commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2005

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... of Politics

Jan 4/05: Hmm, in his latest, Ugly Truths About Guantanamo, Richard Cohen opens the New Year -- and next week's Gonzales confirmation hearings -- with a tasteless mix of Bush, Orwell and Kafka. Downright inhospitable, it is, this treating our guests at Guantanamo to Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, and an obviously techno mix of, complains Cohen, "the wail of an infant with an incessant meow from a cat food commercial." (Didn't Fat Boy Slim do that one?) -- but Orwellian? Jeez. Cohen's blown himself an analogy:

In George Orwell's novel "1984," it was rats, as I recall, that were used to torture Winston Smith. It was not that the rats could do real physical damage; rather it was that Smith was phobic about them -- "his greatest fear, his worst nightmare" -- and so he succumbed, denounced his beliefs and even his girlfriend, and went back to his pub where he wasted his days drinking gin. This was Orwell's future, our present.

Are we this silly? First of all, not even those robed arbiters of the U.S. Constitution said we couldn't play bad music for the towel-less of Gitmo. Next, I don't for a second believe that Cohen didn't fret over 1984 in 1984 -- no fan of Ronald Reagan that Cohen. And now it's 1984 and Kafka:

 The term "Orwellian" is much abused, and back in the actual year 1984 I thought Orwell himself overrated. The essential novelist of the 20th century, I thought then, was Kafka, who realized that there is no more efficient murder weapon than what the critic George Steiner called "the lunatic logic of the bureaucracy."

Cohen's been sniffing around too much on the Left side of the street, it seems, where one finds Orwell behind every anti-Bush sticker, such as here:

Why Bush's America Feels Like Orwell's 1984

...and here, a site entirely dedicated to 1984 here, now, and everywhere (no need for bugmenot.com's passcode help on these sites):

The Orwellian Internet Watch

These, from the dedicated Bush haters. So what's Cohen's excuse? Or do I repeat myself? Thankfully, it's not just the torturous soundtracks over which Cohen resuscitates Orwell. It's cuffs and small chairs and prisoners driven to pulling hair:

...shackling detainees to a low chair for hours and hours so that one prisoner pulled out tufts of hair...

Seems shackling didn't include the hands, or was it the friendly meows of Rage and M? Heh, who am I to judge a good torture, especially when Cohen has appointed himself the judge of that.

Truly, what a panzy. Our friends at Gitmo -- these are the nuts who, as reported by the Weekly Standard (reprinted here), masturbate in front of the guards and eat their stools, and without any help from the U.S. Marines (that last was a Abu Ghraid specialty, as well: The Washington Post found that prisoners there "stockpiled their feces to throw at MPs") -- are terrorists. These are the nuts who bought into Osama's pretty world. These are terrorists, not citizens of a state, not citizens of the United States, for whom, btw, the Supreme Court has demanded due process of civilian law. So what's the matter with Richard Cohen? How does he get from "meow" to 1984?

Ya just gotta believe it, that's all. All the whacked-out internet sites I ran over researching today's comments are all about that one thing: we're wrong. If you believe it, then it is so. If you don't, or if you're willing to question things just a bit, then let it land you safely back to 2005 from 1984 -- or 1789, one of the periods after which Orwell modeled 1984. There, Richard Cohen, is something truly to fear, not Gitmo and cat noises and "shackling... to a low chair." True abuse was neither invented nor perfected by the Americans. The French had it down pat (or is it "schlap"?) in 1789:

"Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to the authority of the Tribunal would be to put yourself out of Law. As to what is dearer to you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic."
- A Tale of Two Cities

"Meow," to you, too, Cohen. I hate cats, anyway.
 

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