So just on the radio on NPR there was an interview with a congress critter. Telling us that the missile strike on Syria was about peace in the region.
Yes, “War is Peace”.
Then locally a “Freedom” caucus Republican congressman was happy about trying to remove ACA again. As usual conservatives are making efforts to have people that are getting more freedom under ACA to have less.
Yes, “Freedom is slavery”.
And then there was a report on how animal testing is distorting the ways to find cures for human diseases. With many researches acting as if the differences in Animal physiology can be ignored.
So, yeah, also “Ignorance is strength”….
Just your literary rant of the day, please add other Orwellian items, just to tell others… While we still can…
As I remember, in 1984 the TV’s had cameras so the gubbermint could monitor everyone’s activities … in reality it’s our computers that have this ability … the BIG difference is that all of us have the ability to video and record … a two-edged sword as it were … “big brother” is watching us AND we’re watching “big brother” … the so-called “little brother” effect …
Of course it can … but is it any more medicinal than peppermint tea?
The whole movement is just a cheap excuse to legalize pot … and I’m using it as an example of Orwellian Double Speak going back the other way … We the People are imposing our will on the gubbermint … and it’s catchy, lining up the terminal cancer patients …
The scientific studies have not been done to any great degree … but it’s just a plant, no more harmful than peppermint … just don’t toke and drive please …
Yes, considerably. My 87yo mother uses a salve for her sciatica and crushed vertebra, and when she feels a migraine coming on, 2-3 drops of CBD tincture under her tongue stops it in it’s tracks.
Hopefully, as it becomes more accepted studies and funds for studies will increase.
Actually, there have been studies that point to cannabis as having an effect against nausea (that is what refractory emesis means -if you think that is not important consider that there are patients that do get nausea because of a treatment and then other needed medications or food that is needed is not taken-) when a patient gets chemotherapy, and other issues: Redirect Notice (PDF)
Of course, more research is needed as even in those issues some studies are inconclusive and in issues like epilepsy marijuana is not looking to be effective. One point the study cited makes is that marijuana should be used mostly in support of other more understood medicines or as an option after other remedies are shown to not be very effective in controlling a condition.
As usual, not all people react the same to a remedy but some do show very dramatic results as a recent video of a Parkinson’s patient showed:
Who are the “many researchers” ignoring differences in animal physiology?
Or is the problem actually the news media and Google University graduates, who act as though a single small-scale study in mice proves that Substance X cures cancer?
Looking at how medical research has taken a drubbing lately this could be one factor on why most of the examples from other posters (mostly from the right) that want to disparage the whole of science are coming from medical science.
We often hear Trump or his supporters say things that are obviously false and which they must know to be false, but nevertheless say with conviction. Members of the House Science Committee say things their own ten-year old children must ridicule them for. This reminds me of doublethink
[QUOTE=George Orwell]
In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world.
…
But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.
… Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able – and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years – to arrest the course of history.
PATRIOT Act
Clear Skies Initiative
Healthy Forests Initiative
No Child Left Behind
Homeland Security, constantly referring America as “The Homeland”
Coalition of the Willing
Enhanced interrogation
Extraordinary rendition
Axis of Evil
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Kinetic action
The Obama years saw mass surveillance turn into “bulk collection.”
From what I’ve seen, Team Trump just lies as much as possible, adhering to the Russian “firehose of falsehoods” model. “Alternative facts” was an instant classic, though.
One old one still in use, beside “collateral damage,” is framing American military action as inherently stabilizing a region. The bad guys destabilize the region, American and its allies stabilize it.
