And it’s symptomatic and sometimes ideological that some people can’t see how barbaric that lack is — even some people who are wholly opposed to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

One novel explicitly critical of the so-called neo-conservatives and the Bush Administration (it doesn’t strictly focus on the Iraq War) has been published in Canada — it’s called Homeland, by Paul William Roberts. It’s lively and informative and ought to be widely known, which it’s not. My review of Homeland should appear at PopPolitics soon (http://www.poppolitics.com). In the meantime, a slightly abbreviated version of that review, with link to a much longer version, can be found here:
http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/homeland-and-partisan-fiction/

The point is to pierce the propaganda and catalyze change, first in thought, then in action, via clinical analysis or fact-based and often “clinical” satire (and in many other ways) as I do via Tropetopia, Pangloss, and Dimslow satires, and through literal critiques as well. Andy Borowitz critiques with satire as a contributing columnist over at Truthdig: http://www.truthdig.com/about/staff/43.

Of course I’m being satiric. The point is to pierce the propaganda and catalyze change, first in thought, then in action. Consider Noam Chomsky’s remarks about satire, propaganda, and thought control in various types of socio-political systems and cultures:

“About Orwell’s 1984, I thought, frankly, it was one of his worst books. Could barely finish it. Some parts (e.g., about Newspeak) were clever. But most of it seemed to me — well, trivial. The problem is not a very interesting one; the modes of thought control and repression in totalitarian societies are fairly transparent. In fact, they often tend to be rather lax. Franco Spain, for example, didn’t care much what people thought and said: the screams from the torture chamber in downtown Madrid were enough to keep the lid on. It’s not too well known, but the Soviet Union was also pretty lax, particularly in the Brezhnev era. According to US government-Russian Research Center studies, Russians apparently had considerably wider access to a broad range of opinion and to dissident literature than Americans do, not because it is denied them but because propaganda is so much more effective here. Orwell was well aware of these issues. His (suppressed) introduction to Animal Farm, for example, deals explicitly with “literary censorship in England.” To write about that topic would have been important, hard, and serious — and would have earned him the obloquy that attends departure from the rules.

“Caricature can be very well done. Swift is marvelous, for example. Animal Farm is pretty good, in my opinion. But 1984 I thought was a serious decline from his best work.

“Caricature is an art, and not an easy one. But when well done, a very important one. As for dealing with Orwell’s problem,* I try to do it in the ways I know how to pursue; 1000s of pages by now. No doubt there are other ways, maybe better ways. But others will have to find what works for them.”

*[Orwell’s problem: how is it that oppressive ideological systems are able to] “instill beliefs that are firmly held and widely accepted although they are completely without foundation and often plainly at variance with the obvious facts about the world around us?”

My next reaction was to ask if you were merely being ironic, for instance if you thought that the first act of a fascist state is to impose thought control, so that only the State is allowed to influence the minds of its subjects (formerly its citizenry, until it all became a Nazi experiment in mind control, with the human being as the ultimate lab rat).

Mr Tony Christini, you may be my opponent, but you are not my enemy. Your thoughts and words sharpen my own, albeit in contrast. Please go on to make those points that my own mind’s missiles seek to torpedo. Let everyone see the great display of words as “bombs bursting in air” happens all over the internet. Let them join in the conflagration. And if it is our DNA design and free will choice to make war, let us do it in words, not in bullets.

May it be!