Reality Check

[greywolf]

I save newsclippings.
I also make notes on things of interest.

Times happen that I hear a "fact" cited which is in variance with my newsclipping and I visit a "news" organization's website to confirm my clipping.

Half a dozen times, the story on the website matches the "fact" cited although my news clipping is quite different.

I cannot ascribe this to an Orwellian re-writing of history, as too many
people swear their memories are clear (in agreement with what I consider a 'revised' story)
With people looking at my clippings, (in one case an encyclopedia)
and telling me I must have had a fake printed up;
It leaves me to wonder if I have retained something from an alternate reality.

A really wierd explanation of this is by a guy I personally consider nuts, who is sometimes on Art Bell.
(Wayne Green)

He says that if you consider the cave paintings and ancient rock carvings, medieval paintings, modern photos...
and notice they all show the same pattern flying discs (UFOs)
Then consider that no technology remains unchanged throughout tens of thousands of years;
That they must be time machines.
One model thus shows in many time frames as the first thing upon inventing a time machine is to go back and record history.

His thesis is that any changes to the continum caused by their observations are cleaned up by the "men-in-black".

That might explain why things change, but not why I retain the rogue copy of the origional, newsprint, or why I retain a clear memory of the origional events.
Other Orwell fans might note that I often fail to agree with the Newspeak version of events.

Or:

Actions in our "present" can affect the "past".

(and all potential futures exist simultaneously;
we choose which one to follow in our common reality construct)

In case my Orwell references are obscure:
www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
Quote:
The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past.


Quote:
that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control.




Quote:
where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.


Half a dozen times, the story on the website matches the "fact" cited although my news clipping is quite different.

I cannot ascribe this to an Orwellian re-writing of history, as too many
people swear their memories are clear (in agreement with what I consider a 'revised' story)
With people looking at my clippings, (in one case an encyclopedia)
and telling me I must have had a fake printed up;
It leaves me to wonder if I have retained something from an alternate reality.

Our American philosopher, Rush Limbaugh (IMHO) often contradicts himself from week to week and day to day, but his devoted listeners ("dittoheads" they proudly call themselves) adjust their memories to match the new version of the past and absolutely refuse to accept any "revisionist Liberal history"

My recordings of past statements of "fact" which IMHO condradict other statements of "fact" are called (by dittoheads) 'clever editing' and 'obvious fakes'.

I cite the words of our dear President GW Bush when he criticised the hated President Clinton for US troops' Nationbuilding in Somolia,
(a mission actually initiated on Jan 6, 1992 by orders of President GHW Bush. Weeks before Clinton became President.)
Our dear President GW Bush promised in 2000 that he would never use US troops for nationbuilding.
Citizens vehemently point out to me that he said no such thing!
After all Rush Limbaugh said that "that's just a Liberal lie!"

[greywolf]

Quote:
doublethink.
To know and not to know,
to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies,
to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out,
knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them,
to use logic against logic,
to repudiate morality while laying claim to it,
to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy,
to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed,
and then promptly to forget it again:
and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. ...

Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.


"Megadittoes!" is the accepted greeting to Rush by his callers.

I once was a frequent caller, back in 1984;
When Rush was a local talk-show-host in Sacramento California.

Before he went national.

I feel I'm somehow stuck inside the Novel: "1984"

Quote:
Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify.


My newsclippings, back issues of magazines, videotapes and memory tell me one version of events, and the evening news, network "Special Reports" and History Channel,
so often tell a different version of events.

Quote:
It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, The Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones.


My videotape of our dear President, at a local school on 911;
For example, shows his being told about the WTC airplane crashes,
and then sitting quietly on stage for about 20 minutes while a child finished reading a story about a goat.

Everyone now knows that our President took decisive action, speaking to the governor of New York, the Mayor of NYC and military commanders.

My videotape is clearly wrong!
Have I retained a video-recording from an alternate reality?


Quote:
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it.


As RA Heinlein wrote about in his later years;
Have I somehow fallen into the alternate reality of a novel?

On 9/11-9/12, I recorded official statements that Osama Bin-Laden was responsible for the events of 911.

Now, 'everyone knows' that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, and for that reason among others;
We had to invade Iraq!

When I try to tell people different;
they call me crazy and question my patriotism:





Quote:
war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.


In case my Orwell references are obscure:
www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/