Atrocity Pamphlets

Is English capable [caypubpull] of sustaining demagoguery? Yes, if it is no longer English.

(I.e. I hope not!)

I have this image of Orwell picturing pubescent youths of Ingsoc trawling through the tedious, technical, sedately sterile section C of the Newspeak dictionary for descriptions of sexcrime.

(I previously said something about Dickens; there ( Read more... )

When there is nothing else left, love is quite easy to take away from a person.

Everything else is stronger than fear, but fear is stronger than love.

(Is there something detached about the style in these last three chapters? All the while before there was something that felt like intimacy.)

Smith's thoughts become those of the good Party members: ( Read more... )

With nothing to argue against, there is no longer intellectualism in any sense. (I don't mean to rhyme.)

The problem is love for the tangible (i.e. not material). When you can be told what to love, it is no longer love. There is barely a Julia, but there is even less of Big Brother.

The Übermensch is a myth. Howard Roark and John Galt are fantasies.

There are only charity and selfishness. There are only the human spirit and debasement.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

This is objectivism. This is negative liberty. There is no there there.

"The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms." Without history there is no need want for them. Without want of progress there is no history. Without a purpose for martyrdom there is no progress.

Rand adherents frig off to that sort of tautology.

Parsons, too!? (Nice to see Orwell can squeeze in a shit joke amidst everyone losing their humanity.)

"In the face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm."

Trust no one.

We are now at war with Eastasia. Considering that Minitrue has to rewrite the entire history of the world in a few days, it is described exactly as Herculean as necessary.

However, ALL things considered, the task is merely replacing one false history with another false history. So, it is actually ONLY Herculean.

In spite of many of the Latin ( Read more... )

It's probably not even good wine.

Emmanuel - God is with us.

"It is necessary for us to know everything." We will know exactly when we have broken Smith.

Let's drink a toast to the past.