“I think you know you sort of always have it maybe in the back of your mind that you know you’re not part of something good. But I didn’t have a clear sense of: I am doing something actively harmful and then when the financial crisis hit, I started to feel really uncomfortable and I asked my boss will the public ever forgive us for this? Meaning the bailout and he basically said to me well here’s the thing the public always forgets, the public forgot after the Savings and Loan crisis, the public forgot after long-term Capital Management blew up. The public always forgets and the public will forget again and we will you know move on and it’ll go back to normal so don’t worry about it”
The public forgot after 9/11, the public forgot after Afghanistan and Iraq, the public forgot after financial crisis, the public forgot after Libya, the public forgot after Syria, the public is forgetting Nord Stream, the public always forgets and the public will forget again and we will you know move on and it’ll go back to normal so don’t worry about it.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been re-written, every picture has been re-painted, every statue and street and building has been re-named, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -George Orwell, 1984
In 1984, for example, the Ministry of Plenty put out a bulletin that they were increasing the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. Orwell writes:
“And only yesterday, [Winston] reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that [the citizens] could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it…Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?” -George Orwell, 1984
Am I?
“He could not fight against the Party any longer. Besides, the Party was in the right…It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought…The pencil felt thick and awkward in [Winston’s] fingers. He began to write down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it: TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE…the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” -George Orwell, 1984
Do you?