The intellectual gulag

I've been thinking lately about the meaning of the term "politically correct". In the world I grew up in (and worked in) the truth was important. Things just couldn't and didn't get done if you disregarded the facts of the matter.

This is stating the obvious - but maybe it's about time we started doing that. If any working guy paid no attention to reality, to the truth, then he wouldn't last long. He'd be up the road by the end of the week, at the latest.

In the real world, when an assertion is correct, that means that it is true. And every day, working people rely on the truth. They have to, or else they couldn't do their jobs.

If everyone ignored the truth and just pleased themselves, spoke to the wrong people about the wrong things, had products delivered to the wrong destinations, sent people to work in the wrong places, pretended invoices were paid when they were still outstanding, then they might manage to look busy, but no real work would get done, and the country would grind to a halt in a matter of days.

But according to politicians and journalists nowadays, to say that an assertion is correct does not mean that it is true. The truth no longer matters in their world. Politicians and journalists have created an alternative world - a fantasy world. Whereas in the real world, people who disregard the truth will be sacked, in their fantasy world if they disregard the fantasy and speak the truth, they will be sacked, disgraced, unemployable - their ride on the great gravy train will be over. So they lie.

They have a vested interest in lying. And like all liars, they will go to great lengths to cover up the truth. No person who chooses to live according to a system of lies is a moral person. These people will do anything, say anything, in order to prevent the truth from being spoken. They have no sense of right and wrong, no moral compass to guide them - for they have forsaken not only the truth but the very concept of truth. They are amoral. Nothing exists for them beyond their lies, and their self-interest.

Anyone daring to attack their lies is by extension, attacking their comfortable lives. And that is the one thing guaranteed to get these intellectual cowards to develop a backbone. Then they'll suddenly start to speak up and take people on - people who tell the truth (when that is precisely what they ought to be doing day in and day out, after all that is their job.)

Today in the Western world to say that an assertion is correct no longer means that a proposition is true. The word "correct" has been stripped of its meaning. Today, when someone makes an assertion that is politically correct what that means is that they've said something that is in accordance with what the establishment wants them to think. And that is all it means.

Yes, that is the world we're living in. The Orwellian nightmare has come about. Solzhenitsyn wasted his time writing The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is forgotten, and Dostoyevsky needn't have bothered writing The House of The Dead. Because we are all living in an intellectual gulag, right here and right now.

The physical bodies of Dostoyevsky's fellow prisoners were held captive, but their minds could roam free. We on the other hand can eat whatever we want, whenever we want, we can get aboard our cars and drive anywhere in the country, first thing Saturday if we feel like it, and we can fly abroad every year to sit in the sun, if we're lucky. But our consciousnesses are surrounded by barbed wire, and guards watch what we are thinking: One slip of the tongue, an Orwellian denunciation, just one instance of thoughtcrime and ladies and gentlemen, you will be up shit creek without a paddle.

This is the world we live in now.

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Tags: Orwell, 1984, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, Gulag Archipelago, Ivan Denisovich To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the Patriot's Corner. Thanks!