Re: Now Regionalism Is A Contest we Can Win!
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:10 pm
Thealexa Becker wrote:I have no idea why in the world you are attempting to equate 1984 with "regionalism". You either don't understand the book or you are blowing this thing way out of proportion.
TeamNEO is hardly Big Brother. The information about them online is hardly frightening enough to merit that comparison. They're just promoting themselves by promoting regional business. Not that hair-brained an idea.
Sure, it wouldn't be a good idea for Lakewood to mesh with Cleveland, but there is no reason why organizations or individuals that are trying to collectivize resources should be demonized.
I can understand that some people on this board might be opposed to the idea of regionalization, and that's your right, but it is foolish to be so dead set against the idea that you cannot even hear the other side or positive aspects without balking. It's closed-mindedness akin to this that keeps progress from being made.
I also agree that Lakewood needs to improve itself first, but I don't see many people fixing the empty storefronts. And I wonder how everyone will vote on the school levy?
Thealexa
Start a new thread for the levy.
The very real issue is not the demonization of Team Neo, CLE +, etc. but the entire process
is flawed, and being shoved down our throats by who? As Charlie Page pointed out, all of
these groups are related. So who is footing the bill? I know of many people that have
been co-opted into movements they think are fun and positive only to find out the punchline
after the damage is done. I remember one story of a high school writer that went to a
special meeting thinking it was all good, only to see the problems, stand up and walk out.
So Lakewood pulled out of RITA, and it has paid big dividends, Regional Transit Authority
cuts Lakewood without any discussion or thought of how it affects Lakewood. Other
regional groups are using Lakewood for a dumping ground for homeless etc. This is what
Charlie, Bill, Ken, Dan, and many who have sat through meeting after meeting on why
regionalism is good end up saying think about it first. If it is so good why the endless
hard sell? Why the never ending push? I will tell you why. That is what they get paid to
do. Not make our lives better, but to shove regionalism down our throats as many
different ways as possible. Because it is the slippery slope I pointed out. Once you get
there, you ain't never coming back.
Lakewood has been singled out, because we have a unique situation, and a school system
and award winning library that was fighting the trend. So we get "voices and choices", and
Team Neo telling civic leaders WE MUST BECOME REGIONAL. Meanwhile they infiltrate
every aspect of Lakewood's daily life, to show us how much fun it is, how good it is...
As far as the 1984 link, it is easy. Speak against them, question them, and you are scorned
belittled, insulted and NEVER given answers you seek. To me it is far closer to 1984,
than a healthy Lakewood that empowers its citizens to think and work, not control their
work or make them think they are buying into things already decided for them by Big
Brother.
Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
TRAMPLED UPON
"Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain."
THREE SLOGANS
"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."
PURE POWER
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
ERRONEOUS THOUGHT
"We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out."
PERFECT UNITY
"The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering—a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face."
.
