by Richard Cohen

Common Dreams

01/05/05

The term 'Orwellian' is much abused and, back at the actual year 1984, I thought Orwell himself overrated. The essential novelist of the 20th century, I thought then, was Kafka, who realized that there is no more efficient murder weapon than what the critic George Steiner called 'the lunatic logic of the bureaucracy.' Orwell, however, was only off by 20 years. With immense satisfaction, he would have noted the constant abuse of language by the Bush administration -- calling suicidal terrorists 'cowards,' naming a constriction of civil liberties the Patriot Act and, of course, wringing all meaning from the word 'torture.'

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0105-31.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp