Wednesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Happy hump day Deplorables, we’re halfway there…

The Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No Longer Fiction

By John W. Whitehead

“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.

It’s been 70 years since Orwell—dying, beset by fever and bloody coughing fits, and driven to warn against the rise of a society in which rampant abuse of power and mass manipulation are the norm—depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in 1984.

Who could have predicted that 70 years after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.

“To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!”—George Orwell

1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”

We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”―George Orwell

Much like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley’s A Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.” Much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Mixing Kids With Drag Queens Sets Gay Rights Back Decades

Via The Federalist

When LGBT activists argue their goal is to introduce preschool-aged children to concepts of gender-fluidity and openly “queer” people, they are arguing for forcing leftist views about sexuality and gender on children. That, in many ways, is what the conservative opposition is truly about.

We do not want kids to be confused by a culture that cannot decide if drag queens are positive expressions of queer identity or a transphobic mockery of gender identity. We do not want kids to be pushed into believing their childhood exploration of identity is evidence they must change everything about themselves. We don’t want kids to look up to adult men dressed as sexualized caricatures of women and believe this is, indeed, normal or respectful towards women.

In this, the movement has lost its way. Rather than enjoy the vast and open freedom and acceptance LGBT people have in our culture, they continually believe they are entitled to push the limits. By promoting adolescent boys as drag queens and intentionally setting up events in which adult entertainers entertain children, they have reignited the fears the community spent 30 years fighting.

The majority of gay men who work as drag queens are not out to hurt kids, but LGBT activists are placing them in increasingly compromising social positions. Drag queens were never meant to be educators or entertainers to children.

Read the entire article HERE.

Most ‘meat’ in 2040 will not come from dead animals, says report

Via The Guardian

Most of the meat people eat in 2040 will not come from slaughtered animals, according to a report that predicts 60% will be either grown in vats or replaced by plant-based products that look and taste like meat.

The report by the global consultancy AT Kearney, based on expert interviews, highlights the heavy environmental impacts of conventional meat production and the concerns people have about the welfare of animals under industrial farming.

“The large-scale livestock industry is viewed by many as an unnecessary evil,” the report says. “With the advantages of novel vegan meat replacements and cultured meat over conventionally produced meat, it is only a matter of time before they capture a substantial market share.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Church Hosts Summer Camp to Train Grade School Kids to Be Antifa Activists

Via PJ Media

I’m so old I can remember when disseminating communist propaganda in public schools was frowned upon.

Last Friday afternoon, I was sitting at my computer when I received an email from Peachjar. This is a service used by several school districts near me in the Portland area that sends home digital fliers to parents in lieu of paper fliers to advertise extracurricular activities sponsored by various groups in the community. My son’s middle school uses this service, and I receive a few emails a month from them. I’ve used the service myself to send advertisements for recruiting events for Scouts, and I’ve received other fliers such as music lessons, sports teams, and the like.

This one, however, was quite different.

There’s so much wrong here it’s hard to know where to start.

The first thing that struck me, before anything else, was the mask-clad, fist-raising elementary school kids in the illustration. Teaching incoming 4th-8th-graders how to riot, become members of antifa, and join a communist revolution seems a bit much—even for Portland, Oregon. Notice the star on the mask and the raised fist. Classic imagery from the USSR, China, and other violent Marxist revolutions in the 20th century.

One might immediately think of the Brown Shirts, except that Nazis and antifa hate each other. Antifa formed in the 1930s to oppose the rise of the Nazi party and to try to bring a Marxist revolution to Germany. Rather, the imagery is eerily reminiscent of the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization, or Pioneer Youth. Lenin established this organization to replace the Boy Scouts, which he outlawed after the Bolshevik revolution.

Read the entire article HERE.

$11 Million Verdict for Gibson’s Bakery stands: Judge denies Oberlin College motion for a mistrial

Via Legal Insurrection

With the compensatory damages verdict of $11.2 million having been rendered last Friday, the parties in Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College are now into the punitive damages phase.

But in a civil trial that has gone on much longer expected, the jury never saw the courtroom today as the judge had to rule on about a half-dozen motions filed by Oberlin College.

The motions sought to restrict the information the jury could hear in the punitive phase, which could add an up to extra $22.4 million to the verdict the jury gave last week against the college and its Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo.

The motions were all filed at the last minute, and Gibson’s attorney Lee Plakas was quite angry with the tactics, calling it “a total disregard for the jury, who gets called into court again to sit it out for another day. There was plenty of time to file these, and decided without having the jury called in, but Oberlin College thinks the jury sitting and waiting is not a problem for them.”

In what might be construed as a victory for the defendants, Judge John R. Miraldi ruled that in deciding a punitive amount (if any), the jury cannot be presented with an email blasted out to alums immediately after the verdict last week. Part of the email by Donica Thomas Varner, Oberlin College’s Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, sent to thousands of alumni in the United States and around the world, said the following:

“We are disappointed with the verdict and regret that the jury did not agree with the clear evidence our team presented.” …

“Neither Oberlin College nor Dean Meredith Raimondo defamed a local business or its owners, and they never endorsed statements made by others. Rather, the College and Dr. Raimondo worked to ensure that students’ freedom of speech was protected and that the student demonstrations were safe and lawful, and they attempted to help the plaintiffs repair any harm caused by the student protests.”

The Gibson lawyers wanted to not only present the jury with the email as evidence of “malice,” but to also bring in Varner to testify via subpoena to the jury in the punitive phase. However, the judge ruled the jury would get neither the email nor the testimony of the general counsel.

Owen Rarric, an attorney for the Gibson’s, argued that the email was valid because the “jury will be deciding based on the deterrence and punishment they will exact on the school,” and that “this [email] is directly relevant to the issue of malice and the jury can determine the amount award to prevent future malicious conduct.”

Read the entire article HERE.

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