At times, there is an awful lot of chatter about how ‘1984 is coming true’ and a blog with the title of ten minutes hate is probably no place to try to argue the opposite. So I won’t bother.
1984 is here.
You’re a citizen of Oceania and you give the state your full, unquestioning obedience or they will put you in a room and cage hungry rats to your face so they chew off your nose.
Except they won’t actually be so inventive. That level of creative cruelty is probably beyond their imaginations. So instead, they will stick to the old, tried and trusted methods.
They will pull out fingernails:
…he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep and sexually humiliated. At one point three fingernails were ripped out of his left hand. He says this was done slowly, over a period of days…
They will take away children for spurious reasons and, despite eventual proof of innocence, refuse to give them back:
Despite the finding of the tribunal, the social workers have remained determined to hold on to the children, with a view to their care being determined in a county court on Wednesday.
They will use the smokescreen of war as a distraction from what is really going on:
Millions of farmers will have to give up traditional crops as they experience changes in the seasons that they and their ancestors have depended on. Climate-related hunger [may become] the defining human tragedy of this century.
The sad truth is that I fall for the distractions every time. Happy spending time going to gigs, watching telly, indulgently writing. Not lifting one finger of my untortured hand to do anything to stop it happening, just passively drinking the Victory Gin and telling myself nothing will ever change, so what’s the point?
—
Hat tip to Tom Paine for the social services story and the Bleeding Heart Show for the Oxfam one.
