I come here with a precise idea: The Ppl, The Poor, & The Wealthy.
How do they articulate? What is "The People"? What is "The Poor"? We all know what "The Wealthy" is, in this context, I think.
How do they articulate? What is "The People"? What is "The Poor"? We all know what "The Wealthy" is, in this context, I think.
I had been reading Orwell's diary and, in it, he says many things which most might be surprised to learn that he thought. I'm not surprised.
I was thinking of poverty and "the poor", about how perhaps the one thing which distinguishes "The Poor" from everyone else is how they receive language, more than anything else. Vocabulary words and syntactical constructions. Orwell discusses this in a very short way, reporting something his wife said about how ppl hear elaborate 'upper English' in gov't and galvanizing speeches, where most of the words are perfectly unknown to most ppl. This stayed in my memory and it won't leave.
Also, it is pretty clear to me, more than ever, that the only ppl who feel patriotic tend to be of a lower socio-economiClass. The rich usually only use the idea of patriotism (when it is to their advantage) but they themselves don't seem to experience the sentiment of pride in one's country (in sport or elsewhere). Their country is the country of privilege which they must keep at any price, be it against their own compatriots & at the expense of sovereignty.
Whoever is ruling, the rich be on that side, if the ruler doesn't challenge their privileges. Off soil, disconnected from any land and any culture now, from history and the people who made it, from Language, from even Art; from cuisine, traditions, customs, and values. The Rich are International-ized. They're mobile in a way no one else is, in a way no other class has ever been before, except perhaps when it comes to being buried when dead.
Yes: there is still something in common among the dead.
The Poor are the ppl who make and defend a country, a nation even more so, in the
end. They're the ones who not only believe but also embody the nation when the time comes. No draft-dodging, no favour-calling there.
Then:
They keep the language fresh, styles renovated, in most fields; businesses flowing, customs alive.
They are, at the same time, manipulated by patriotic rhetoric when it comes from the rulers, as well as the substance which sustains the very reality of a nation, day-to-day.
They endure the bad decisions made by the patricians, which "usually always" lead to war which get The Poor themselves killed first, on either, on any, side, and when the plans made by The Wise Rulers fail, as they often do (depending on whose perspective we're looking from...), The Poor are there to pick up the pieces of the country and rebuild it. This is the perennity of a nation. No matter which one it is.
Yes, in this sense, only The Poor make The People.
Of course that in a more general, daily, way, this is not true. This truth only appears when a country is in danger. Then The Poor leave their individual lives, dropping everything - wife, kids, job, social life, aspirations, hobbies - and go save the nation from the hands of (usually) foreign power (they're not so good at saving it from the hands of domestic tyrants, oddly).
George Orwell is powerful because, among other reasons, he did not start out as The Poor, but lived down his aristocretinousness into poverty. His gentility didn't prevail in his mind, he saw through the aristocretins' amoral and stateless self-interest. The Good Ol' Boys' club. It doesn't matter what form the gov't takes so long as the aristocracy can continue to play cricket in white on Sundays drinking tea & eating crustless cucumber sandwiches. Or eating oatmeal in a State office while the world crumbles. The Aristocretinous will not see a major change in their lives.
And if they were still the moral and aesthetic landmark they once were! Oh, then things wouldn't be nearly so bad. Gone are the days when rulers put their own noble asses on the line, before ANY soldier! OH, gone, terribly gone, are the days when real princes were first in battle.
Now, then, the contempt the rich have for the poor comes from looking in the mirror and seeing total vampirical uselessness. Their own parasitical, cultureless, redundancy.
Yet I am aware that
Then:
They keep the language fresh, styles renovated, in most fields; businesses flowing, customs alive.
They are, at the same time, manipulated by patriotic rhetoric when it comes from the rulers, as well as the substance which sustains the very reality of a nation, day-to-day.
They endure the bad decisions made by the patricians, which "usually always" lead to war which get The Poor themselves killed first, on either, on any, side, and when the plans made by The Wise Rulers fail, as they often do (depending on whose perspective we're looking from...), The Poor are there to pick up the pieces of the country and rebuild it. This is the perennity of a nation. No matter which one it is.
Yes, in this sense, only The Poor make The People.
Of course that in a more general, daily, way, this is not true. This truth only appears when a country is in danger. Then The Poor leave their individual lives, dropping everything - wife, kids, job, social life, aspirations, hobbies - and go save the nation from the hands of (usually) foreign power (they're not so good at saving it from the hands of domestic tyrants, oddly).
George Orwell is powerful because, among other reasons, he did not start out as The Poor, but lived down his aristocretinousness into poverty. His gentility didn't prevail in his mind, he saw through the aristocretins' amoral and stateless self-interest. The Good Ol' Boys' club. It doesn't matter what form the gov't takes so long as the aristocracy can continue to play cricket in white on Sundays drinking tea & eating crustless cucumber sandwiches. Or eating oatmeal in a State office while the world crumbles. The Aristocretinous will not see a major change in their lives.
And if they were still the moral and aesthetic landmark they once were! Oh, then things wouldn't be nearly so bad. Gone are the days when rulers put their own noble asses on the line, before ANY soldier! OH, gone, terribly gone, are the days when real princes were first in battle.
Now, then, the contempt the rich have for the poor comes from looking in the mirror and seeing total vampirical uselessness. Their own parasitical, cultureless, redundancy.
Yet I am aware that
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