VideoPsychotherapy

Welcome to The Asylum

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:10:00 GMT

“They pour the poison, you drink the poison You taste the poison, you love the poison” - The Doctor

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” - 1984, George Orwell

“We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up … You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed in pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?” - 1984, George Orwell

I see a violent character

“Tomorrow, when you awaken, you will sense the change. You’ll have that uncertain feeling that bizarre things are about to happen. You’ll go to the door but there’ll be no newspaper there. You’ll switch on the radio but there’ll be no broadcast. You’ll turn on your television but there’ll be only noise and confusion. You wonder what the problem is. You look out your window and you see people roaming on the street. They seem confused. Why, you go outside to see what the matter is and you’re shocked at what you see. Buildings are burning, there’s automobile accidents and there’s confusion of all kinds. You ask someone what’s happening but it’s no use. He’s insane, quite insane. The world has gone mad, they’re all mad. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know where you’ll hide. Perhaps you’ve gone mad. You rush back into your apartment, you’re sweating, shaking, you pray for the answer, and then a voice comes to you from out of the darkness. It is the voice of your Doctor. Do you wish to escape from the madness? Do you seek refuge from a world you will never understand? I will grant you Asylum from the madness, a passage through the void. But the price is your obedience, your devotion, your surrender. Follow me or scramble in your mad world, tumble in the void. Surrender your will, surrender your mind! They’re worthless to you now! ONLY I MATTER NOW! ONLY MY GLORY MATTERS NOW! - The Doctor

Go down to the bridge late at night

“Tell me,” he said, “how soon will they shoot me?” “It might be a long time,” said O’Brien. “You are a difficult case. But don’t give up hope. Everything is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.” - 1984, George Orwell

Watch TV Until You Rot!

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 17:39:00 GMT

It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.
— Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Then—motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.” “And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?”
“I think so.”
“Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”
“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”
— Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Every second closer to the end. The years tick away like minutes. You live such a brief time. Why do you spend it watching this nonsense?

— The Doctor

“Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page, from the second and so on, chain-smoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the secondhand notions and time-worn philosophies.”
“One last thing,” said Beatty. “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.”

You can’t build a house without nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
— Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Faber turned the pages. “Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it’s too late.”
— Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

I Love The People

So you say your child is watching too much television. What the hell do you know about it? What is too much television anyway? You make me sick with your old fashioned ways. Kid wants to have a little fun, watch a little TV. Well, let him watch it. Let him watch it until he rots!

— The Doctor

The Media Reacts

— The Cleveland Edition, Rikki Santer

Sing Praises To My Glory

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 02:10:00 GMT

… a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face.
1984 - George Orwell

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
1984 - George Orwell

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated. …
Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. …
Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected.
… he began thinking of the things that would happen to him after the Thought Police took him away.
… the groveling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth, and bloody clots of hair.
… He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently.
There was a knocking at the door.
1984 - George Orwell

First they came for Jones

It was always at night—the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: VAPORIZED was the usual word.

The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force himself into losing consciousness.

Nobody ever escaped detection, and nobody ever failed to confess. When once you had succumbed to thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date you would be dead.
1984 - George Orwell

Couldn't we cull the human population by turning loose wolf packs and hungry hyenas in crowded cities around the world?
Wouldn't that be a natural, green solution?
Watch the humans run! Watch the jackals feast!

— The Doctor

Site Guide and Tech Specs

VideoPsychotherapy — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 16:49:00 GMT

This Substack site was created for viewing on a laptop or desktop computer, not on a phone!

This post will help you navigate your way through the madness of the VideoPsychotherapy Substack site. The thumbnails designate the different types of posts:

Episodes, Asylum 2003, Vintage Asylum, Science Fiction Remix, Poli-Sci-Fi Theater, Video Nouveau, Holiday Greetings, Asylum Shorts, Doc Singles

Episodes

These 18 posts are “episodes” of VideoPsychotherapy—compilations of videos, photos, quotes from The Doctor and passages from Dystopian Fiction. “Episode” posts use a variety of thumbnails.

Believe My Lies! • Welcome to the Asylum • Watch TV Until You Rot! • Sing Praises to My Glory • ALL MAD! • Kill the Children, Take the Money • Clean The Boot! • I Know All, I See All • There Are Traitors Amongst Us! • You’re Doomed! • Kill For Wine • Worst Movie Ever! • Obedience is Freedom • You Love The Sickness • The Vile Sickness • My Truck is Huge • A Christmas Miracle • A New Religion

Asylum 2003

Two full length 40 minute shows—The Asylum for Shut-Ins: VideoPsychotherapy. The first Non-Linear, computer edited shows, created in 2003. The first use of “Hypermix”: video scrubbing or “scratching” on the timeline. 2 posts

You Love The Sickness • Clean The Boot!

Vintage Asylum

Full length episodes of the original Asylum 1987-1991. 7 posts

Asylum: The Beginning • VideoPsychotherapy Will Guide You Through Your Nightmares • Why Do You Spend So Much Time Thinking About Evil? • The Nightmare Never Stops • World Gone Mad • Cracked Open Heads • You’ll March, You’ll March!

Science Fiction Remix

A Collection of science fiction mash-up videos without The Doctor. 1 post

Poli-Sci-Fi Theater

Political satire from early in the 21st century, with special guests. 1 post

Video Nouveau

Highlights from our Public Access show which began in 1984. A variety of experimental videos made while learning to use Cablevision’s cameras and editing equipment. Featuring: Heal, Triple Talk and Frank’s Crazy. 2 posts

Video Nouveau • Odds & Ends & Dead Ends

Holiday Greetings

Personal greetings from The Doctor! 1 post

Asylum History and Mythology (coming soon)

How The Asylum was created and The Doctor’s backstory … 1 post

The following two posts are behind a paywall. All 87 videos are included in the “Episodes” posts.

Asylum Shorts

Collection of all 26 video shorts with The Doctor and VideoPsychotherapy. 3 posts

Doc Singles

Collection of all 61 videos featuring only The Doctor—no film clips. 3 posts

Tech Specs

Video Nouveau, including The Asylum, was shot on VHS tape. Video samples were recorded off the air on a consumer VHS recorder. Fun fact: in the 80’s, broadcast TV did not yet use ID. bugs! Edited on 2 VHS machines with a +-5 frame accuracy, 5 second pre-roll for every cut, and only 1 audio track so music had to roll live during the tape to tape edit.

Music and graphics were created on Chris Yewell’s homemade modular synthesizer and assorted computers, listed below.

Asylum early tech details

The Asylum Graphics

3D graphics program: ‘Cyber Studio CAD-3D’, on an Atari ST computer (16-bit).
NTSC Video capture card: Vidi ST(12) connected to the Atari ST’s game cartridge port. Resolution of capture was 320 x 400 with 256 gray scale “colors”.
Tesla Coil 3D animation and the Doc’s 2D face animation used Cyber Studio CAD-3D, and the video capture card was used to grab the Doc’s image from an existing video.

Heal

Apple II+ with ‘MIDI Madness’ software and MIDI interface
SoundChaser keyboard for the Apple II+, used for the organ
Decillionix DX1 sound-sampling card on the Apple II+
Homemade analog synthesizer with homemade step sequencer.
Waveform was shot off an oscillator. Graphics created on a sound visualizer from Decillionx called ‘Splash’ were also used in the videos “SPEAK!” and “Squeal” (not posted).

Mad Avenue

• Apple II+ with Decillionx DX1 and MIDI Madness
• External synchronization used a homemade clock-divider built on a solderless breadboard connected to a (Thomas Henry) Snare+ Drum and a homemade, modular, analog synthesizer.
• Master sync was from a homemade step sequencer. The accelerando at the end of the video was accomplished by manually turning a ‘rate’ knob on the homemade step sequencer

Asylum 2003 - Present

Analog becomes digital. Some of the early Doc was shot, in a studio, on Sony Betacam tube cameras. The “Club” sequences were edited in a CMX controlled, Grass Valley switched, 2” Reel, broadcast master edit suite. Analog material was later converted to digital and loaded into Final Cut Pro, a non-linear video editing program, which I continue to use to this day. The white-room title sequence was shot on 35mm film with an Arriflex camera. The “Doc Arrives” sequence was shot on 16mm film. The Doctor was more recently shot with a cheap digital camcorder. The Asylum logo Tesla Coil animation was created with Crystal Topas Professional from CrystalGraphics.

About VideoPsychotherapy

ALL MAD!

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 01:45:00 GMT

I suppose you might be curious to know what a man can be like who does not love men. Very well, I am such a man, and I love them so little that soon I am going out and kill half a dozen of them: perhaps you might wonder why only half a dozen? Because my revolver has only six cartridges. A monstrosity, isn’t it? … I was born like that. - Erostratus, Jean-Paul Sartre

Bad Behavior Has Great Rewards

EROSTRATUS

… everything went along much better starting from the day I bought a revolver. You feel strong when you assiduously carry on your person something that can explode and make a noise … I simply put it in my pants pocket and then went out for a walk … I felt it pulling at my pants like a crab, I felt it cold against my thigh. But little by little it got warmer with the contact of my body. I walked with a certain stiffness, I looked like a man with a hard-on, with his thing sticking out at every step. I slipped my hand in my pocket and felt the object … As a result, I never went out without my revolver … I looked at people’s backs, and I imagined, from their walk, the way they would fall if I shot them
“I know your character,”he said to me. “His name is Erostratus. He wanted to become famous and he couldn’t find anything better to do than to burn down the temple of Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world.”
“And what was the name of the man who built the temple?”
“I don’t remember,” he confessed. “I don’t believe anybody knows his name.”
“Really? But you remember the name of Erostratus? You see, he didn’t figure out things too badly.”
… Erostratus, his story was encouraging. He had been dead for more than two thousand years and his act was still shining like a black diamond. I began to think my destiny would be short and tragic … I felt a strange power in my body when I went down into the street. I had my revolver on me, the thing that explodes and makes noise. But I no longer drew my assurance from that, it was from myself; I was a being like a revolver, a torpedo or a bomb. I too, one day at the end of my somber life, would explode and light the world with a flash as short and violent as magnesium.

“Why must I kill all these people who are dead already?”
I let myself become slowly occupied by my crime. In the mirror, to which I often went to look at myself, I noticed the changes in my face with pleasure. The eyes had grown larger, they seemed to be eating up the whole face. They were black and tender behind the glasses and I rolled them like planets. The fine eyes of an artist or assassin.
When the big man passed me, I jumped and followed him … I took out my revolver: it was cold and bright, it disgusted me, I couldn’t remember very well what I was supposed to do with it … I wondered if I wasn’t going to throw my revolver into the sewer. Suddenly, the man turned around and looked at me, irritated … Then I knew I was going to start screaming. I didn’t want to: I shot him three times in the belly. He fell with an idiotic look on his face … I ran as fast as my legs could carry me … I shot twice. People began to scream and scatter … I ran into a cafe … and locked myself in the lavatory. There was still one bullet in my revolver … After a while, a voice said, “All right, open up. We won’t hurt you.” … I told myself, “If they get me , they’re going to beat me, break my teeth, maybe put an eye out.” … I hurriedly put the barrel of the gun in my mouth, and I bit hard on it. But I couldn’t shoot, I couldn’t even put my finger on the trigger. Everything was dead silent.
I threw away the revolver and opened the door. - Erostratus, Jean-Paul Sartre

I Hate the Weakness

It's a Shame isn't it?
The Old Monsters are a thing of the Past.
No one is afraid of Wolfman anymore.
You're more afraid of your Neighbor than you are of Wolfman. The Horrible isn't a fantasy anymore.
The Horrible is next door.
Your cousin, your Mailman, your Wife...
Who's going to Cut your Throat Tonight? - The Doctor

Kill The Children, Take The Money

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 03:01:00 GMT

The Head Nurse … pressed down a little lever.
There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.
The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.
“And now,” the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), “now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.”
He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires. - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks—already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
“They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.” - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

“Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too—all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!” The Director almost shouted in his triumph. “Suggestions from the State.” - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

You’ve always been told what to think, ever since you were a child. First by your parents, then by your teachers, none of them know anything. They’re all liars. You can believe me though. Yes friends why not believe me. I’ll tell you the truth. Sink into the blackness of the horrible truth. I’ll lead you there. I’ll guide you there. I’ll take you there my friends. I understand you. I want to help you. Trust me. Put your faith in me. Obey me. I am the only one that can save you. - The Doctor

Little child, the ghost will come and eat you

No one else can save you. Not your Preacher, not your Teacher, not Mommy and Daddy, not your role model. They will all betray you. You’re alone. Alone in your sickness. Alone in the suffering you so richly deserve. Only through your obedience, your devotion to your Doctor, will you find salvation, a refuge from the madness you will never understand! - The Doctor

Clean The Boot!

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:04:00 GMT

To Question is cowardice. To Obey is Glory! - The Doctor

On the Idiot News for Slugs at six and eleven They speak of "Boots on the ground."
They love the sickness...
So smug, so giddy,

And plastered with Clown makeup.

In 1984
The Secret Police torture another Rebel... And speak of Boots on the Face... Forever!
They tell you that two and two are three... And you agree!

But when History Speaks,
You do not listen.
You see my Boot before you And you rush, without question, To Buff it Bright!

Boots on the Ground! Boots on the Face! Boots Buffed Bright!

I Condemn You! - The Doctor

Use Those Boots!

The War Prayer

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
- The War Prayer, Mark Twain

I Know All, I see All

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 06:57:00 GMT

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
—1984, George Orwell

‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’
Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’ the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, … All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which ‘The Times’ did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak—’child hero’ was the phrase generally used—had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
—1984, George Orwell

‘Who denounced you?’ said Winston.
‘It was my little daughter,’ said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. ‘She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact I’m proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.’

It was a good hanging,’ said Syme reminiscently. ‘I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue—a quite bright blue. That’s the detail that appeals to me.’
—1984, George Orwell

“History has taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth, for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert for forty years before each step in his development. And he has to be driven through the desert with threats and promises, by imaginary terrors and imaginary consolations, so that he should not sit down prematurely to rest and divert himself by worshipping golden calves.
“ ‘It is necessary to hammer every sentence into the masses by repetition and simplification. What is presented as right must shine like gold; what is presented as wrong must be black as pitch. For consumption by the masses, the political processes must be colored like ginger-bread figures at a fair.’ ”
“Your task is simple. You have set it yourself: to gild the Right, to blacken the Wrong. The policy of the opposition is wrong. Your task is therefore to make the opposition contemptible; to make the masses understand that opposition is a crime and that the leaders of the opposition are criminals. That is the simple language which the masses understand. If you begin to talk of your complicated motives, you will only create confusion amongst them. Your task, Citizen Rubashov, is to avoid awakening sympathy and pity. Sympathy and pity for the opposition are a danger to the country.
—Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
—1984, George Orwell

Asylum: You Love The Sickness

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 22:31:00 GMT

Asylum: You Love The Sickness is first of 2 full length episodes of the second generation of VideoPsychotherapy—created with the new dummy, all Public Domain footage and all original music. It is also my first use of non-linear editing and the introduction of ‘Hypermix’, my frenetic time-warping, digital editing technique. Please view the show on full screen and in a darkened room for full effect. — TZ

There are Traitors Amongst Us!

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 02:24:00 GMT

There is no way in which the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is for ever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.’
— 1984, George Orwell

He began asking his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers were known to him already.
‘You are prepared to give your lives?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are prepared to commit murder?’
‘Yes.’
‘To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?’
‘Yes.’
‘To betray your country to foreign powers?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases—to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?’
‘Yes.’
‘If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face—are you prepared to do that?’
‘Yes.’ …
‘You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?’
‘Yes.’
— 1984, George Orwell

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. … We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.
The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism.
— 1984, George Orwell

Take your hanging like a man

On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns—after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces—at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.
— 1984, George Orwell

Glory be to The Doctor!

And to VideoPsychotherapy!

And to the Holy Dollar!

As it was in The Beginning.

Is now and Ever Shall Be.

Con Job without end.

Glory be to Brass Knuckles,

And to Black Jacks,

And to the rifle butt.

As it was in The Beginning.

Is now and Ever Shall Be.

Torment without End.

—The Doctor

YOU'RE DOOMED!

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 03:02:00 GMT

Utopia lies just ahead and … since ideal ends justify the most abominable means, it is your privilege and duty to rob, swindle, torture, enslave and murder all those who, in your opinion (which is, by definition, infallible), obstruct the onward march to the earthly paradise. - Ape And Essence, Aldous Huxley

Your History is drenched in Blood

Nationalism—the theory that the state you happened to be subject to is the only true god, and that all other states are false gods; that all these gods, true as well as false, have the mentality of juvenile delinquents; and that every conflict over prestige, power or money is a crusade for the Good, the True and the Beautiful. - Ape And Essence, Aldous Huxley

The Horrible Truth

All you need to do is just to threaten your neighbour with any of the weapons of mass destruction. Their own panic will do the rest. Remember what the psychological treatment did to New York, for example. The short-wave broadcasts from overseas, the headlines in the evening papers. And immediately there were eight millions of people trampling one another to death on the bridges and in the tunnels. And the survivors scattered through the countryside, like locusts, like a hoard of plague-infected rats. Fouling the water supply. Spreading typhoid and diphtheria and venereal disease. Biting, clawing, looting, murdering, raping. Feeding on dead dogs and the corpses of children. Shot at sight by the farmers, bludgeoned by the police, machine-gunned by the State Guard, strung up by the Vigilantes. And the same thing was happening … all over the world. Not a shot had been fired, and civilization was already in ruins. - Ape And Essence, Aldous Huxley

Say Goodbye to the Humans!

I love the old war movies, they’re the greatest. The more destruction and explosions the better I like it. It doesn’t matter which side wins as long as there’s plenty of fire, plenty of explosions, plenty of destruction. Philosophy means nothing to me. Politics means nothing to me. Good, Evil, Nothing, Nothing! Just the war, the destruction, the heartbreak, the terror. These are the things I cherish. - The Doctor

I was driving down MLK the other night and I saw an 8-dog pack runnin' down the street together. Man was I glad I was in the car. They looked like they were having a good time. They were dragging along the body of a small child. A great pity I said as I got onto the freeway... - The Doctor

Kill For Wine

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 23:39:00 GMT

Our boasted civilization is based upon blood, soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of us can escape the scarlet stain.
— The Iron Heel, Jack London

The Iron Heel

The capitalists have stolen our country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary, and ridden over us rough-shod, and now they propose to murder those who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal dominion.
The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right. Never mind the exceptions, and never mind the oppression and injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The point is that the strength of the Oligarchy today lies in its satisfied conception of its own righteousness.

They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained civilization. It was their belief that if ever they weakened, the great beast would ingulf them and everything of beauty and wonder and joy and good in its cavernous and slime-dripping maw.
This was the beast to be stamped upon, and the highest duty of the aristocrat was to stamp upon it. … they alone, by their unremitting toil and sacrifice, stood between weak humanity and the all-devouring beast; and they believed it, firmly believed it.
“We have no words to waste on you. … We will show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns … We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain.

One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory of the divine right of kings—commercial kings in their case.
But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense."
— The Iron Heel, Jack London

"When he says "free opportunity for all," he means free opportunity to squeeze profits, … And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated these phrases so often that you believe them. You want opportunity to plunder your fellow-men in your own small way, but you hypnotize yourselves into thinking you want freedom. You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you are patriotic.
We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor.
… labor, and all of us, will be crushed under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and terrible as any despotism that has blackened the pages of the history of man. That will be a good name for that despotism, the Iron Heel."

"It's no use," he said. "We are beaten. The Iron Heel is here. I had hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box. I was wrong. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties; the Iron Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a bloody revolution of the working class.”
“I told him that we would walk upon the faces of the working class. And so we shall. As for you, … if you throw your fortunes in with the working class—well, watch out for your face, that is all.”
— The Iron Heel, Jack London

Take More Than You Know You Should Have

They hoisted the white flag of surrender, but it was ignored. There were no survivors. The entire six thousand were annihilated. Common shell and shrapnel were thrown in upon them … they were mowed down by the machine-guns. The earth was carpeted with the slain, and a final charge of cavalry, with trampling of horses' hoofs, revolvers, and sabres, crushed the wounded into the ground. … Eleven thousand men, women, and children were shot down on the streets of Sacramento or murdered in their houses. The national government took possession of the state government, and all was over for California. … Their leaders were executed for sedition or confined in madhouses. Those who were executed went to their deaths with all the gladness of martyrs. It was a time of madness.
— The Iron Heel, Jack London

When you sleep and dream,

There is hope.

That’s what you want,

To walk in your sleep,

To live in a dream,

But you wake to greet a new

day…

Where you toil in Ignorance.

Where you welcome Defeat.

Where you

worship the Master.

Don’t fight, Quit.

Don’t cry, Cheer.

Don’t think,

Surrender.

I Condemn You,

DOC

Black & White photos: Cleveland Flats, 1976—TZ

WORST MOVIE EVER!

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 18:58:00 GMT

Using thousands of clips from dozens, if not hundreds, of Public Domain movies, Documentaries and Government Educational films, I am creating an experimental feature length narrative Science-Fiction/Horror film. An opportunity to experience an avalanche of ridiculous, campy and terrible movies in one extreme mash-up—with action, humor and narrative drive designed to keep the viewer happily engaged. - TZ

"We travel back in time to the 20^th Century when mankind dreamt about the possibilities of the future…"

Spacecraft leave the Earth to search for life on distant planets. Astronauts explore strange dreamlike worlds and are attacked by monsters, robots and Alien spacemen. The astronauts battle back with space-age weaponry, kill off as many Aliens as they can and escape in their spacecraft. Cruising back to Earth, in a victorious mood, they are pounded by meteor storms that throw them off course, damage many ships and force crash landings.

Many of the astronauts return dazed and confused, possibly infected and suffering mental problems—they are not themselves. Crowds celebrate as troops march in the streets and some citizens demonstrate against the war ... Military operations continue on far off planets. Astronauts continue to exterminate Aliens.

Alien abductions begin and fear and paranoia grip the population ... As more people disappear and Alien sightings increase, the government continues to deny their existence. There is chaos in the streets as torch mobs seek scapegoats. Suspects are attacked, lynched, burned.

Just as civil disorder reaches a fever pitch, saucers appear in the skies and attack, delivering devastating blows. Earthlings scramble for survival and the Aliens demand total surrender. Leaders of all nations agree to launch a united attack. The fate of mankind swings in the balance as battles rage across the globe. Monsters and spacemen are hunted down and killed … Rockets and missiles, from all over the world, are launched—blasting the Alien spacecraft out of the sky.

Peace prevails. Couples reunite and people around the world celebrate ... The earth begins to rumble and shake. Earthquakes erupt and volcanoes explode all over the world. Giant reptiles emerge from the earth and rampage across the planet, destroying everything in their path. Armies counter-attack but are helpless, even resorting to atomic weapons. Humans flee burning cities in terror as fire rains from the sky … Raging monsters and nuclear explosions destroy what’s left of civilization.

Peace reigns on a planet devoid of human life. Dinosaurs roam the Earth.
— Worst Movie Ever!, excerpts from synopsis

Gift Shop

Music in videos #3, 4, 6, 7 - Humachine / #2 - TZ / #1, 5 - Stock

Holiday Greetings from The Doctor

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 02:07:00 GMT

Valentines Day

Mardi Gras

St. Patrick’s Day

The Party

Mother’s Day

Fouth of July

Birthday

Halloween

Christmas

Mardi Gras - Fourth of July (raw takes)

The Party (raw takes)

Obedience is Freedom

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 02:03:00 GMT

He knew in advance what O’Brien would say: that the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail, cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.
—1984, George Orwell

A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate …
Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another … At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia…
—1984, George Orwell

Mrs Parsons’ eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children, and back again.
‘They do get so noisy,’ she said. ‘They’re disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the hanging, that’s what it is.
‘Why can’t we go and see the hanging?’ roared the boy in his huge voice.
‘Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!’ chanted the little girl, still capering round.
Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamored to be taken to see it.
—1984, George Orwell

‘Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy—everything. … There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. … But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’
—1984, George Orwell

Hatred and Glory!

I line thousands of you up. I watch you March all in a row like little bugs. And when I grow weary of this I squash you with my boot. Do you like that? That’s the way it is. Let me tell you something else. All the things that you cherish, the things that you hold dear, they’re false, lies. Do you understand me? CLEAN MY BOOT! That is the only truth you need to know.

—The Doctor

You Love the Sickness

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 03:20:00 GMT

I will inform you as to the nature of your desires, their causes and the possibilities of their fulfillment. Do you suppose if you were capable of figuring these things out for yourself that you would be here now? You are surrendered, you are in protective custody. You have forfeited your rights as an individual. From now on I will do your thinking for you. You will listen. You will observe. You will obey. Let’s begin.

— The Doctor

I Love Culture

“Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don’t want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one.”
“Oh. And what’s stinking about it?”
He cried out: “It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there’s no law nor order no more … It’s no world for any old man any longer, and that means that I’m not one bit scared of you, my boyos, because I’m too drunk to feel the pain if you hit me, and if you kill me I’ll be glad to be dead … So your worst you may do, you filthy cowardly hooligans.” and then he started singing again: “Oh dear dear land, I fought for thee And brought thee peace and victory”– So we cracked into him lovely … Then we tripped him so he laid down flat and heavy and a bucketload of beer-vomit came whooshing out. That was disgusting so we gave him the boot, one go each, and then it was blood, not song nor vomit, that came out of his filthy old rot.
— A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

Duet

“You mean,” I said, “it will be just like going to the pictures?”
“They’ll be special films,” said Dr. Branom. “Very special films.”
One veshch I did not like, though, was when they put like clips on the skin of my forehead, so that my top glazz-lids were pulled up and up and up and I could not shut my glazzies no matter how I tried.
“This must be a real horrorshow film if you’re so keen on my viddying it.”
And one of the white-coat vecks said, smecking: “Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors.”

… there was the close-up gulliver of this beaten-up starry veck, and the krovvy flowed beautiful red. It’s funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen. Now all the time I was watching this I was beginning to get very aware of a like not feeling all that well … I was sweating a malenky bit with the pain in my guts and a horrible thirst and my gulliver going throb throb throb, and it seemed to me that if I could not viddy this bit of film I would perhaps be not so sick. But I could not shut my glazzies, and even if I tried to move my glaz-balls about I still could not get like out of the line of fire of this picture. So I had to go on viddying what was being done.

I was heaving away but could not sick … while red krovvy shot on to the camera lens. Then all the teeth were like wrenched out with a pair of pliers, and the creeching and the blood were terrific.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it … Turn it off you grahzny bastards, for I can stand no more.”
So this time I knew I had to sick up, so I creeched: “I want to be sick. Please let me be sick. Please bring something for me to be sick into.”
“It was horrible.”
“Of course it was horrible,” smiled Dr. Branom. “Violence is a very horrible thing. That’s what you’re learning now. Your body is learning it.”
— A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

Welcome to the Club

Throughout the centuries your culture has celebrated destruction and oppression, and the murder and the burning and the horror. It’s always been that way. That’s the way you operate. Now, when I make a few simple observations on the show, a couple of remarks, the next thing you know, with the phone calls and the letters, “It’s inappropriate, it won’t do, we really don’t want to hear it.” Well, my friends, how would you like to be crushed under my boot! That’s what’s coming to you — complainers and bellyachers. You’ll all be crushed!

— The Doctor

Asylum: Clean The Boot!

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 22:22:00 GMT

Asylum: Clean The Boot is second of 2 full length episodes of the second generation of VideoPsychotherapy—created with the new dummy, all Public Domain footage and all original music. It is also my first use of non-linear editing and the introduction of ‘Hypermix’, my frenetic time-warping, digital editing technique. Please view the show on full screen and in a darkened room for full effect. — TZ

The Vile Sickness

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 01:02:00 GMT

Homo homini lupus, “Man is wolf to Man” — Latin Proverb

It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian could have lived without it-lived forever, perhaps. Only a fraction of his countrymen would give up their lives to win it, and it was not his ambition to be among them. To die or not to die, that was the question … History did not demand Yossarian’s premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
— Catch 22, Joseph Heller

“I’m cold,” Snowden said softly. “I’m cold.”
“You’re going to be all right, kid,” Yossarian reassured him with a grin. “You’re going to be all right.”
“I’m cold,” Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice. “I’m cold.”
“There, there,” Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. “There, there.”
“I’m cold,” Snowden whimpered. “I’m cold.”
“There, there. There, there.”
Yossarian bent forward to peer and saw a strangely colored stain seeping through the coveralls just above the armhole of Snowden’s flak suit. Yossarian felt his heart stop, then pound so violently he found it difficult to breathe. Snowden was wounded inside his flak suit. Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden’s flak suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden’s insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping out. A chunk of flak more than three inches big had shot into his other side just underneath the arm and blasted all the way through, drawing whole mottled quarts of Snowden along with it through the gigantic hole in his ribs it made as it blasted out. Yossarian screamed a second time and squeezed both hands over his eyes. His teeth were chattering in horror. He forced himself to look again. Here was God’s plenty, all right, he thought bitterly as he stared-liver, lungs, kidneys, ribs, stomach and bits of the stewed tomatoes Snowden had eaten that day for lunch. Yossarian hated stewed tomatoes and turned away dizzily and began to vomit, clutching his burning throat.
“I’m cold,” Snowden whimpered. “I’m cold.”
“There, there,” Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. “There, there.”
Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.
“I’m cold,” Snowden said. “I’m cold.”
“There, there,” said Yossarian. “There, there.” He pulled the rip cord of Snowden’s parachute and covered his body with the white nylon sheets.
“I’m cold.” “There, there.”
— Catch 22, Joseph Heller

Outtakes

I didn’t say that. Somebody made that up. They put it on a piece of paper and they told me to say it and I said it. And now everyone’s saying that I said it. It’s ridiculous!

— The Doctor

My Truck Is Huge

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 22:42:00 GMT

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while POWER remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
—1984, George Orwell

All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived. Physical rebellion, or any preliminary move towards rebellion, is at present not possible. From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.
—1984, George Orwell

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. … no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations.
—1984, George Orwell

Next door … lived an old fellow who had worked for the company seventeen years, and had been told to turn in his badge because he started to wipe the grease off his arms a few seconds before quitting time. Down the street lived a young fellow who had been an errand-boy and had made the mistake of stopping to buy a chocolate-bar. They had a thousand petty regulations on which the “spotters” could take you up. …You were fired for forgetting to wear your badge on your left breast, for staying too long in the toilet, for eating your lunch on the floor, for talking to men in the new shift coming on. It wasn’t even necessary that you had done one of these things; it sufficed that some ex-pugilist of the “service department” said that you had. There was no appeal.
—The Flivver King, Upton Sinclair

The whip sings and the whip soars

‘The point is, these capitalists—they and a few lawyers and priests and so forth who lived on them—were the lords of the earth. Everything existed for their benefit. You—the ordinary people, the workers—were their slaves. They could do what they liked with you. They could ship you off to Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if they chose. They could order you to be flogged with something called a cat-o’-nine tails. You had to take your cap off when you passed them. Every capitalist went about with a gang of lackeys …
—1984, George Orwell

… father kept hearing about this new vigilante group, the Black Legion, which was building up a great membership, especially among the “hillbillies,” the white workers of the South … These men were mostly illiterate, but they were patriotic, and full of racial pride; they hated Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and anybody who could be called a “Red.”

… that “Black Oath” which you had to sign with your blood. “I do swear in the name of God and the Devil to devote my life to the obedience of my superiors, and to exert every means in my power for the extermination of the anarchist, the Communist, the Roman hierarchy and their abettors. You had to be a “native-born white Protestant Gentile American citizen,”… You put on a black robe and went out and inflicted the penalties of “fire, flogging, and death” upon the enemies of your ideas.
—The Flivver King, Upton Sinclair