Kafkaesque and Orwellian

Hearing a news story last week about suspected terrorists or enemy combatants being tried using secret evidence made me think that I ought to go back and re-read Franz Kafka’s works.
When the Bush administration started ginning up the Iraq war, I revisited 1984 because it kept coming to mind when I heard the Neo-Cons talk about “the long war.” Orwell didn’t write in a vacuum, he was talking about totalitarianism. He saw how a big lie, repeated over and over, becomes believable. And when you hear the language get bent beyond meaning, remember “newspeak,” like when congress passes bankruptcy reform measures at the behest of the credit card companies, and call it a “consumer protection act.” War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. As seen on TV.