Joanna
Andy F wrote:
> On 9/26/06, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>