08w52:1 Xmas Propaganda Posted December 21st, 2008 by timothy. 0 Comments Goodreads | 2008 week 52 number 1 (Xmas Propaganda) I think I’ve heard ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas’ every weekday since the end of November, and when I read this earlier this week, I understood what it was like to live in a totalitarian state. – Timothy The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas | Christopher Hitchens http://www.slate.com/id/2206713/ “As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor’s office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined “themes” have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader’s birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events. Originally Christian, this devotional set-aside can now be joined by any other sectarian group with a plausible claim—Hanukkah or Kwanzaa—to a holy day that occurs near enough to the pagan winter solstice.”
