George Orwell
Frederick Sheehan uses George Orwell’s assessment of the 1930s and 1940s as a backdrop for today’s world, which Mr. Sheehan summarizes thusly:
This is an apt summation of the desiccated American hierarchy today. It is withering into dust.
This post is very interesting. It suggests history is repeating, power is always corrupt and fools are almost always in charge.
Mr. Sheehan ends his post on this note:
Of Bernanke today, he is a combination of both the establishment and the regimented intelligentsia that has acquired power. Orwell wrote of the intelligentsia: “Clearly there was only one escape for them – into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was necessary” After a time, which looks like it will be after Bernanke and his comrades have done their worst, a leader, looking at the world as it is, may state:
“Difficulties began to build up in the economy in the 1970s, with the rates of economic growth declining visibly…. A lag ensued in the material base of science and education, health protection, culture and everyday services. Though efforts have been made of late, we have not succeeded in fully remedying the situation. There are serious lags…in the improvement of the people’s standard of living.”
Thus spoke Mikhail Gorbachev in his 1986 speech to the 27th Communist Party Congress when he effectively declared the institutions which had colluded to bankrupt the nation’s economy and spirit were dead.
