17 January 2017

Lenin is dead; Orwell is alive

From Davos, after President Xi Jinping's speech to the World Economic Forum:

Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt noted that a century ago, Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was plotting world revolution in Zurich, a couple of hours' train ride from Davos.
   
"And now, 100 years later we have the leader of the largest communist party in the world coming to the leading meeting of global capitalists to preach the virtues of globalization....Lenin is dead."


From  Anthony Scaramucci, the President-elect's man in Davos:

"[W]e want to have a phenomenal relationship with the Chinese....But if the Chinese really believe in globalism, and they really believe in the words of Lincoln, they have to reach now towards us and allow us to create this symmetry, because the path to globalism in the world is through the American worker and the American middle class."

From Animal Farm (1944):

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.
But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

In other news, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, but if the new administration has its way, it may turn out that we have always been at war with Eastasia....

2 comments:

hobbyfan said...

And in other news, Sammy, water is wet, the sky is blue......!

Translated, whoop-de-damn-do.

Anonymous said...

And yet, the truth is, we've never been at war with either.