Hannah Arendt — The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
— Chapter 11 II: Totalitarian Organizations, page 386 Harvest book 1968
George Orwell 1984 Part One Chapter 7
““The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
[...]
6079 Smith W, Writing in his diary
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
George W Bush — Bob Woodward (November 19, 2002). Bush at War. Simon & Schuster. pp. 145–6. ISBN 978-0743204736.
"I'm the commander, see. I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."[22]
Donald Trump 2018
“Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
I am sure that if I look enough I will find a quote from Reagan that will fit right in but I will leave that for others. I have spent the last 41 years watching and listening to the Republican party morph into the inner party of Big Brother. I have read others opinions and writings that have also done so, some during the time of the Reagan Regime, and it’s heavy use of Doublespeak, as noted through Quarterly Review of Doublespeak originally sponsored by The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
During the time following, when they had pointed out that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, were working with folks in the Reagan Regime to create an American Disinformation campaign by accepting “news article straight from the White house, without noting that said pieces were not done by reporters but the White house Press Office.
Too often, when it was noted just how close the Reagan/Bush admin, and then later the Bush Admin were coming to in their efforts to appear like the inner party of the Big Brother, as the republican party worked to find another puppet to put on the seat of the power, there were be the inevitable “No, it can’t happen here, there are too many safeguards”. When asked ‘What safe guards, and where are they” the return answer would ‘they are there, because it has never happened before, therefore they are in place.”
Lately some folks have come to see the very close resemblance of the Current Republican Party (Note: My Father, Father in law, Grandfather-in-law and Brother were/are Republican. My Father and Father-in-law would not support the Current leaders in their current mode of being the party of Donald Trump.
So somene mentioned that maybe we could get a diary started, which explains (at least we think it does) why we are seeing the party morph like the Stay-puft Marsh-mellow guy like in Ghostbusters. into this dangerous regime that is bent on taking the power, for the sake of power, pure and simple.
Of late, they are working hard to install the Former Resident of the Offal Office back into office, Why we have to ask?
I say Look once more to Hannah Arendt book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” Chapter 11, II Totalitarian Organization.
It is this freedom from the content of their own ideologies which characterizes the highest rank of the totalitarian hierarchy. These men consider everything and everybody in terms of organization, and this includes the Leader who to them is neither an inspired talisman nor the one who is infallibly right, but the simple consequence of this type of organization; he is needed, not as a person, but as a function, and as such he is indispensable to the movement. In contrast, however, to other despotic forms of government, where frequently a clique rules and the despot plays only the representative role of a puppet ruler, totalitarian leaders are actually free to do whatever they please and can count on the loyalty of their entourage even if they choose to murder them. The more technical reason for this suicidal loyalty is that succession to the supreme office is not regulated by any inheritance or other laws. A successful palace revolt would have as disastrous results for the movement as a whole as a military defeat. It is in the nature of the movement that once the Leader has assumed his office, the whole organization is so absolutely identified with him that any admission of a mistake or removal from office would break the spell of infallibility which surrounds the office of the Leader and spell doom to all those connected with the movement. It is not the truthfulness of the Leader’s words but the infallibility of his actions which is the basis for the structure. Without it and in the heat of a discussion which presumes fallibility, the whole fictitious world of totalitarianism goes to pieces, overwhelmed at once by the factuality of the real world which only the movement steered in an infallibly right direction by the Leader was able to ward off.
Trump has claimed since the Election was over that he was “still in charge, he was still the officially elected leader” and he will return to the seat of power. The Reich-wing propaganda machine has spewed it over and over. Thus who are inner party members (Lindsey, Graham, Jordon, Greene, Boebart, Cotton) adhere to this, there can be no show of fallibility, and if the “Dear Leader” is displaced they are in trouble. Thus we see why they are still following him, working with him and spewing his lies, if they can ‘put Trump back into power’ this will prove the infallibility of his actions.
Or as O’Brien (1984) would say
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for A limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'
Come in take your shoes off, and stay a spell. _ Beverly Hillbillies
Welcome to my Nightmare, I think your not gonna like it, but you’ll feel right at home. — paraphrased from Alice Cooper, Welcome to my Nightmare.