Banned Books Week: between the lines

Thou shalt not read (any unapproved materials or else face prosecution and imprisonent).

Smart phones, now attached by virtual-Neuralink, serve as Big Brother. The're always listening.

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Mark is a good boy working for US.

Eventually George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four will be banned for fanning the fires of paranoia that the government ever bans information, deceives us, incites war, and enslaves whole populations (not to mention democide).

Orwell was born in British-ruled Buddhist Burma, then treated as a part of British-occupied India. seeing authoritarian forces spreading terror and colonialism. He noted how the same sort of things were happening in England but in a subtle way most people were not noticing. An imperial war culture is that way.

• Official website: BANNEDBOOKSWEEK.org
• Waiting for a flight at LAX? Try reading a banned book (Los Angeles Times)

Jello's Dead Who'addys?

• Anyone who thinks 1984 happened in 1984 hasn't read the book or didn't read it carefully. Winston Smith didn't know what year it really was. The title came about in 1948, so it seemed like a good way of saying "in the not-too-distant future" It might have been titled Winston and Julia in Love as when Pygmalion got a title reworking to the more inviting My Fair Lady. What is it really about? Orwell goes to pains how thinking is being reduced in the population by a systematic shortening, dumbing down, and contraction of the language. Instead of Standard English, people are using Newspeak, kind of the way we have replaced English sentences with texts, slogans, icons, and emojis. Newspeak leads to a new way of thinking where no one questions authority because no one even thinks to question it. If an "expert" said so, what is there to think about?

We have a world to police.

We live in it now, as the US War Machine and Empire, but as greater Rome at its height and the beginning of its decline, no one really notices. We rule, and everything's okay. We don't even rule that well. Look how other puppet states resist us.

Hey, wrap it up! This is unapproved. It's not just books that are banned. In Orwell's novel, the whole of his job was disappearing people on paper, removing them from the record. Of course, there were soldiers, police, neighbor-spies feeding police information, even drone-like helicopters peering in windows, but the main character, Winston Smith, didn't know why other than for show or to mislead the population to think this was the only thing of which to be wary.

Gov't propaganda is mainstream "news"

In fact, the main source of spying and privacy deprivation was known as the "telescreen," screens of all kinds today. There are cameras everywhere, with AI to automate monitoring, and key words to scour and search for on posts, articles, videos, TikToks... -- all for our "safety," of course. It's never for population control by the truism, "If you think the System is working, you must be working for the System" without even realizing it.

• What's the definition of book ban? Librarians, authors, others weigh in (NPR)
• But we have to protect the children! Don't just ban books, burn them!!!
• I read banned books! (Kurt Vonnegutlibrary.org)
• The Vagina Museum
• Check out a “banned” book from the library (City of San Antonio)
• Book bans and the librarians who won't be hushed (Harvard Graduate School of Education)
• Educators and students get creative in evading book bans (thehill.com)
• Effective Techniques to Keep Anxiety at Bay

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

• Editors, Wisdom Quarterly