrupt leaders. Truth becomes subservient to power, and as George Orwell said, “History is something to be created rather than learned.” In other words, the powerful, in the absence of objective truth, create it, and the scariest part is that our leaders are so confident in their powerful positions, they all too readily, confess.

" [He] said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. [...] That’s not the way the world really works anymore. continued. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” -- Karl Rove to Ron Suskind in New York Times Magazine on October 17, 2004

We've already seen some of the most brutal regimes spring forth throughout the twentieth century--the darkest century in history. In less than 30-years’ time, these totalitarian regimes brought about two devastatingly bloody world wars. Yet, as we begin the twenty-first century, moral relativism ( the notion that there is no objective moral truth, no right or wrong) reigns supreme, rendering evil's very existence as subjective.

In a culture or society that claims there is no absolute truth, our leaders can use his Noble Peace Prize win as a platform for making the case for war as President Obama did when he told his speechwriters,  "he intended to use the acceptance speech to make the case for war."  But those who would claim this is morally wrong are dismissed as rigid, fundamentalist, judgmental, and/or intolerant. In fact, tolerance is the only "moral" claim that one can make without being slapped with the aforementioned labels. Of course, President Obama is not the first, nor the last leader to twist the truth into whatever he wants it to be.

So war is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery. This is what our leaders are telling us, and we accept it as "truth".  Therefore, war, technological advances, profit, or really anything created  at the expense of nature and mankind is just fine.

Granted, those who are easily seduced by the prospect of wealth and power, and who lack conscience naturally gravitate toward leadership positions, and that's why it's our job to hold those people accountable. But to what? If there are no absolutes.

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. [George Orwell, 1984, Part 1, Chapter 3.]

The secret of their success? How U.S. leaders from JFK to Roosevelt and George W Bush share character traits with psychopaths

A character trait in psychopaths has been identified by scientists as a common thread in successful US presidents.

Fearless dominance, which is linked to less social and physical apprehensiveness, boosts leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management and congressional relations, according to new research.

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Discerning Truth in a Hux-Orwellian World.

We've never had so many options to choose from. Yet, despite the hundreds of cable channels, 24/7 "news", countless magazines, and the availability of the Internet, etc., the average person is less informed than ever before. Why is this the case? Well, for one, the choices aren't real; it's an illusion of choice.   Why? Because all of these choices are controlled by five or six ginormous multinational corporations that put out the same propaganda in slightly different packages.  All style and no substance.

There is an all-out effort to change the meanings of words, if not eliminate certain words entirely...or create new ones to facilitate the political/capitalist/corporate agenda. The broadcast-controllers subtly, or not so subtly, rework the definition of a word, until it means the exact opposite of its original meaning.

“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.” -George Orwell

Demonizing a word is another tactic of our Orwellian leadership, because it very effectively shuts down further exploration of issues and/or controversial subjects.

Take the word, conspiracy, for example. This effort to equate the word conspiracy with lunacy can be traced back at least as far as the JFK assassination, maybe even further. The definition of conspiracy is: an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act. Uh...hello? This isn't happening in the highest corridors of the power structure that leads us astray? Must not be, if people's reactions to this despised word are any indication.

Nope. Despite the fact that 90% of our politicians are playing the game exclusively to line their pockets and secure their personal future. And it's almost always at the expense of these very same people, who look at you as if they want to set you on a fast-track to a lobotomy, for daring to suggest that the power-hungry, greedy leaders may be, indeed, conspiring. Yet, at the same time, most people will readily admit that the power elite are plundering the till with impunity.

Okay, so all of these politicians, world leaders, corporate leaders and banksters...they all act completely alone, without consulting with anyone else?  And it's all just one big coincidence that these independently acting individuals produce results that are excessively advantageous to one infinitesimally small group of people, time after time?  It would seem to me that the near-clockwork precision of a very well organized group would be required to achieve what appears to be near perfect results. If you doubt it, just compare and contrast their ever-growing wealth and power to that of the average American citizen.

Not only do they control the money, they control the language, which is the ultimate control of other people's thoughts.  When you combine the  manipulation of our language, and the suppression and twisting of information , with total control of the money supply, it ensures a constant state of mass confusion necessary to create a Hux-Orwellian world where war is peace. Ignorance is strength, and freedom is slavery.

This is Orwell's world.  Although the Huxley carrot is still dangling - here in the United States, anyway - the Orwellian stick is becoming more prominent every day. The over-abundant trinkets, trivia, and encouragement of mindless consumption serve to divert our attention away from the colossal surveillance society that is manifesting right before our distracted eyes.

In a nutshell, 2 + 2 no longer = 4. It's the annihilation of an objective reality through the alteration of everyday thought and language.

 Aldous Huxley v. George Orwell.

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This is the Hypocrisy We Should Tune In.

Eliot Spitzer may be hypocritical but his hypocrisy cannot compare to the duplicitous way we impose further punishment on the young men we flaunt our patriotism for...whose lives, in so many cases, will not only never be the same, but whose dreams for the future were obliterated.

One day people will look back at the way we draped ourselves in "red, white and blue", chastising anyone who didn’t chant "We Support our Troops," just like the sheep who chanted "Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good" in George Orwell's Animal Farm, and then take a look at the way those who served this country were treated and they will see the blatant hypocrisy and willful ignorance of a nation distracted by an over abundance of everything.

According to The Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, the soldiers, we glibly "honor" with dollar store "patriotism", have to wait, at the very least six months, or should something go wrong during these unnecessary procedures and red tape, up to two years to qualify for Veterans’ benefits. This dereliction of duty occurs because as soon as the soldier is discharged from the military, he immediately loses all of his benefits, no matter how severe his injuries. It makes no difference whether the soldiers are severely wounded or not, they must be processed through the archaic paper based system, still in existence thanks to tax cuts for those who need an entire staff to track their wealth, in an effort to prove themselves worthy of receiving any compensation for the wounds sustained abroad.

The burden is placed entirely on the veteran, who has already trudged through places and experienced things most of us only see in our nightmares, to prove he deserves benefits. The presumption is that whatever the veteran is claiming is wrong with him is not therefore he must gather all the documentation, doctor’s notices, all of the hospital forms and all the things from all the different places to prove he is indeed injured and in need of care, even though prior to his discharge from the military, his condition was already confirmed.

We should presume the veteran is entitled to his benefits and it is up to the government to prove why not. Our tax system is set up in such a way that the burden is on the government to prove that what we're presenting as true, is false, by auditing a small subset of taxpayers, in hopes that that will be enough to prevent people from cheating the system.

Many of us are ignorant of the way soldiers are treated once they return home, however that is no excuse, because it is our duty as citizens to make sure those we send into battle are at the very least taken care of without delay or made to endure further trauma.

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