The Antique Shop
July 19, 2020 Leave a comment
On a street known as Artifact Row, in the historic district of Langford, D&D Antiques offered vintage collectibles. The owners, Dale and Doris, lived in the small apartment above the shop. 
Per the rules of the town’s preservation committee, the shops and cafés of Artifact Row were required to maintain their 19th century façades. During the summer months, the lattice ironwork of the display windows and the frame of the double doors into D&Ds were coated with layers of black paint to keep them from oxidizing. Next to D&Ds, the Reitz Artifact Gallery, specializing in graphic arts, antiquarian maps and atlases, repainted its ironwork verdigris green and installed a new awning. On the other side of D&Ds, the wood framed windows and door of Dunwoody’s Furniture Restoration were repainted with a fresh coat of terra beige and brown.
Above D&D’s recessed doors were two transoms which, when lowered, gave the appearance with the doors of being the door’s black eyebrows. And above the transoms was a weathered green signboard with gold letters:
D&D Antiques
Things both Excellent and Rare
The shop’s windows displayed objects collected by Doris from estate sales. On exhibit, a menagerie of items passed down through generations of families including pottery, porcelains, vases, silver platters, a Tiffany lamp, jewelry, spelter candlesticks, figurines, watch fobs and watches, photographs and, postcards. A small banner with a gold star on a red and white field hung in the recessed window next to the door. Above it, a sign posting the shop’s hours. Beneath, a detachment of smartly uniformed nutcrackers that appeared to be standing guard at the door.
The shop now offered consignment, as Things both Excellent and Rare were no longer collected by Doris. A gaunt figure in her eighties, called a flower with a delicate stem by Dale, Doris could no longer attend estate sales. Her knees had become feeble, her gait wobbly, her strength gone. Dale noticed, too, that her mind had become wobbly. Doris no longer knew who he was. So, for a time, she remained with Dale in the shop.
During her days in the shop, Doris would sit listless in the spool-turned rocker. At times she would get up, hobble around and pick up pieces on display. She held them to her ear, as one would do with a sea shell at the beach. A dulcet smile would then appear on her face.
During fifty-five years of marriage, the two had worked hand in hand. Yet a time came to keep Doris upstairs. No longer active, Doris had grown weaker. Dale, also in his eighties, frail and hunched-over, could no longer help his wife up and down the apartment stairs. In the days that followed and at regular intervals, Dale would hang a “BACK IN TEN MINUTES” sign on his door. He would head up the shop’s adjoining stairs to their apartment to care for Doris, where she sat in her arm chair with a vacant stare.
On any given day, except on Mondays when the shop was closed, D&Ds was visited by women poring over each item and husbands who listened to Dale as he regaled them with his stories from his time in the Navy. The children who came along were directed to a corner of the store. There, Dale had set a small table, two chairs and a globe. On the table, Dale’s loose-leafed stamp albums. The children were enchanted by the colorful stamps Dale had collected from around the world. At Dale’s suggestion, they swirled the globe looking for each stamp’s country of origination.
It was now Sunday evening. The ageless sounding chimes of the grandfather clock and the sudden “koo-koo” of the Black Forest clock announced six-o’clock. It was time to close the shop. As was his habit, Dale placed the cash drawer and the antique jewelry in a safe. The coffee was shut off. The back door checked. The model train was shut off. The three weights of the grandfather clock were rehung. And, the two streetside lamps that shown down on the face of the shop were switched on.
After one last look around, Dale turned the door sign from “OPEN” TO “CLOSED” and stepped outside into stifling heat of the August night. As he turned the key in the lock, he noticed a thunderous commotion behind him. He looked around. Up and down the Row passersby stopped at window displays. Shoppers walked out of the closing shops. The tremendous clamor, clashes of curses and bellowing voices, seemed to come from the next street east. “Something is in the offing,” Dale thought. “There must be some confusion about the hour.” Tired, Dale trudged up the adjoining stairs.
11:10 and the shop was still. The inconsonant tickticktick of three mantel clocks the only sound.
11:11. The grandfather clock began a sonorous toll. The cuckoo exited with loud rousing “koo-koos”. The conversation began again.
“Let us use our time wisely,” came the booming voice of the grandfather clock.
“Here one minute. Gone the next,” chirped the cuckoo.
“What? We sit here, day after day. Nothing changes,” moaned the mantel clock.
“I do have my ups and downs,” noted the barometer.
“It’s all the same,” sighed the depression glass.
“But we’re not the same,” countered the silver chalice. “Some of us have a higher station in life.”
“I was tops in my class,” said masthead light.
“But I summoned the attention of all,” said the ship’s bell.
“No. It was I,” said the bosun’s pipe.
“I held the compass,” said the binnacle proudly.
“But you are not me,” said the compass. “I gave directions.”
“I was the admiral’s go to,” said the brass ship’s wheel.
“You couldn’t go anywhere without me,” replied the rudder.
“You don’t know the time of day,” replied the ship’s clock.
“I’m getting sea sick,” growled the gyroscope.
“Boys. Boys. Don’t make waves,” admonished the sextant. “Know your place.”
“It’s all the same. Night after night.” groaned the glass.
“But we aren’t!” said the painting pointedly.
“We are!” declared the silverware.
“We aren’t”, squealed the Chantilly porcelain terrine.
“We are. We aren’t,” the rocker hemmed and hawed.
“Things are heating up again,” the fireplace poker jabbed. “Just the way I like it.”
“You’re always stirring things up,” jabbed the ivory letter opener.
“Can’t we all just get along,” the fine china clattered.
“Let’s have a party,” the silver platter prompted.
“Yes, let’s!” shouted the silverware.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“The same. Not the same. The same. Not the same,” choo-choo-ed the tinplate model train.
“At least I don’t go around in circles all day,” remarked the rubber stamp.
“No. You just sit there with ink on your face,” countered the train.
“Don’t rub it in,” the stamp came back.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” pounced the Murano glass paperweight.
“Look who’s talking,” remarked the art nouveau hand mirror.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“We are. We aren’t.”
“The same, Not the same. The same. Not the same.”
“I could shed some light on this,” laughed the Tiffany lamp.
“You’re not plugged in,” the flat iron spoke frankly.
“And neither are you,” countered the candlestick holder.
“You can’t hold a candle to me,” bragged the wash basin
“Keep a lid on it,” the tea pot protested.
“I’m with her,” tittered the tea cup
“Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” snorted the spittoon.
“Have you no taste? I am fine china!”
“Have some decorum,” pleaded the painting.
Tickticktick Tickticktick Tickticktick.
“Bor…ring. I’ve more important things to do,” brayed the brass bugle.
“He’s always blowing his own horn,” a nutcracker noted.
“It’s all the same.”
“You need to change your worldview,” the globe giggled.
“Get a hobby,” snickered the stamp album.
“The same, Not the same. The same. Not the same.”
“Let’s change the subject,” broached the book. “I am a first edition.”
“But I was here first!” shouted the Louis the XVI chair.
“And consigned to the dust bin of history,” scoffed the newly arrived brooch.
“I did not know you had come, and I shall not miss you when you go away,” replied the chair.
“I have served wine to kings and queens,” said the goblet. “I deserve better company.”
“Mais oui, bien sûr,“ came back the chair. “As do I.”
“Those two are broken records,” the gramophone pointed out.
“I am above all that,” said the annoyed candelabra. “I have looked down on royalty and heads of state.”
Not to be overlooked, the Victorian sewing table said proudly, “Not what I have but what I do is my kingdom.”
“Let’s face it. It’s all about me,” the cameo came back.
“You’re just another face in the crowd,” the mirror mocked.
“The lady picked me up. Held me to her ear.”
“And what did you tell her?” queried the quartz watch.
“If it’s true it’s not new.”
“Are you a philosopher now?” wondered the Wedgewood vase.
“Though Truth and Falsehood be Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is,” recited the limited-edition poetry book with a flourish.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“We are. We aren’t.”
“Well, you are all waiting,” remarked the rubber stamp.
“Waiting for what?” asked the tintype.
“Waiting to be taken to a home,” cooed the wood doll.
“Home is where the heart is,” replied the postcard.
“You’re just ephemera. Here today. Gone tomorrow,” tut-ted the dressing table.
“You have no utility,” snarked the silver platter.
“I’m a keepsake. A reminder of times past,” the postcard said proudly.
“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now,” exhorted the jade Buddha.
“Right on!” shouted the mantel clock.
“Progress!” The cuckoo poked his head out.
“Revolution!” fired off the fireplace poker.
“Diversity!” yelled the stamp album.
“Equality!” exclaimed the stamps in unison.
“Solidarity!” cried the flat iron.
“Can’t we all get along?” pleaded the fine china. “We can all serve humanity.”
“Hear! Hear! Shouted the silverware.
“Keep it together,” begged the bookends.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“We are. We aren’t.”
Tickticktick Tickticktick Tickticktick.
2 AM. Grandfather tolled and the cuckoo called. A loud crash.
“What was that?” questioned the quilt.
“A torch,” said one of the nutcrackers.
“I’ve seen this before,” said the fireplace poker.
“What’s it for?” wondered the watch.
“A torch is for light,” said the candlestick holder.
“But why is it on the floor?” asked the Oriental rug anxiously.
“Perhaps it is to be sold,” speculated the rubber stamp.
“I’ve read about this sort of thing,” stated the first edition. “It doesn’t bode well.”
“Some say the world will end in fire … Some say in ice,” warned the poetry book.
“The fire is coming closer,” fretted the lute.
“Shouldn’t it be on a candleholder where it belongs,” asked the candlestick holder.
“Fire goes where it goes,” replied the fireplace poker.
“It’s going up my leg,” said the Louis the XVI chair.
“How does it feel Mr. High and Mighty?” asked the rubber stamp.
“It feels … ohhhhh …familiar, …! …. like searing passion and raging anger.” The chair tried to maintain composed, but, “… now, ow! Ow! OW! …je suis d’histoire!. Aurevoir à mes amis.” The chair toppled down.
“What shall we do?” roared the rocker engulfed in flames.
“Maybe the shopkeeper will come,” said the cameo.
“Bugle do something,” shouted a nutcracker, his ranks now diminished.
The bugle, overcome by smoke, sputtered and coughed, “splurrrrtttt ….cuh cuh ….cuh cuh …someone get me some AIRrrrrrr …!”
“If I only had water,” said the basin.
“If only someone had taken us home,” cried the postcard.
The mirror, enamored by its reflection, proudly stated, “Look at the light I am reflecting. The whole room is lit up.”
“Don’t you see what is happening?” rasped the rocker. “We are being consumed!”
“I’ve done my job,” replied the mirror.
“I want out!” cried the postcard, the flames edging up his sides.
“We’re all in this together,” wheezed the stamp album with its last breath. The conversation ended.
3 AM. There was no ageless sounding toll and no sudden “koo-koo”. The second story had collapsed.
© Jennifer A. Johnson, 2020, All Rights Reserved
(aka, Lena de Vries)
Manipulated to Follow the Course of This World
July 28, 2019 Leave a comment
There is a passage in C. S. Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength (published in 1945) that foreshadows the media manipulation going on today. I’ll begin with some background from my post Genealogies of Straw?
The narrator in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy novel That Hideous Strength tells us about one of the central characters Mark Studdock. He is a young academic, a sociologist, and a member of the Progressive Element at Bracton College. He is an ambitious, self-centered and shallow intellectual who has come into the service of the National Institute of Coordinated Sciences (NICE). He believes NICE will serve the best interest of humanity through progress at any cost. Once he stopped hemming and hawing about joining the organization he is welcomed into the inner circle. But he soon finds that he has committed himself to a hellish organization which plans to re-do humanity by force so that only the best humans (in NICE’s view) remain. He is made aware that the tentacles of the organization are growing.
Before the passage I quote below we learn that Mark is pressured to write newspaper articles that conceal what N.I.C.E. is up to. At one point he questions Miss Hardcastle, the sadistic leader of the N.I.C.E.’s corrupt police force, about which newspaper – “Left or Right” –is going to print the “rot” he is being asked to write. Miss Hardcastle answers.
“Both, honey, both,” said Miss Hardcastle. “Don’t you understand anything? Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and terrified of each other? That’s how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it’s properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us – to refute enemy slanders. Of course we’re non-political. The real power always is.”
“I don’t believe you can do that,” said Mark. “Not with the papers that are read by educated people.”
“That shows you are still in the nursery, lovey,” said Miss Hardcastle. “Haven’t you realized that it’s the other way around?”
“How do you mean?”
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in the Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
Mark, the academic sociologist, balks at such an inference. And Hardcastle responds “…Don’t you see that the educated reader can’t stop reading the high-brow weeklies whatever they do? He can’t. He’s been conditioned.”
Anyone who spends time reading and watching the media, and I presume a large portion of the population here in the U.S does., is susceptible to its manipulation. Is this news to anyone? TV commercials and internet popup adverts are created to manipulate the viewer and reader to go after what is being offered, or to at least carry a jingle and a phone number and an image around in their head. Subliminal manipulation is used constantly to sway thinking.
Similar manipulative influence is used by Progressive Element’s TV news/political opinion programs and on its news and opinion websites where news is swapped for narrative. The talking heads of these shows and websites hope to affix their narrative in the minds of the viewer and reader with an endless repetition of lies, innuendos, slander, and charged words: “Racist!” Sexist!” “Homophobe!” “Islamophobe!” “Nazi!”. These words are intended to produce hate for the ‘enemies’ of the Progressive Element’s agenda. It induces an effect on the viewer and reader not unlike those who take part in INGSOC’s Two Minutes Hate as described in George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949).
The Progressive Element’s desired outcome-based control of others using terror and ideological fiction is characteristic of totalitarianism. This manifestation of political evil is not new nor Progressive. It is characteristic of what came before as expressed by Hannah Arendt in her 1951 Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt, a German-born American political scientist and philosopher wrote about the horrific events of her own day: the totalitarian regimes of Soviet Stalinism and the rise of Nazi Germany that brought about the annihilation of millions. Referring to the citizenry who allowed such horrors, Arendt found a “mixture of gullibility and cynicism… is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements”. And, so was lying. Here are three quotes coming out of Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the forces at work during those times to de-legitimize truth and to de-humanize the hearer:
Why the constant, often blatant lying? For one thing, it functioned as a means of fully dominating subordinates, who would have to cast aside all their integrity to repeat outrageous falsehoods and would then be bound to the leader by shame and complicity.
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… 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.
The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.
The talking head’s mocking and sneering of the ‘enemy’ is echoed in social media by the viewers of Sixty Minutes Hate. Internalized totalitarianism, often disguised as a push for social justice, demands control of the conversation, of people’s thoughts, of people’s behavior and of people’s property. With terror-mongering (e.g., “The world will end in 12 years if we don’t do something about climate change”; “Democracy will end if we don’t wrest control of it from those in power”) and with endless repetition one’s understanding of reality is swapped for the socially constructed reality. Shadow banning on social media sites is meant to keep opinions opposed to the Progressive Element’s agenda out of sight and mind.
Societal manipulation done by academics and the elites of the ruling class is used by totalitarian regimes (North Korea most notably today) to produce servitude to its agenda:
“Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part, by repetition, assent or failure to contradict. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of propaganda in communist countries was not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate and emasculate.”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World
Big tech uses societal manipulation. Machine Learning Fairness algorithms are used by Google to put Google’s thumb on the scale of searches in order to skew search outcomes toward the social justice their narrative demands. Enter “Men can” and “Women can” into the Google home page and see what immediately shows up. Men are portrayed negatively or neutral and even as being able to have babies. Women are shown as compassionate and as powerful corporate and civic leaders – positively. One can imagine what Google’s Machine Learning Fairness algorithm does to skew political and cultural (the LGBTQ in particular) searches.
No matter where you lie on the political spectrum you will want to listen to the video and read the research of Dr. Robert Epstein, Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat. Beyond newspapers, you and I are being manipulated by the princes of the power of the air – Big Tech. Dr. Epstein stated at the senate community hearing that Google’s manipulation affected a range of a minimum of 2.6 million to 10.4 million votes in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Liberal Professor Warns: Google Manipulating Voters ‘on a Massive Scale’
You can be sure that what comes out of Hollywood is societal manipulation. The entertainment you watch is manipulated. You are taking in pagan and Progressive notions of life meant to shape your world view. One example: 7 Moments That Made ‘Frozen’ the Most Progressive Disney Movie Ever
Because of the incessant and ubiquitous manipulation impelling one to follow the course of this world, because the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:1-3) to produce hatred, vindictiveness, greed and a lust for power, a follower of Christ must set their mind on things above (Col. 3:1-2) to gain their bearings in this world. One way to deal with the manipulative narrative is to do what Jesus did to Peter when Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him. Jesus rebuked Peter: Get behind me Satan! You’re trying to trip me up! You’re not looking at things like God does! You’re looking at things like a mere mortal!” Jesus put his Father’s words in front of him and put man’s manipulative narrative – avoid pain, suffering and death – behind him.
The father of lies has been around since the Garden of Eden. He lies and he wants you to be a party to his lies. The Evil One is behind manipulative narratives as Jesus makes clear when he denounces the Judeans and their narrative, one of evoking their Abrahamic lineage as proof of the rightness of their narrative.
“You are from your father – the devil! And you’re eager to get on with what he wants. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he’s never remained in the truth, because there is no truth in him, because he is a liar – in fact, he’s the father of lies!” (Jn. 8:44)
The teachers of the law and the religious leaders in Jesus’ day wanted to control the narrative of what the law said, how it was to be applied, and of who had say-so with regard to the law. They clearly had expectations of a Messiah who would overthrow the Romans and of a man as not as repulsive as John the Baptist and of a man not as conciliatory as Jesus. Truth showed up one day in the marketplace and revealed their manipulative narrative (Matt. 11;15-17) regarding John the Baptist and of himself:
“If you’ve got ears, then listen!
“What picture shall I give you for this generation? Asked Jesus. “It’s like a bunch of children sitting in the town square, and singing songs to each other. This is how it goes:
‘You didn’t dance when we played the flute;
You didn’t cry when we sang the dirge!’
The narrative of the teachers of the law and the religious leaders clearly had its expectations. And when those expectations were not met the crowd would have Jesus crucified. The same deference to popularized and propagandized narratives with expectations based on ideological fiction is true now. And the same totalitarian impulse, like in Stalin’s and Hitler’s time and, today, within the Progressive Element, desires that you be in the thrall of their narrative, to dance to its music and to sing its songs. And in servitude to Big Brother’s narrative you will soon hear “‘You dance when we say dance! You sing when we say sing! Or, else! for totalitarianism and the evil behind it are never satisfied. Both seek to control outcomes with lies and manipulation and then with force.
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Filed under Culture, Economics, History, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, socialism Tagged with cultural Marxism, culture, Google, Machine Learning Fairness, media, progressivism, subliminal manipulation, totalitarianism, Two Minutes Hate