Brave New World is one of my favorite books because it got so much right. In fact, it got so much right that both sides of the ruling class pretend it was never written. Instead they prefer Orwell to be their bogeyman. The Left says the Right harbors fantasies about Hitler and Right says the Left is dreaming of Stalin or Mao.
The truth is Orwell was mostly wrong about the future. He made some keen observations about his fellow ideologues, but only incidentally. I don’t think he ever understood that his brand of utopianism could only lead to madness. I’m not an Orwell scholar so I’ll accept correction on that point, but that is my impression.
The one thing I think Huxley got wrong, however, is that bounty always contains the seeds of destruction. Good times lead to careless risk taking and negligence. Before long, the whole thing comes unraveled. A world where human want is eliminated will eventually implode when some lunatics get control of the levers of power and they will because everyone will be too fat, dumb and happy to notice.
This story is a reminder of that truth.
A commuter wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a “well-known” actress after brushing past her at a train station has spoken of how “half a second turned into a year of hell”.
Mark Pearson said he felt like he had “undergone a form of mental torture sanctioned by the state” after he was charged over the alleged incident at Waterloo station in December 2014.
CCTV footage showed the 51-year-old walking through the station holding a newspaper in his left hand and with his right hand on his bag strap when he brushes past the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The alleged victim later told police he had “penetrated” her and hit her on the shoulder – although footage showing he had never broken his stride.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were found to have deliberately slowed down the footage, which made it appear Mr Pearson had more time to assault the alleged victim.
Amazingly, there’s no indication in this story that anyone is angry that the police framed an innocent man by manufacturing evidence.
Mr Pearson’s defence barrister Mark Bagshaw explained the footage had been slowed down from one frame per second to one frame per two seconds.
Again, look at how casually this is reported, as if it is just standard procedure.
There were no witnesses or forensic evidence.
A jury took just 90 minutes for jurors to clear Mr Pearson of any wrongdoing at his trial at Blackfriars Crown Court.
Speaking BBC Radio Five Live, the married picture-framer called the charges “preposterous” and said “anyone who has seen the CCTV images knows that I couldn’t possibly have done it”.
He said in court: “It is against everything I believe in as a human being. I did nothing. I would have had to crouch down, put my hand up the woman’s skirt … penetrate her, take my hand out again … all while holding the newspaper and walking along the concourse.”
“For me, half a second turned into a year of hell. I feel I have undergone a form of mental torture sanctioned by the state.”
Mr Pearson, who says he now suffers from anxiety, said he spent a year defending himself in and out of court.
He said whenever he told people he was innocent he would feel they were thinking “of course you would say that”.
The CPS defended its decision to take the case to trial, saying in a statement: “There was sufficient evidence for this case to proceed to court and progress to trial. We respect the decision of the jury.”
The short version is we have a collection of pussies at the police department too afraid of the social justice warriors to do their jobs. Instead, they frame innocent men, fobbing off the responsibility on the juries. The process, however, is a terrible punishment for people like the victim in this case, just so the pussies in the police department can hide from the mean girls.
This is why Europe is succumbing to what amounts to a flash mob of cab drivers and carpet salesmen pouring in from the Middle East. These illiterate young men may not have much on the ball between the ears, but they can spot a bunch of feckless pussies when they see them. If the cops can’t stand up to some screeching man-hating harpy, making ridiculous accusations, how in the hell can they stand up to young men willing to use violence? They can’t, which why we are seeing what we are seeing.
That’s the flaw in the Huxley model. To get to and maintain the Brave New World, you need people willing to use violence, if necessary, to preserve order. Once a society gets rich enough to dream of the custodial state, it gets too soft and stupid to implement it. Right now, it seems like the only thing keeping order is cultural inertia. The migrant waves are making clear that the big burly custodial state is really a paper tiger.
This is straight out of HG Wells. Eloi vs. Moorlock.
Her story reminds me of the bit on Portlandia about the feminist bookshop and the air conditioner repairman…..
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I have seen enough Japanese tentacle “documentaries” to know this fellow is probably some kind of demon, sent from either deep space, or the underworld. For such a creature it would be child’s play to digitally (tentacley?) violate this poor woman in ways a normal human could not. Occam’s razor my friends.
This whole case can be explained pretty simply. The law enforcement system has devolved into an apparatus that protects a psychopathic elite against normal, healthy human beings. This actress is obviously part of that psychopathic elite; therefore, law enforcement must act on her behalf. Remember that pyschopaths are people who are devoid of empathy, utterly selfish, and disconnected from reality. It just makes sense that those whose livelihoods depend on protecting them start adopting the same behaviors. The CCTV cameras that recorded the incident are reflective of reality, but reality is irrelevant and ignored; therefore, the case proceeds.
It’s also worth asking just how nuts that actress had to be. Given that she didn’t know him and her name hasn’t been released, one supposes she really felt she’d been penetrated.
What was that about “we must always believe ‘victims'”?
And yes, it’s because the Western world has had such a good experience with democracy that people don’t riot. Democracy on the one hand, and a good justice system on the other mean there’s no need for mob rule. We’re used to things working out. How about when both of these systems break down? If people can’t trust the police and can’t trust the state, civility goes out the window.
It’s coming: Zone Seven: http://jlepore.fineartstudioonline.com/blog/99934/zone-seven
What on earth motivated this woman to pursue the prosecution of this man? What causes her to make up such a fallacious and crude story? If it weren’t for the police state cameras, he might be in prison now and being penetrated himself. I travel on high-volume commuter transport and I am aware that if some psycho targeted me for harassment, I could end up wrecked.
She obviously has some mental problems. I suppose she really felt penetrated and even though she couldn’t figure out just how he did it, she felt she must be right. Were she led by malice, she’d have dropped the case the moment she saw footage exists. For all I know, those women who ‘remember’ being anally probed by aliens mean it.
The ethos of ‘we must always stand against rape’ led to extremists who claimed that because rape is so sacrilegious, we should condemn someone on the basis of very little evidence, which meant that policemen sometimes feel they should proceed even when all the evidence is against the claim. Every movement has its extremists, and because they speak for the governing ethos, moderates (as in, sane people) find themselves at a loss and give in.
It’s a good thing the justice system found him not guilty. If we continue to move towards these extremes, there’ll come a day when someone like him will be found guilty.
Curious, or perhaps less than curious given our progressive weaknesses, that our ‘authorities’ will so eagerly pursue an obviously unwinnable case — and in so doing name and shame an innocent person — using every trick they can to pretend it happened but the liar, for if the jury is to be believed that is what she is, must be protected.
But then in Germany (and it has to be said, my own country) the police are quick to stand firm against those who protest muslim barbarities but remarkably short-sighted when it comes to seeing the barbarians. And yet… surely there are some cops and lawyers and even judges who, while taking the state’s money, think that what they are being ordered to do is wrong. Once the armed/legal side of the state begins to crumble when forced to defend the obviously insane then the only thing that keeps governments governing has gone.
As you say, Z, it will not end well but I would add that it will end.
If I were Mr Pearson I’d be soooo tempted to identify the lying c***t, and if I were rich, to fund a private prosecution of the director of the cps for attempting to pervert the course of justice
I also prefer Aldous Huxley than Orwell, George had some kook ideas and loved the Tribe, carefully reading Brave New World you can see a lot of references to the Chosen Race, Huxley was very lucid.
“The short version is we have a collection of pussies at the police department too afraid of the social justice warriors to do their jobs.” Possibly; but it’s also worth considering that the “well-known actress” was politically connected and that helped the prosecution along.
No. Remember her complaint benefits from being part of the current ethos. It’s like having a well-known person accuse a random passerby of blasphemy back in the dark ages. Or like (for us) hearing someone accuse a Somali immigrant of attacking her. The moment it’s part of a sacred ethos, it packs a punch and people are scared of saying ‘nonsense!’.
Huh??
lol. What I’m saying is she doesn’t need to be politically connected so long as her complaint fits well within the governing ethos. Being perhaps fairly well known certainly doesn’t hurt, since if her idiotic complaint wasn’t taken seriously, the Guardian may have run a headline “Actress’s sexual assault not taken seriously”.
You are absolutely correct. Even though Brave New World is a satire on the sort of state that Wells and his circle imagined, Huxley buys into Wells’ central premise: that once “reasonable” technocrats like Mustapha Mond gained power, they could maintain control indefinitely. Huxley was correct that such a state would have to warp human nature beginning in the womb to survive. It would not last for long. Eventually the technocrats would pick the “wrong sort” for the next generation of managers. Whether it be deviancy, cowardice, or psychopathy, the Huxleyan state’s leadership would likely drift towards one or more of those poles and evolve into something altogether different.
My own experiences lead me to believe that in order to survive, humans need some amount of conflict, strife, hunger, uncertainty and about a dozen other things that the custodial state tries to eliminate. The custodial state is a form of captivity. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Species X won’t breed in captivity.” The welfare state becomes a self-perpetuating zoo. Homo sapiens stops breeding and starts engaging in all of the neurotic behaviors that caged animals demonstrate. Going to zoos has become more difficult as I’ve grown older.
I paused a long time before writing this paragraph, because all I have to offer is gloom at this point. I cannot see how Europe can recover. Maybe if in the next year or two, the dirt people rise up, throw the plutocrats and managers into camps and evict all of the immigrants, they might squeak by. They would still have to deal with demographic decline, debt, and deflation, but at least they would have a chance. I don’t see that happening. The movements that might lead that change are small and underfunded and the elites will fight them relentlessly until the immigrant hordes have taken over. In America, I think we will try for a 1688-style glorious revolution and fail. After that, the deluge.
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=1552
Thanks, Z. Glad to know I’m not the only one thinking along those lines.
I think that I’ve recommended once to you and your readers to go see “two-lane America.” I half-way believe that the Mennonites win in the end. They’re close to the land, have high birthrates, and seem to utterly lack the Amish’s aversion to the internal combustion engine. And I keep running into them every time I travel through the sort of farmland that ConAgra’s algorithms deem to be too marginal to buy up and turn into latifundia.