1984 has long passed, but I suspect that we shall continue to turn to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four for the insights it offers. Apparently the book made the top ten "books the nation cannot live without" on World Book Day in the United Kingdom. However, the impact of Nineteen Eighty-Four can obscure the wisdom of much of the rest of Orwell's writing; so it was good to read Frank Kermode's review of Paul Anderson's compilation of the "As I Please" columns that Orwell wrote for the Tribune between 1943 and 1947. For Kermode one of Orwell's greatest assets was his unflagging honesty and, viewed in the other direction, his abhorrence of the dishonesty of propaganda. (Lord only knows what he would think of advertising in today's consumerist society.) This leads Kermode to summarize the punch line of one of Orwell's post-War essays as follows:
The Germans and Japanese lost the war because they avoided reality, could not admit what was plain to the dispassionate eye.
One wonders what Orwell might be writing were he alive today and casting his own "dispassionate eye" towards Iraq.
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