kameelyun

I posted this over at 911blogger.com and thought I'd post it here too.

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I am inspired to write this entry thanks to scubadiver's question, to the community, in my previous blog entry, about our favorite authors. While I have quite a few, one lifelong one who sticks out is Roald Dahl, of children's novel fame, particularly Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. He also wrote some titillating adult novels.

As we all know, the "big lie," a term coined by Hitler in his autobiography, roughly goes: The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. As a corollary, it should also be noted that the bigger the lie, or the more monstrous the crime, the less likely people will want to know about it, or at least know the real truth.

My introduction to this concept came via Roald Dahl's children's novel Matilda. The story centers around a child genius who bears the book's title as her name. She's roughly first grade age, and it is her first year at school. Her school's name is "Crunchem Hall." The principal, or headmistress, is named "Miss Trunchbull." She is the textbook example of a gigantic holy terror (even parents and teachers are frightened of her) as exemplified by this illustration:



Miss Trunchbull has a pet peeve against ponytails ("pig tails" in merry old England). One day at recess, she targets a most unfortunate girl named Amanda Thripp:



And orders Amanda to "chop of her pigtails and throw them in the dustbin!" before the next day.

When poor Amanda nervously stammers back. "B..b...but... my mummy likes them." Miss Trunchbull barks back: "I don't give a tinker's toot to what your mummy thinks!"

At that point grabs the girl by the ponytails and picks her up, then begins to spin her whole body round and round in a circle, and like fan blades, the girl becomes a blur; needless to say, the girl is screaming bloody murder, and the entire playground of children is watching, spellbound. Then to conclude, Miss Trunchbull lets go of the girl on an upward trajectory and the girl shoots off like a rocket hundreds of feet, clear over the playground fence and into the open field beyond.



Watching the whole scene are Matilda and her friend Lavender. Here is the conversation that ensues:

"How can she get away with it?" Lavender said to Matilda. "Surely the children go home and tell their mothers and fathers. I know my father would raise a terrific stink if I told him the Headmistress had grabbed me by the hair and slung me over the playground fence."

"No, he wouldn't," Matilda said, "and I'll tell you why. He simply wouldn't believe you."

"Of course he would."

"He wouldn't," Matilda said. "And the reason is obvious. Your story would sound too ridiculous to be believed. And that is the Trunchbull's great secret."

"What is?" Lavender asked.

Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable. No parent is going to believe this pigtail story, not in a million years. Mine wouldn't. They'd call me a liar."

"In that case", Lavender said, "Amanda's mother isn't going to cut her pigtails off."

"No, she isn't," Matilda said. "Amanda will do it herself. You see if she doesn't."

When I first woke up to 9/11 being an inside job, one of the very first things my mind thought of was the above scene and ensuing conversation. Just as most parents of first graders would find it extremely difficult to believe a principal could be so unimaginably cruel and insane, most "dyed in the wool" Americans (including myself at first, and too many still to this day) would "not in a million years" believe that their own leaders could be so unimaginably cruel and insane as to kill 3,000 people for money, oil, and power.

As a final postscript, it seems I'm not the only one who remembers this scene. What do you know, it is alluded to on Wikipedia's entry on "The Big Lie."

__________________
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." - Gloria Steinem

patriot

Marijuana is a dangerous drug. It amazes me how many people actually believe that. Some of them are even on this forum.

__________________
A true patriot is always ready to stand up against his own government.

We can't be using plants that come from the Lord for beneficial purposes. Now hurry up, or we'll be late for church.

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.-Adolf Hitler

Legalizing marijuana won't grow our economy-Barack Hussein Obama 2009

The Rev

I'm still struggling with the idea that real "grownups" don't actually exist.



The Rev

__________________

DdC

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed,
for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts
more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad.
The primitive simplicity of their minds
renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one,
for they themselves often tell little lies
but would be ashamed to tell a big one."
~ Benito Mussolini,
London Sunday Express, December 8, 1935

"How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups,
burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year,
especially among the young, can only be conjectured...
No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips,
whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven,
a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..."
~ HARRY J ANSLINGER,
Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics 1930-1962

"All propaganda must be so popular
and on such an intellectual level,
that even the most stupid of those
towards whom it is directed will understand it.
Therefore, the intellectual level
of the propaganda must be lower
the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."

Just say NO

Through clever and constant application of propaganda,
people can be made to see paradise as hell,
and also the other way around,
to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
~ Benito Mussolini,
London Sunday Express, December 8, 1935

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US,
and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers.
Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage.
This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations
with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
~ Harry Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics,
testifying to Congress on why marijuana should be made illegal, 1937.
(Marijuana Tax Act, signed Aug. 2, 1937; effective Oct. 1, 1937.)

"The masses have little time to think.
And how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe."
~ Benito Mussolini,
London Sunday Express, December 8, 1935

"Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."
~ Carlton Turner,
Former Drug Czar (Reagan)

"Another weapon I discovered early
was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me.
The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag -
a thing with a soul that could mirror my own."
~ Benito Mussolini

"Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."
~ Daryl DARE Gates - Former LAPD Chief

"A violently active, intrepid, brutal youth that is what I am after...
I will have no intellectual training.
Knowledge is ruin for my young men."
Adolf Hitler quoted by John Gunther "The Nation"

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
~ Harry J. Anslinger,
America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

"Because Fascism is a lie,
it is condemned to literary sterility.
And when it is past,
it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder."
- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)

"...somebody has to take governments' place,
and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it."
- David Rockefeller,
Newsweek International, Feb 1 1999