“Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph.”
— from George Orwell’s “1984”
“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…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. To keep them in control was not difficult.”
— from George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
Photo credit: By Michael Vadon (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.
Americans, please consider voting for me.
The first priority of my administration will be establishing a database and surveillance of rich assholes.
Also? A free copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” to any American citizen who requests one. A copy of the United States Constitution will be tucked inside.
“Inferior intellects generally succeeded best. For, aware of their own deficiencies, and fearing the capacity of their opponents . . . they struck boldly and at once.”
— Thucydides, in “History of the Peloponnesian War”
To be fair, though … this quote could address American public discourse in general. Or, hell, people in general. How many of us know that person who acts tough (or “real”) because they have no logic or evidence to support their argument?
It was just so off-putting and bizarrely unexpected that I just … feel … icky.
It’s junior high school ugliness. The weird, gross kind.
“Donald Trump: I’d Love to Pick Sarah Palin for Cabinet Spot,” nbcnews.com, 7/29/15:
One online commenter said, “I am almost happy to see this. I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
“On Oct. 25, 1967, [John] McCain had destroyed two enemy MiG fighter planes parked on a runway outside Hanoi. He begged to go out the next day, too. But as he flew into Hanoi again on Oct. 26, his jet’s warning lights began to flash.”
What Donald Trump was up to while John McCain was a prisoner of war
AND THEN GO LIVE THERE.
Pictured below is United States Senator John McCain’s flight suit, displayed at the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam, December 2010.
Photo credit: Esemono (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 