recent tracks:

Incidentally

I ran into a prof today who once posed the half-humorous question I think has been on the minds of more than a few: is the trend in the United States under the current administration more Kafkaesque or Orwellian? Ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer:

Orwellian!

Leaking/reporting classified information is one thing. Generally, a bad one. Leaking/reporting illegal government activities is another. Generally, not so bad. Especially when compounded with GTMO, extraordinary rendition, and creative definitions of torture. From 1984:

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, annhilated: vaporized was the usual word.

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

Remember "softening up"?