Dictatorship Day simulation (in a 6th grade classroom)

[Benko]

Dan Simmons is a writer who has won awards in multiple genres (SF/Fantasy, horror, mystery) and when he was a teacher he conducted this experiment one day a year for many years.  I believe he considers himself a JFK liberal.  He posted the below and then "VDH Our Make it up world" following the below. 

http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/ ... Post157631

Dan S. comments:

We need to re-read Orwell's 1984. Facts are what the government SAYS they are. War is Peace. Love is Hate. Old "facts" that are no longer politically useful to the regime are literally put down the Memory Hole while old newspapers are rewritten, photos of old Heroes of the Revolution are airbrushed out and cease to exist.

When I taught sixth-graders my one-day DICTATORSHIP DAY SIMULATION at the end of eight weeks (of curriculum I'd written and created) my 11- and 12-year olds had to learn pages of political dictum before noon because the dreaded POLITICAL OFFICER was coming sometime that afternoon to quiz them. Kids who still hadn't mastered their basic multiplication tables after 4 years could give the right memorized answers in a 5-page single-spaced catechism of THE STATE KNOWS BEST political litany.

All around the classroom were photographs of OUR GLORIOUS LEADER (The Hero of the Revolution) -- Kurt Vonnegut -- and at least five times an hour we all stood rigidly with our fists over our heart as the Revolutionary Anthem ("Pomp and Circumstance") played. Girls wore blue skirts, white blouses, and the red kerchiefs of the Revolutionary Girl Guides. Boys were supposed to wear the white dress shirts and red(dish) ties of the Future Military Male Guides (but every year I taught this since the early 1970's, fewer and fewer boys had a white dress shirt -- many came to Dictatorship Simulation Day wearing their father's wrinkled white shirts. By the end of my doing this annual simulation, NO boys knew how to tie a tie.)

No kids giggled. No kids titered. By 10 a.m. we LIVED IN a state ruled by OUR GLORIOUS LEADER who was always right. I did exercises where the class had to shout out that a black panel is white and a white one black. Reality was what the STATE and OUR GLORIOUS LEADER dictated was reality.

I'd love to report that there were hold-outs and counter-revolutionaries in the classes over 18 years of my teaching, but in truth everone, even the strongest, smartest students, caved within one school day. Individual work and grades no longer existed. Each row of kids was now a CHAIN and anyone's failure meant everyone in that chain's failure.

When I shouted (the only time I ever shouted in my classes, ever) out the question -- "How strong is our CHAIN?" -- the response was an immediate united roar -- "A CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG AS ITS WEAKEST LINK!!!" I'd snap back -- "How many weak links can we have" Again the instant roar -- "OUR CHAIN CAN HAVE NO WEAKEST LINK!!!"

Kids who'd had problems in school for years loved the Dictatorship Simulation Day. They were rewarded for spying on and squealing on their classmates who were whispering or writing things CONTRARY TO THE TRUTHS OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER. The biggest rats were made into enforcement squads -- each carrying a swagger stick I'd made -- who gave orders and made sure that the TRUTHS OF THE REVOLUTION were obeyed without question.

By early afternoon, before the feard Political Leader's unscheduled appearance, I'd moved to exercises where the students had to affirm their allegiance to the STATE and to OUR GLORIOUS LEADER over any closeness to family or parents. Stick figures on the chalkboard (it was that long ago) showed parents holding hands and the mother or father holding hands with one of the kids (who held hands with the other kids.) There were different sized families represented.

One by one, as their names "Citizen ______" were called, the student had to come up, erase the joined hands with the parent(s), and vowed that their only true love and loyalty were to the GLORIOUS LEADER (a poster of Kurt Vonnegut was above all the stick drawings and after the student had erased his or her holding hands with parents, and even with sibings, they were given a bigger, wider piece of colored chalk to draw a line between them up to the image of OUR GLORIOUS LEADER.

At this point, a few students tried to hold out. Such revolts didn't last long, but I loved and admired the very few kids who tried. All the rest of us had school lunches delivered and the kids ate in their Loyal Citizen Chain group. The few rebels had to sit on the floor under his or her table (no desks in my classrooms) and eat alone. When they finally broke and came up front to erase the connection with their families and show their loyalty only to OUR GLORIOUS LEADER, all the other kids were allowed to applaud and hug the former holdout.

Then, sometime past 2 p.m., the POLITICAL OFFICER arrived to test the kids on their Political Education. I always used district psychologists for Political Officers -- an adult the kids didn't know. It was up to the psychologist to decide how he or she would dress as a REPRESENTATIVE OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER. My brother-in-law Jim was a school psychologist (not for our school) and he just wore a suit with a red tie. His voice, when quizzing the kids on their political litanies, was soft and reassuring. The kids were still trembling. When someone made a mistake, Jim's voice turned flat and deadly as he snapped the question to another member of the failed Citizen's chain.

One psychologist I'd known for years showed up in a full Castro military uniform, complete with Castro cap and paratrooper boots with his uniform pants tucked into them, and he was smoking a cigar! (I had to get special permission from the district superintendent for that cigar, but it was the cigar that put the kids over the edge. It's no friggin' simulation if the military Political Officer is smoking a cigar!!!

The students stood at attention with their fists over their hearts the entire time the feared Political Officer snapped political litany questions at them. When he (rarely) said, "Very good, Citizen" the 6th grader's knees grew wobbly and one boy wept with relief.

The Political Officer would then join us, fist over his uniformed heart, in listening to the Anthem of the Glorious Revolution annd then give one last exhortation to the quivering Citizens about their importance in upholding the Power of the State, the Truths of the Revolution, and the total control of Our Glorious Leader, and then he left. I would say "Sit down, Citizens" and the kids -- invariably -- collapsed into their chairs.

On the last year I did this culminating simulation after the 8 weeks of study of totalitarian societies, one boy -- our biggest and toughest boy, someone who should have been in 8th grade by now rather than 6th -- locked his knees during his quivering at-attention, listening-to-the-Political-Officer with his fist over his heart, and passed out when the Political Officer turned the anthem on at the record player.

Luckily, I was there and caught him on the way there before he hit anything. He was out for fifteen seconds or more.

At that point, about 90 minutes before the end of the school day, the simulation always ended and we had -- as we did after every simyulation -- our "debriefing". Ties were loosened, scarves removed, our red armbands (which the Political Officer also had been wearing) tossed away, and we talked, And talked. And talked.

The most common and, to me, disturbing response to me, every year, was how many of the rank and file 6th Graders had LOVED being so regimented and part of something so much larger than themselves. The usually unhappiest tough kids and slow learners who, because of their informing on classmates, had become CHAIN LEADERS, frequently wept and said something to the effect, "I was HAPPY today! I was SOMEBODY IMPORTANT today!"

I've pondered that for years.

The smartest kids were the angriest at what they'd been through, and he first to note the connections to the totalitaran states and iedologies we'd been studying for weeks, but even they, at the end of the simulation, came slowly out of character as if they were still dreaming, still part of something bigger and more important than themselves.

I ponder that as well.

When words are totally separated from facts and reality, anything is possible.

Dan S

[Pointedstick]

Chilling, though utterly predictable. There's a very good reason why stratified, hierarchical dictatorships work so well for the brief period of time before they collapse or are overthrown by someone even worse.

[annieB]

Scary and so real...

[Pointedstick]

Well said, Tenn. It's also why I believe liberalism is the weaker ideology. Liberals simply don't like unity very much. They celebrate diversity, uniqueness, and change, not order, discipline, and sameness. When the chips are down, conservative-minded people are eager to line up and say, "Yes sir!" but liberals simply don't feel the same way, and have to be tricked, pressured, or bullied into it. It is this disunity that causes their social models to be weak and fail. For example, all the attempts at full-on leftist societies (e.g hippie communes, Israeli kibbutzim, the Spanish Revolution libertarian socialist society) failed very quickly. And Communism may have been a leftist ideology, but it was only able to be successfully implemented by injecting it with conservative militarism, transforming it into a dictatorial monster without actually much diversity at all. And it failed too.

The only durable ideologically leftist regimes that exist today are defended by conservative militarists and ideologically accompanied by a heavy dose of conservative social thought. The USA, with all of our socialist programs, is a far-right dystopia by European standards with our religiosity, triumph of all things commercial, glorification of violence, and widespread military operations. And those socialist Europeans countries explicitly discourage cultural diversity and are quite content to be protected by NATO (i.e. us). For all their economic leftism, they are very frequently happy to preserve their social, religious, and architectural conservatism. I'm reminded of RuralEngineer's trip to some eastern European country that banned advertising and air conditioning compressors from the streets to preserve the quaintness of their cities. That's conservatism.

So if you're worried about dictatorship, it's going to come from the right, not the left. It may have leftist trappings, but at a fundamental level, leftism is weak, ineffective, and focused inward, while conservatism is strong and expansionistic. The leftists may ruin a country's economy and discard its traditional culture, but it will be conservatives who transform that country into a dictatorial, exterminationist nightmare. In this respect, they almost seem to work together, as right-wing takeovers often immediately follow a spate of disastrous leftism that leaves the country a shambles. If you want to stop the right, stop the left first! 

[Benko]

Liberals simply don't like unity very much. They celebrate diversity, uniqueness, and change,

IF you are talking about the left in the US today (not people on this board, but the left in the general population), I would say you have drunk the cool aid of what they say they believe, but not the reality of what they do.  Different beliefs or even doubts are not allowed* on e.g. global warming, abortion, gays (and gay marriage).  Even if your beliefs are against e.g. gay marriage you are forced to e.g. photograph their wedding, bake their cake.  I'm not certain, but don't believe this was true of "JFK liberals" but is true of "progressives i.e. what the left has become.  Many on the left believe conservatives are "evil" and there views don't even deserve to be heard. How are conservatives treated in the media and on college campuses?

*Yes there are factions within the left  that have beliefs that contradict the beliefs of other factions on the left.

I'm reminded of RuralEngineer's trip to some eastern European country that banned advertising and air conditioning compressors from the streets to preserve the quaintness of their cities. That's conservatism.

That sounds more like putting the e.g. Quakers in charge, and I don't think that is conservatism as the vast majority in this country would advocate. 

PS you may have come a long way from your more leftist days, but given how you view the left and the right, I would argue you still have biases about both that are not in line with reality.  And NB I don't like many/most of the right's social views.

contrary to the popular depiction in images and the media, the political spectrum is not best plotted on a line with left on one end and right on the other, a truer and more accurate way to view it is as a circle, with tyranny at the top and the "left' and the "right" or "progressive" and "conservative" sitting to either side*. the two have far more in common with each other (due to their closeness to tyranny) than they do to liberty which is on the opposite side of the circle.




* if you want to fill in the labeling in a more comprehensive manner put Communist and fascist next to tyranny and "left' and the "right" or "progressive" and "conservative" immediately next to them...

[Benko]

NB I don't like many/most of the right's social views.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Republican Party. The social views of mainstream America are moving further to the left with each passing day. As long as the Rs continue to cling to their far-right social agenda, it will become increasingly difficult for people to vote for them for their [perceived] fiscal and anti-big government policies, etc.

Benko, how do you resolve that in your brain? It is a constant struggle for me to decide what is more important on any given day or topic.

PUG,

We prioritize things every day.  If O (or Jeb) successfully allows millions of illegal immigrants into the country IMHO that will overshadow almost everything else.  Given what is going on in the country now, social issues take a back seat to many other issues e.g. the economy, etc.

[Mountaineer]

NB I don't like many/most of the right's social views.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Republican Party. The social views of mainstream America are moving further to the left with each passing day. As long as the Rs continue to cling to their far-right social agenda, it will become increasingly difficult for people to vote for them for their [perceived] fiscal and anti-big government policies, etc.

Benko, how do you resolve that in your brain? It is a constant struggle for me to decide what is more important on any given day or topic.

PUG,

We prioritize things every day.  If O (or Jeb) successfully allows millions of illegal immigrants into the country IMHO that will overshadow almost everything else.  Given what is going on in the country now, social issues take a back seat to many other issues e.g. the economy, etc.

I most likely have a minority position, but to me it seems when we turned "social issues" over to the state to manage from hundreds or thousands of miles away (from management by the family and/or local and/or religious communities), we have created a huge quagmire of fecal matter that does little than create a bigger pile of fecal matter.  By most objective measures, it seems there is little to claim as a success story by either party. 

... Mountaineer

[Benko]

Liberals simply don't like unity very much. They celebrate diversity, uniqueness, and change,

IF you are talking about the left in the US today (not people on this board, but the left in the general population), I would say you have drunk the cool aid of what they say they believe, but not the reality of what they do.  Different beliefs or even doubts are not allowed* on e.g. global warming, abortion, gays (and gay marriage).

I'm not really sure what this means.  Different beliefs or doubts are "not allowed"?  By whom? 

PS said liberals celebrate diversity which presumably means being open to opinions other than their own.  Which I call BS. 

1.  I'm sure you read about people being forced to take photographs for gay wedding and forced to bake cake for gay wedding even though it went against their beliefs.

2. a Marine in Maryland who served overseas and fought against Islamic extremists was barred from school premises when he protested his daughter learning about what he called “the benefits of Islam”? at her Maryland high school.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Cali ... Curriculum

3. I was close to a women who was an assistant professor at a local university.  She was actually pretty leftist in most ways, but she was from Britain and believed in god.  She was quite clear to me that she had to keep quiet about believing in god since people who did were not treated well (and this was not berkeley). 

4. Mike Adams is a prof an Univ. NC and has lots of columns about how people with non-liberal views are treated at his school. 

5.  Last I checked, journalist Bob Woodward was not exactly conservative.  He is apparently honest and has on more than a few occasions expressed concerns about the current administration.  Have you noticed how he has been treated by other journalists when he has made these comments?

6.  Sure the left and right are the same.  That is why the consequences for a neighborhood of a tea party rally are the same as for an Occupy wall street rally.

I didn't say we lived in a totalitarian state.  We don't--yet. 

[Pointedstick]

PS said liberals celebrate diversity which presumably means being open to opinions other than their own.  Which I call BS. 

By that definition of "diversity," I don't think it actually exists. I don't believe I have yet met a person who was open to political opinions other than their own.

However, that's not exactly what I meant by "diversity." It's been my experience that conservatives are interested in conserving (imagine that) the details of a particular social order. Liberals are generally interested in subverting it and replacing it with any of a very large number of alternatives. It is this that I was referring to. While conservatives generally want one thing, liberals will generally accept anything except that one thing that conservatives want.

Perhaps it would be more correct to say that liberals are interested in a diversity of options outside the traditional social order. But certainly, that only appears to prove my point: there are many, many options outside of the traditional social order, while the traditional social order itself is the one single thing that conservatives want to keep going.

[Benko]

PS said liberals celebrate diversity which presumably means being open to opinions other than their own.  Which I call BS. 

By that definition of "diversity," I don't think it actually exists. I don't believe I have yet met a person who was open to political opinions other than their own.

  Asi I'm using it I think everyone on this board is. 

I don't think anyone on this board would give people a hard time because of their religious belief or lack thereof.  This happened to the women I know at local university and you can read about it at others.

I hope no one on this board would do the equivalent of making someone take pics/bake cakes against ther will/beliefs.

"conservatives are interested in conserving (imagine that) the details of a particular social order. Liberals are generally interested in subverting it"

Your very choice or words is revealing.  Are you really suggesting that the methods used by the majority of both sides are the same?  ALinsky is liked by both Hillary and O and it advocates gross dishonesty and the ends justify the means.  Where are the popular conservative authords advocating the same?

"some eastern European country that banned advertising and air conditioning compressors "
This is example is not realistic, not even in the town of 50,000 in south carolina I used to live in.

There were 2 sets of voting machines that had "glitches" (one chicago and one marylad) last week and converted D votes to R votes and 2 sets of democratic operatives were caught on video last week assisting in voting fraud.  If both sides do the same things, where are the cases of Rs doing the same thing?

I will certainly give you that the mainstream Rs are not that much different from Ds (which is why they are called RINOs). 

[Xan]

I don't think anyone on this board would give people a hard time because of their religious belief or lack thereof. This happened to the women I know at local university and you can read about it at others.

Unless of course those religious beliefs came from a Muslim....
Do you seriously dispute that?

i might... the difficulty is that Islam/Muslim is a set of religious beliefs intertwined with a (violent) political ideology, i doubt that anyone here cares a bit or has anything bad to say about the religious beliefs or practices of Muslims, and that many or most (legitimately) would express disagreement with the political ideology. The problem is how can you speak ill of one without sounding as though you are an anti Muslim bigot? it probably can be done if you take the time to use words with great care and provide definitions and detailed explanations, but unless you are writing a thesis with no limit on space and time it is not easy, the two things are deeply intertwined. When somebody is speaking about the evils of Islam and using generalizations, i tend to give benefit of the doubt and assume they are not narrow minded haters of a religion as much as making a point about the evils of the ideology..

If pressed, I would say that the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims lead people away from Christ, and are therefore of the devil.  But I'd expect any Muslim to say that my own beliefs lead people away from Allah and are therefore of the devil.

If we didn't both believe that, then neither of us would be particularly strong on what we supposedly do believe.  Frankly I'd have more respect for the Muslim who told me that rather than the one who might say "anything is okay and nothing really matters".

well i guess i stand corrected... i think my own peculiar views on religion tend to blind me to the whole black/white, my idea right/your idea wrong, my side good/other side evil dichotomies of faith based believers.

i still expect you would not "go around giving anyone a hard time" about their beliefs, being pressed (asked) is not the same as being confrontational or trying to force your beliefs on others..

[Pointedstick]

I don't think anyone on this board would give people a hard time because of their religious belief or lack thereof.  This happened to the women I know at local university and you can read about it at others.

I hope no one on this board would do the equivalent of making someone take pics/bake cakes against ther will/beliefs.

"conservatives are interested in conserving (imagine that) the details of a particular social order. Liberals are generally interested in subverting it"

Your very choice or words is revealing.  Are you really suggesting that the methods used by the majority of both sides are the same?  ALinsky is liked by both Hillary and O and it advocates gross dishonesty and the ends justify the means.  Where are the popular conservative authords advocating the same?

"some eastern European country that banned advertising and air conditioning compressors "
This is example is not realistic, not even in the town of 50,000 in south carolina I used to live in.

There were 2 sets of voting machines that had "glitches" (one chicago and one marylad) last week and converted D votes to R votes and 2 sets of democratic operatives were caught on video last week assisting in voting fraud.  If both sides do the same things, where are the cases of Rs doing the same thing?

I will certainly give you that the mainstream Rs are not that much different from Ds (which is why they are called RINOs).

To be honest, Benko, I think you may have misinterpreted my position, and are kind of going off the rails a bit. I'm not sure why you brought up religious persecution, taking pictures, baking cakes, Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton, voting machines, or South Carolina, as they appear to be part of a general anti-liberal sentiment that doesn't really have much to do with what I was saying. Clearly the methods of conservatives and liberals are going to be different; a subversive aim is going to require subversive methods, and a conservatory aim requires conservative methods. I'm not trying to suggest that liberals are better than conservatives here, or vice versa. I was only ruminating on their various differences as they pertain to the process of a government transforming into dictatorship.

If I was to try to summarize my point, it would be that liberals seem to pave the way for conservatives to transform society into a dictatorship by destroying cherished traditional institutions which fractures the culture and emboldens those who are willing to use violence to bring it back, or create a scary mutated militaristic version of it.