In the 1940s George Orwell asked readers to image a future, a "totalitarian age
in which such things as mass bombing of civilians, the use of hostages, torture to obtain confessions, secret prisons, execution without trial, floggings with rubber truncheons, drownings in cesspools, systematic falsification of records and statistics, treachery, bribery, and quislingism [reconciliation with fascism] are normal and morally neutral, even admirable when they are done in a large and bold way." ["Raffles and Miss Blandish," 1944]
Funny, innit?
-B.
^^^^^ CB: Yep. And in 1984 , the actual year, Reagan was calling some horrific weapon a "peacemaker", and called terrorist counterrevolutionaries "freedom" fighters. America has realized Orwell's nightmares at least since then.