Comrade Lyndon B Johnson's Newlead Plus Speech

An Excerpt from Lyndon B Johnson's Inaugural Address

My fellow countrymen, on this occasion the Oath I have taken before you and before God is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens. That is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.

For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own.

Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene that is different from our own, because ours is a time of change -- rapid and fantastic change, bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values, and uprooting old ways.

Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith. They came here -- the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened -- to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land, conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union. It was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.
…
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that's sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say, "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it -- and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

And to these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November last year: I will lead and I will do the best I can.

 

 

A Shortful Piece from Comrade Lyndon B Johnson's Newlead Plus Speech

Comrades, this day the doublepromise I take in front of you and BB is unmine, it is fullwise all Party. Eurasia is the Party. Our comrade futureday as Eurasia and our futureday as Party depend on unone, but all. That is the doubleplus important of this plus shortday. 

 For all issue group, there is futureday. Some, oldtime decides. For this issue group, the decide is issue group dayorder.

Daywise, a skyfire train move towardwise rednight circle. It us think the world will be unsame for issues, or for the Party in unlong years. The next leader to stand here will see an unsame crowd group, our yeartime is a yeartime for unsame – doupleplus speedful unsame, sees the untruths of uncity, it makes Eurasia plus big, gives undecided hands new firemake for plus ungood, unsames oldspeak values, and unsames oldtime. 

 Our futreday unsame daywise will decide the sameful personmake of our comrades and their loyalty to BB. Comrades move here – the crimethink and the unknow, unfear but fear – to move to Eurasia, where BB safemake comrades. BB speakwrited a doublepromise with Eurasia, maked in --, speakwrited in --, togethered in allsame. Eurasia was maked to goodthink the unfears of all comrades; and it togethers comrades daywise. If we do goodthink and bellyfeel for Eurasia, we will undead goodwise.

…

This is what Oceania is. It is the unwater sand and the heightful rocks. It is the glow light that is unreached and the foodtake that is unsleep in the unfood ground. ---- We greet it and we doubleplus help it to the Party goals. 

 And to the plus good Inner Party and to my comrades who have togethered with me on a unshort, unstraight car path, and to all comrades and all Eurasia and all world, I will againspeak what I goodspeak on that ungood day in unwarm oldtime anteyear; I will upstand together and I will doubleplus good as I make.

1984: A Haiku

Nineteen eighty-four
I like nineteen eighty-four
Nineteen eighty-four

Writing Credits
Anderson, Chase
Allen, Megan
Bracy, Claudia
Robinson, Jake
Johnson, Mackenzie
Rosenbloom, Jeri
McMahon, Mackenzie

Ignorance is Strength

He was very important to me.

My brother, that is,

But he’s gone now

Across the sea,

Across the world,

Helping some people that,

From my perspective,

Aren’t even there.

I cared about him very much

But I can’t think about him anymore

Because when I think about him,

It isn’t his face that comes to mind.

It is the hundreds of indistinct faces I can’t bear to think about

It is the stomachs that are constantly wanting

It is the minds that are living with the horrors I can’t fathom

I can't think about them

So I can’t think about him.

It was simpler, nicer, easier for me

When he was just my brother

When he wasn’t a mass of the people he needed to help.

And I know that what is simple and nice and easy 

And what is right 

Are not synonymous

But I can’t help it.

It was simple when I was protected from all of it

It was nice when my problems were contained to myself and my superficialities

It was easy to be strong when there was nothing to face

But it wasn’t right.

Underwater: Impressionistic Writing

All of the lines curved away from each other, bending with the heat waves that shot down from the sky, making the dirty feet of strangers and childhood acquaintances twist and warp as they paddled past. Blues and greens swirled together in indistinct clusters of water and algae and reflections if the haphazardly patterned tiles that coated the walls. Little oil spills of sunscreen drifted lazily across the surface, filtering the light through opalescent windows, diluting the summer brightness from above. The muffled noises of happiness and conversation bubbled up in loose, round syllables. A man, just a few years too old, swam down to the drain, surveying the little world occurring under the water until his breath ran short and he shot back up, into the thick midsummer air. Everyone's skin prickled with the same insidious threat from that gaseous mass of the sun hanging what seemed like merely ten feet above. Inflatable balls and rings and animals far outnumbered the grimy hands of the children tossing them around, a whirlwind of fluorescents spinning in the humidity. The full onset of it all, if you were to break the surface, would be enough to make you burst.The paddling of some unclaimed toddler in this inflatable contraption stirred the water, forcing the bubbles into hurricanes, blotting out the blues and greens with a solid white cloud of air before fizzling up to the top and out of existence. Ripples in the surface tension echoed in sloppy rings, pressing outward, as if trying to escape the heat like everybody else.

Colonial Enterprises and Violence as a Language

Our choices, as an enterprise, were entirely based on making a profit and maintaining a certain level of resources at all times to act as a cushion in case of unforeseen issues. Though idealistically the situation would be handled with mutual understanding and generosity, that is not an accurate representation of your average colonial enterprise. On our fictional venture, deep in the jungle, we couldn’t bargain or work together to make a better deal with the natives, truthfully depicting the language barrier between colonials and natives of the time period. This made violence, or lack thereof, our only tool in gaining resources and communicating with the only people who could get us resources. Keeping this in mind, my group made sure to save some force cards to use as the game neared it’s end and kept track of our balance of force to goodwill cards in the native relations deck. We also looked at probability for harsh weather conditions when deciding whether or not to push for resources each month. As unfortunate and grim as it is, we profited because we used force an, although it was only a game, it make me think, as I suppose it was meant to. I thought about the role of violence and force in the relationship between European colonials and those they attempted to colonize, if we can even call it a relationship. Honestly, the only way to avoid using violence was to fail, or not play the game. I guess that makes a pretty good argument for throwing in the metaphorical towel and putting down the deck of cards. When the only way to avoid violence is to not play the game, it says a good deal about the game itself. If it is impossible to do something without harming others, the benefit of what you set out to do must be weighed against the lives of those you harm. I guess that set up a fairly simple choice for the colonists, as they weighed the promise of gold and resources against the lives of those they considered almost subhuman.

And now I must add my last little paragraphs, commenting on the game, checking off the little sections in this journal prompt. I found the game realistic for the most part, especially considering the reliance of the colonists on the natives and the inability for the two groups to really communicate. The one thing I thought might have been improved upon was the amount of chance involved in the native relations. I thought it might have been based more on the colonists’ actions of each month, rather than as a whole. Although, I couldn’t find a feasible way to do this with only playing cards.

There isn’t anything I would change as a group, considering we did produce the most profit in the class and I would be afraid of changes failing to reproduce our good fortune a second time, but were the victories in this game based on ethics rather than profits, I would feel differently, of course. That seems almost silly to say, but I feel the selfish need to mention it, how very human of me.

Context Is Key

Context is key. This works with sound bytes, quotes, embarrassing pictures, and, yes, literature. When we judge something, we ought to judge it by the standards and norms it lives by rather than our own. This idea of cultural relativism not only could make one a more fair judge of character, but enrich the meaning one derives from literature. Okay, now I just sound obnoxious. The point here is that we can ban Huck Finn for all the offensive language in the world and condemn Romeo and Juliet's underaged love affair all day long, but it means that we're missing the point, we aren't reading the story from the right perspective.

In Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, an elopement throws the entire Bennet family into chaos. Lydia, one of the five Bennet daughters, elopes with Mr. Wickham, a militia officer, because they are in love. Though we know that Wickham is a sleezebag, the full impact of this foolish decision does not hit us if we are looking at it through modern eyes. To understand the behavior of the Bennets, we must take on an early-twentieth century perspective. Now, when we approach the situation from this new viewpoint, not only has Lydia thrown away her own life, but the lives of her sisters as well. Having scandalously run off with a man, Lydia has disgraced her entire family, virtually destroying any of her sisters' prospects for marriage. This ties back in with the main drive of the story, the Bennet sisters', or rather their mother's, hunt for husbands. If we look at these women, judging them by today's standards, they're just boy crazy gold diggers, desperately chasing after any wealthy man in the neighborhood. But it is not today's standards by which they should be judged. To understand the urgency and desperation of the whole scenario, we have to look at the consequences that could fall upon the girls if they cannot marry. Women, being unable to inherit property, had no security for their futures until they were married. This was especially true in a family of all daughters, where in the case of their father's death the whole estate would pass to a distant male relative. Had none of the Bennet daughters married and their father died, Mr. Collins would have had the opportunity to basically throw them out of their own home, a possibility we see played out in Sense and Sensibility.

This brings us back to everybody's favorite moron, Lydia Bennet, and her charmingly horrible husband. Had the young couple's scandalous behavior not been covered up and rectified, the whole family could have ended up in poverty. Perhaps with this perspective, the ridiculous Mrs. Bennet may not be so ridiculous after all. When originally published, Pride and Prejudice was read by women who would understand all of this immediately, because many women were experiencing something similar to it. Now, it takes context to make any sense whatsoever of it. Marriage is no longer by any means a necessity and it would be ridiculous to imagine it impossible to make a decent living as a single woman. When we look at people running away together in modern literature and media, it is romantic much more often than disastrous.

Troll's Roles

Okay, trolls and ogres don't tend to be horribly scary nowadays, maybe they've never been horribly scary, but they had to have been at least menacing at some point. Now, they're generally more comic relief than true villain (see Harry Potter, Ella Enchanted, Lord of the Rings). We see them baffled at the simplest of tasks, warded off by any hero with a vocabulary above the third grade level, and driven entirely by basic needs. They blunder about and are most often laughably stupid, a punch line of an enemy. But perhaps while we're rolling on the floor laughing at them, we're missing some deeper meaning. Perhaps trolls, like onions and ogres, have layers. (Shrek, anyone?) In the past, we know that trolls represented a fear of the natural world or fear of the natural world’s revenge on mankind, but as they’ve developed over time, trolls have come to mean something else. If we stretch our meaning of trolls, we can include ogres, mutants, and creatures like The Hulk, because they all go back to the same basic meaning. Trolls are power and might without the intelligence to wield it properly.

Now that they have a broader meaning, we can find trolls in a wide variety of non-literal ways. Now our trolls don’t have to be covered in warts with giant dopey faces, they can be anything. We see trolls represented in characters like Joffrey Lannister from the Song of Ice and Fire books and the Game of Thrones television series. He is basically exploding with power, but is too stupid and sadistic to use it wisely, bringing about catastrophic consequences in the process. The concept of power and its proper use is a major theme throughout the series and several “trolls” pop up over the course of the story, but Joffrey is certainly one of the most prevalent when it comes to powerful idiots.

If we just talk about that very basic definition, without all of the stumbling comedy, I think a troll is something very real and very scary. Power without constraint or understanding is a reoccurring problem in our modern world. We see this threat in modern leaders and weaponry. As weapons worldwide are constantly ramped up to include more destructive and more volatile threats, the consequences of actually using them are growing too great for any cause to warrant their use. As we mix our chemicals and explosives, we have to realize that there is no purpose for a weapon too catastrophic to fire. It’s own destructiveness renders itself useless. It is raw power, but it isn’t accompanied by any concept of use or control. This is the dilemma trolls can be used to symbolize. As society continues to change and evolve, the meanings of our symbols evolve with us. Our monsters change as we do, as we find new things to be afraid of our monsters represent new things. Having seemingly conquered the natural world, we have found a new meaning for trolls, a new fear. And they are pretty scary.