> 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]
If you read the whole thing (it's an essay on trends in crime fiction) here:
<http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/Orwell-C.htm>
you might recognize the present day in 1944, which then leads you to wonder if anything had actually changed back then from 50 years earlier.
-- Andy