From: backpack@access.digex.com (Stuart Reges)
Subject: Re: THE HIDDEN STORY OF THE L.A. REBELLION
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, Maryland USA
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 15:35:02 GMT

blosser_cy@lrc.edu quotes from:

>		THE HIDDEN STORY OF THE LOS ANGELES REBELLION: 
>		    DOMESTIC POLITICS IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
>
>	By the Los Angeles Rebellion Support Project of Refuse & Resist!

which says, among many other things:

>	Unavoidably, the Los Angeles Rebellion raises the question of where the
>middle class will stand.  with the poor and oppressed who dared to rebel, or 
>with the privileged few and their New World Order?

I don't mean to disparage the article, but this led me inevitably to think of
the following from "1984" by George Orwell, or, more precisly, from "The Theory
of Oligarchical Collectivism" by Emmanuel Goldstein:

	Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic
	Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the
	Middle, and the Low.  They have been subdivided in many ways, they have
	borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as
	their attitude toward one another, have varied from age to age; but the
	essential structure of society has never altered.  Even after enormous
	upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has
	always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to
	equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

	The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable.  The aim of
	the High is to remain where they are.  The aim of the Middle is to
	change places with the High.  the aim of the Low, when they have an
	aim--for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too
	much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of
	anything outside their daily lives--is to abolish all distinctions and
	create a society in which all men shall be equal.  Thus throughout
	history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over
	and over again.  For long periods the High seem to be securely in
	power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose
	either their belief in themselves, or their capacity to govern
	efficiently, or both.  They are then overthrown by the Middle, who
	enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are
	fighting for liberty and justice.  As soon as they have reached their
	objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of
	servitude, and themselves become the High.  Presently a new Middle
	group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them,
	and the struggle begins over again.

I see nothing in the history of mankind either before or after Orwell that
would contradict these observations.

+---------------+------------------------------------------------------------+
|               | Stuart Reges (guest aRreSt?) backpack@access.digex.com     |
|               |                                                            |
|  b      p     | Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable    |
|   a      a    | truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid |
|    c      c   | effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her    |
|     k      k  | sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire  |
|               | to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?             |
|               | --Herman Melville, Moby Dick                               |
+---------------+------------------------------------------------------------+