Forward Command Post
From one of my mailing lists....
Now, I'm not usually one to get up in arms about toys. I played with GI Joes, played elaborate war games in the woods with friends (complete with realistic looking toy guns), went through my D&D phase, and many other objectionable activities. However, this is an entirely new level of disturbing. This reminded me of the toys and imaginary play depicted in 1984. How far is too far? At what point does it stop being play, and start being indoctrination?
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
From one of my mailing lists....
JC Penney is offering a very disturbing gift for the kids this year: "Forward Command Post," a pre-bombed" home complete with a soldier and an American flag to crown it with... all that's missing are dead babies and their maimed refugee family. JC Penney also offers a "World Peace Keepers Battle Station" to help the innocents better understand how it is that War Is Peace.
With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatsoever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother--it was all sort of a glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak--"child hero" was the phrase generally used--had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
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