In this blog I'm going to talk about a few books I read recently, most notably Hillary Clinton's memoir, What Happened. This is primarily a US politics topic, but given the somewhat personal and at times off-topic nature of the critique, I thought it more reasonable to make this as a blog. There will be spoilers and politics ahead, so if you're squeamish about either of those be forewarned. FYI: my hatred for Hillary Clinton burns brighter than a thousand suns.
The other main books I looked at or read recently were Shattered - a story of Clinton's campaign built from interviews with anonymous staffers on her campaign, and Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, a book just released by Bernie Sanders I think I would most accurately describe as a 200-page "Sanders Manifesto" of sorts. For breadth, I wanted to also take a look at a Trump book, and Crippled America was my choice. However, I ended up not reading it, for the simple reason that I have little respect for ghostwriting, and Trump is well known for his tendencies to ghostwrite all his books. Besides, the style is fairly reminiscent of his rallies, and I've seen plenty of those.
The brief summary of the book is that it focuses in on the aspects of the campaign that Hillary found most important - the events leading up to running, major landmarks across the campaign (places visited, debates, winning the nomination, losing to Trump, conceding, all that jazz), thoughts on the other candidates in the race, discussions of emails, Russia, and Comey, blurbs on sexism and its effect on the race, and a spattering of other related topics. While reading it through, I did have a few thoughts that I jotted down in my notebook. I wanted to share those here - in no particular order.
The first point in the book that really struck me was the following quote:
Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism ... this is what happens in George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.
Well, nothing to say but that it's a complete and utter head-scratcher. Though I have not all that much fondness for the book (it's a pretty weak narrative with a farce for a moral), it is pretty damn clear that that wasn't what the story was about. It wasn't about how people are turned against their leaders (Big Brother) and press (Ministry of Truth) in the slightest and I have no idea how Clinton got that.
In general, though, I noticed that she has a tendency to be extremely bland and boring in her selection of books and narratives to reference. Beyond generally giving only a very surface-level interpretation of any given book (e.g. the above or using the term "brave new world" in a manner that has little to no relevance to the book of the same name it is referencing), it almost seems that her entire library of literary/historical works is basically that of an AP Literature and AP US History class. Nothing unique or special about the choice, and while I could sympathize with the idea of having an "all American" choice of literature, there is absolutely nothing un-American about having a diverse reading choice. It strikes me as just a reflection of her overall blandness.
Tying into that, she spends a lot of time talking about her life and her campaign - in a way that is clearly meant to build sympathy and show her as an everyman (everywoman), but that really just makes her boring as hell. What it most reminds me of is when I was reading a (ghosted) Jack Welch autobiography and he spent entire chapters talking about all the golf rounds he had with a lot of people, pretty much the tell-tale sign of being a boring and unimpressive individual on a personal level.
Another tidbit that struck me is her tendency to throw around blame and to villainize pretty much everyone. Trump, Bernie Sanders, Putin, James Comey, hell even CNN, all of them were part of her thrashing, petty piss fight. Her willingness to blame herself was always modest compared to her ability to try to find a way to hate everyone who she perceived as not being fair to her, and the book often read like a gigantic grudge-airing. Most notable is how whenever faced with a tough crowd of potential voters, her response reeked of a "well fuck you anyways" line of thought, which might explain why all across the country, she got clobbered outside of the large, concentrated population centers. It paints her as horribly, egotistically out of touch with reality - and rightfully so.
In a shift of tone, I actually thought her bits talking about the debates were fairly interesting and sympathetic - and the reality was that at the actual debate she did well. Against Trump and against Sanders she generally came out on top. Though I was disappointed with both of them for being sort of mediocre at debates, Hillary definitely shined in that one arena. Her problems with convincing voters aside, she debated well.
Her shapeshifting, mechanical attitude was also on full display. She had a brief blurb about how Chelsea taught her that she should be friendlier to LGBT rights, she talked about how she didn't expect that speeches for finance would be bad because "plenty of former officials do that" so it shouldn't be different, she described herself as a "progressive who gets things done" with Bernie only to change her positions by convenience in the future, and so on. Following along from the other book, Shattered, we see a large emphasis on loyalty and data, with little on big ideas and appealing to individual voters. She often claims that she doesn't get why people think her a liar, but given how much contrived BS she lies through over the length of the book it should be clear to anyone why they think her a liar.
That loyalty emphasis deserves some more thoughts, simply because it ties into a lot of famous criticisms of her opponent Donald Trump. Shattered discusses how a history of loyal service to Hillary, more than anything else, drove the campaign staffing process. The way she brought DWS onto her team, after DWS helped pave the way for her victory by taking care of her competition in the primary, is loyalty over reason on full display. And in a more indirect sense, there are a few definite favorite news sources - CNN, NYT, NPR, and especially WaPo - that she cites and cites and overcites in the same way Trump does the same for Fox and Breitbart. The great irony is that sometimes she gives them thorough, glowing praise, then she turns around and talks about how bad they are when they say something unflattering about her. A definite Trumpian attitude that perhaps shows that preventing a dangerous ego in office was never a possibility.
Next is the way she tries to build a narrative for her campaign. Shattered talks in depth about how ineffective and confused this narrative-building process was behind the scenes, and frankly it was quite visible from the outside too. She didn't make a good case for her life story being interesting (as a standard suburban American with not much of an interesting upbringing) nor did she have any worthy mission to speak of. She tried to use "standing up for women" but damn did she do it badly, what with fantastic prime sound bites such as "how can I, a woman running for president, be part of the establishment?" and Madeleine Albright's "women who don't vote for Hillary Clinton go to hell" subtle insinuation. It felt far less like a genuine mission as much as it felt like entitlement because of "having a narrative." Nor did she build a good economic message, what with a dearth of ideological conviction for her message and a willingness to flip back and forth on issues as important as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (having a contrived "not the agreement I want for America" copout, which her VP copied, whereas everyone knew she would sign). Perhaps her progressiveness a la Sanders would be more believable if her record weren't one of changing her opinion to stay in line with what is the general pulse of the country; as it stands, it is pure, naked opportunism.
She mentions often about how she "loves to talk policy" by giving a two-page blurb on her thoughts on some issue or other... but she writes a book and runs a campaign primarily focused around grudges and blaming others rather than policy. Contrast with Bernie Sanders' most recent book, in which, despite having ample reason to justifiably complain about how things were rigged against him in this election, simply talks about ideals and policies instead of grudges and evil people. Maybe if Hillary cared about policy she would do the same. With Bernie, she countered ideals with little more than a "it's just not practical" attack on ideas that were indeed idealistic, but not without merit, as a lack of ambition will simply lead nowhere. Perhaps if she understood why people tend to see her as untrustworthy, she would not wonder why she is a liar. Hint: it's not a right-wing conspiracy.
Minor note: her mention of Trayvon in the list of kids killed by senseless violence "because he wanted Skittles" was some shitty narrative crafting. He was shot in self defense when attacking a man who was following him, who perhaps should have been jailed for criminal negligence but in no way attacked him for Skittles.
Next point of interest: Bernie's lack of being a Democrat and her general disdain for people not voting for her. She made a big deal about how Bernie is, self-admitting, not even a Democrat - as if that mattered. He's perfectly Democrat by ideology, he just doesn't attend the right cocktail parties, as if that's a great reason for undermining his run for Democratic nominee. Hell, even the Democratic Party of Vermont chooses him as their nominee; that's about as ideologically Democrat as you can get. He just doesn't call himself one. And that comes with a rightful disdain for certain party apparatuses - she calls him out for criticizing PP for endorsing her, without realizing that organizational endorsements that often conflict with the opinion of the underlings (I heard many stories of union workers voting Bernie because they felt the unions were not representing their interests by endorsing Hillary) is part of the exact reason why Bernie isn't part of the system itself. Same goes for her opinion that activists who "waste votes and tear down allies" - a petty way to whine about how people who won't choose the opponent aren't necessarily just going to come around to her no matter what, nothing more complex here. A hypocritical attitude as its finest.
The most tone-deaf of her ideas is perhaps that she thinks she is really popular and that the emails are a distraction. Obama apparently thought she would be his best successor (easily the stupidest decision of his entire presidency, which will rightfully lead to the destruction of much of his legacy), and she talks a lot about how Europe gave her warm receptions all the time. She also makes a big deal out of how popular she was retiring from her position as SoS - coming off the high of the Osama bin Laden raid (which I'm surprised she didn't try to take 100% of the credit for) but before her major FP ventures (Russia reset, Syria, Libya, Asia pivot) proved to be pretty thorough failures. No real surprise it went down once people started to think about her. Apparently fake news is responsible for it all, not the fact that there is plenty of genuine reason for people to think she's kind of a shitty leader who should not be in charge. Fake news, and of course James Comey the traitor.
Her ventures with Silicon Valley folk also bothered me a bit. Her biggest contact very much seems to be Eric Schmidt, definitely a dubious figure to praise as much as she did; between a known history of lobbying and his involvement in a massive anticompetitive class-action back in 2010, a rather unfortunate figure. She cites Elon Musk as if he were an expert in AI, rather than just a money man who gives out cash to AI researchers. And she seems utterly blind to the reality of what Silicon Valley is: a financial hub with an emphasis on software, masquerading as some form of "forward thinking innovative culture" that needs to be propped up and supported. That's a shitty Obama mistake that needs to be corrected, not doubled down upon.
Her Russia philosophy seems to be something especially ridiculous. She talks about how much of a grudgemaker Vladimir Putin is, yet she alone is the one who likes to discuss it as some slap-fight (whereas Putin in public does no such thing - perhaps a low bar put one that Hillary herself cannot reach). She creates some weird "are you for Merkel or for Putin" dichotomy, an odd juxtaposition of two figures which really are different people in completely different situations (let alone Merkel's self-manufactured EU refugee crisis) to try to show why Trump is bad for expressing desire to have better relations with Russia. She even manages to blame Russia for Macron's emails being hacked, even though that story has been long since debunked ("was so simple that anyone could have done that hack" according to French intelligence).
That of course pales to her retardedly simplistic, if common, views on how to deal with Russia. Apparently if you wave your dick around enough and show enough force, then Russia will back down. So let's send troops into Syria to bomb Assad, send lethal weapons - or better yet, NATO troops - into Ukraine to aid in the civil war, and in general double down upon every terrible policy ever produced within the US foreign policy branch. There's no way that instead of leading to a withdrawal that that will lead to a brutal, dangerous escalation, no not at all. Because it's impossible that a country with strong foreign interests will refuse to back down when threatened with American force. Bitch please.
And perhaps more hilarious is the attitude towards being hacked as if it's some sort of unprecedented, impossibly vile, destruction of democracy event. If Russia did indeed do all of the things mentioned by the intelligence branch - DNC/Podesta hacks most prominently, along with many instances of collusion and lesser hacks - then perhaps the most unique part of that is that the US is the target rather than the perpetrator. It's almost as if the only reason this is so problematic is because this kind of democracy manipulation isn't supposed to happen in the US, dammit! Every other country is fair game but #USA is off limits to this stuff.
Summing up, though, what struck me about this book is a deep, systematic tendency for Hillary Clinton to be tone-deaf to genuine criticism, to be very fond of echo chambers and dramatizing conspiracies out of well-founded opposition, and the willingness of an entire party to tolerate and encourage behavior that leads to events like this being completely and utterly commonplace. For every terrible decision there was a terrible, yet thoroughly echoed by Hillary and the sympathetic news media, justification for failure. It is utterly incomprehensible to me why Obama wanted her to be his successor, given how completely and utterly unfit she was for the role.
This book is, essentially, a great way to get a nice, thorough view of what exactly Hillary represents, and perhaps a good way to see why it is that she is as unpopular as she is - if that's what you want, I do recommend you read. It's good to know that, for all intents and purposes, none of the voters are buying her narrative anymore. Should she run again, she will almost certainly get the Jeb Bush treatment - no amount of money nor endorsements will get over the fact that the time of the Clintons is over and that people will refuse to have Clinton forced on them. Good riddance.
Interesting write up. Was wondering if she'd manage to come out as more sympathetic in her book but it sounds like she hasn't. It's amazing to me that not only was she so blind to her faults, but also the masses of people who conceived of and supported her campaign. Did that many people really think she represented the best of the Democratic party, which itself is supposed to be comprised of the country's elect individuals? It just boggles my mind that in a free election, where you'd think the best and brightest of our country would rise to the top, instead we had a choice between Trump and Clinton.
Well, I agree with everything you said. Although keep in mind some people read it and thought it was a great book that put her in a fantastic light.
Reading through the Amazon reviews, I found this one particularly poignant. Reposted below in full, since rumor has it that Amazon has been deleting critical reviews to prop up Hillary.
First, some information about me.
I purchased this book in Kindle format and read the whole thing. I habitually purchase a lot of stuff from Amazon and have written a bunch of other reviews before this one. I have been a Democrat my whole life and have only very, very occasionally voted for Republicans or third-party candidates. I voted for Bill Clinton in both Presidential elections and voted for Hillary Clinton against Trump last year. I have met both of the Clintons a couple of times and spent several hours on a few occasions in very small, private parties where they were in attendance, a few years after they left the White House. I am not a fan of Donald Trump at all and oppose almost everything that he is trying to do. I used to live in Chicago but more recently have been living in the intersection of Iowa and Wisconsin (two states that very well could have gone Democrat in 2016 but of course did not). I saw both Sanders and Trump speak in primary events, and then went to Trump's "Thank You" event in Des Moines, just to try to get a handle on how people in the Heartland were thinking about him (since it seemed to me that the media were getting it totally wrong).
I think that there are some good things to be said about Hillary Clinton. I do think she is smart. I do think she is diligent and a hard worker. I do think that she really cares about children and about a few other pet issues. I do think that she has been attacked unfairly on a lot of occasions, and that being a woman has made things more difficult for her than they would have been if she were a man.
But still, this book seems to crystallize for me a lot of the problems that I have with Hillary Clinton at this moment in time, and the problems that I have with the Democratic party, and in general why I think that they are currently doing so badly.
Perhaps the biggest problem that I have with the book is that I believe that the title is misleading. Although Clinton does attempt in the book to explain why she lost the election, in the end, she really seems to have no idea.
If instead the book had been called "What Campaigning in the 2016 Election Was Like for Me," likely I would feel comfortable giving the book another star. Because that is pretty much solely what this book is about. That is, Hillary tells in detail what it was like to campaign for President (what she ate, where she stayed, who she met, what kinds of gifts she bought for family members, how much time she had to spend maintaining her appearance, what she said, how she made the decisions that she did, what her private reactions were to the things that happened to her). So if the goal of the reader is to learn more about Hillary Clinton, as a person, then perhaps this book is worth reading.
What the book does not do is to provide any reasoned or persuasive discussion on what I see as the key questions that political leaders need to be discussing with regard to the 2016 election and the current state of affairs. Such as: Why is it that both the Democratic and Republican parties nominated candidates with such abysmal popularity ratings? Why is it that the majority of people are so unhappy with both political parties? What is it about Bernie Sanders that makes him continue to be the most popular (by far) well-known politician in America? In what ways might the Democratic party change in order to be more likely to win elections? Or, in what ways might the Republican party change in order to prevent people like Trump from winning elections?
Clinton does not focus at all on any of these questions, except in the most superficial way. There is nothing on them here that has not already been hashed to death in the Washington Post (owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) and other newspapers that I consider to be very strongly biased in terms of the Democratic party elites who chose Clinton to be their nominee.
In my opinion, the biggest question that Clinton does not discuss at all in this book is how much the Democratic party has turned all of its focus toward the goal of making rich people (like Jeff Bezos, no?) even richer, and giving crumbs to the rest of the population. Clinton avoids pretty much all discussion of this topic.
Instead, she spends a good chunk of the book criticizing Bernie Sanders and trying to figure out how she could have acted differently during the campaign in order to more efficiently do away with him. Not once in the book does she consider the possibility that perhaps the reason that Sanders was popular was because the Democratic party (as well as the Republican party) had focused too much of its attention on the 1% (or, more specifically, the 0.0001%) and had left the rest of the population out in the cold.
I'm not saying that I would have expected her to reach that conclusion. But it does not seem to be a question that even entered her mind, from what I can tell from the book.
In general, the impression that I get from this book about Clinton in general - in terms of her political life and her personal life - is that she believes she is right about everything, that she is very very defensive about the idea that she is right about everything, and that she is very slow to change in the face of new information.
Perhaps it is just because I am a lot more focused on diet than most people, but the idea of her eating an egg-white omelet every morning really seemed odd to me. Even the mainstream media seems convinced that egg yolks are not something to be concerned about and very well may be the best part of the egg, at this point.
Later, she says that when reporters get sick, she insists that they drink ginger ale and eat crackers, and sends the State Department doctor to treat them with Cipro and antinausea drugs. All of those are the LAST things that I would use if I got sick, and the idea of Hillary Clinton forcing them on me anyway makes me wonder what other kinds of outmoded, counterproductive things she would have tried to force on the American public had she become President.
Because if there is one thing that I think comes across in this book, it is that she thinks that her own viewpoints are the only legitimate ones. "One time, Liz brought something I hadn't tried before: Flavor Blasted Goldfish," she said. "We passed around the bag and discussed whether it was better than the original. Some of my staff thought yes, which was incorrect."
Of course, that was a joke, but like all good jokes, I think there is a lot of truth in it.
And that, if I were going to answer the question of "What Happened," that would be key to it.
That is, that for the average Joe in the Heartland, Hillary Clinton came across as basically saying, "I know better than you what you need, and I am going to force it upon you whether you like it or not. And if you don't like it, that is too bad. Because regardless of what you think of me, you cannot vote for Trump."
And that is just plain not a winning argument. Once you diss people in that way, they would vote for Satan himself rather than you, just because you have pissed them off in so doing.
I do hope that Hillary Clinton finds something constructive to do with the rest of her life, because I think that in the right position, she would have a lot to contribute.
But in terms of being President - I think that it was her hubris as well as her determinedly neoliberal focus that lost the election for her. And so it is just too bad that she is unwilling to see or incapable of seeing that in the discussion in this book.
On September 18 2017 03:50 ninazerg wrote: George Zimmerman's gun was full of Skittles, and that's why Trayvon had to grab it... to get to the delicious Skittles inside.
Bobby "The Brain" Heenan died today. best pro wrestling manager ever. + Show Spoiler +
On September 18 2017 03:50 ninazerg wrote: George Zimmerman's gun was full of Skittles, and that's why Trayvon had to grab it... to get to the delicious Skittles inside.
Bobby "The Brain" Heenan died today. best pro wrestling manager ever. + Show Spoiler +
The most interesting thing about this blog is how many of the faults LL blames Hillary for can be neatly applied to this very text. Is this elaborate sarcasm or are you actually that blind to your own irrationality?
On September 18 2017 21:06 opisska wrote: The most interesting thing about this blog is how many of the faults LL blames Hillary for can be neatly applied to this very text. Is this elaborate sarcasm or are you actually that blind to your own irrationality?
Trump possesses a great deal of innate intellectual talent. However, Trump is a very bad politician. Hilary lost the election.. Trump didn't win it.
On September 18 2017 21:06 opisska wrote: The most interesting thing about this blog is how many of the faults LL blames Hillary for can be neatly applied to this very text. Is this elaborate sarcasm or are you actually that blind to your own irrationality?
Well, there had to be at least one obtuse kittycat to try to make that comparison. Wouldn't be much of a review without it.
Reposted below in full, since rumor has it that Amazon has been deleting critical reviews to prop up Hillary.
Please take a step back and think about how paranoid that statement is. Repost for convenience is fine, but man... Very unlikely Amazon would do something like that. For one thing controversial means more attention and sales, so they would be unlikely to stymie it. For another thing, Amazon values their brand and being painted as corrupt would hurt them. Even if neither of those things were true, that statement reeks of conspiracy theory, which I think in 2017 we have to avoid like the plague now that conspiracy journalism has shown itself to be a powerful political force. You do not want to be within a country mile of anything like that, lest it become even more mainstream and legitimized than it already is. Someone doing that would get fired, and no one in Amazon would want to pay someone to do it. That is just crazy talk. At worst a user might be reporting reviews they don't like. I only wrote such an excessive amount because I hope you will think about whether you really want to associate yourself with that.
Reposted below in full, since rumor has it that Amazon has been deleting critical reviews to prop up Hillary.
Please take a step back and think about how paranoid that statement is. Repost for convenience is fine, but man... Very unlikely Amazon would do something like that. For one thing controversial means more attention and sales, so they would be unlikely to stymie it. For another thing, Amazon values their brand and being painted as corrupt would hurt them. Even if neither of those things were true, that statement reeks of conspiracy theory, which I think in 2017 we have to avoid like the plague now that conspiracy journalism has shown itself to be a powerful political force. You do not want to be within a country mile of anything like that, lest it become even more mainstream and legitimized than it already is. Someone doing that would get fired, and no one in Amazon would want to pay someone to do it. That is just crazy talk. At worst a user might be reporting reviews they don't like. I only wrote such an excessive amount because I hope you will think about whether you really want to associate yourself with that.
Read dozens of verified purchase reviews on the very book. Plenty of people have had their reviews deleted and are ANGREE about it with a passion generally saved only for Terran imbalance.
Frankly, this "they would never do something line that" approach is misguided as hell in light of having genuine reason to think that just that happened. And that "censor fake news" is the name of the game right now.
Reposted below in full, since rumor has it that Amazon has been deleting critical reviews to prop up Hillary.
Please take a step back and think about how paranoid that statement is. Repost for convenience is fine, but man... Very unlikely Amazon would do something like that. For one thing controversial means more attention and sales, so they would be unlikely to stymie it. For another thing, Amazon values their brand and being painted as corrupt would hurt them. Even if neither of those things were true, that statement reeks of conspiracy theory, which I think in 2017 we have to avoid like the plague now that conspiracy journalism has shown itself to be a powerful political force. You do not want to be within a country mile of anything like that, lest it become even more mainstream and legitimized than it already is. Someone doing that would get fired, and no one in Amazon would want to pay someone to do it. That is just crazy talk. At worst a user might be reporting reviews they don't like. I only wrote such an excessive amount because I hope you will think about whether you really want to associate yourself with that.
Read dozens of verified purchase reviews on the very book. Plenty of people have had their reviews deleted and are ANGREE about it with a passion generally saved only for Terran imbalance.
Frankly, this "they would never do something line that" approach is misguided as hell in light of having genuine reason to think that just that happened. And that "censor fake news" is the name of the game right now.
It is 100% more likely they got their review pulled for calling her the C word or something.
Reposted below in full, since rumor has it that Amazon has been deleting critical reviews to prop up Hillary.
Please take a step back and think about how paranoid that statement is. Repost for convenience is fine, but man... Very unlikely Amazon would do something like that. For one thing controversial means more attention and sales, so they would be unlikely to stymie it. For another thing, Amazon values their brand and being painted as corrupt would hurt them. Even if neither of those things were true, that statement reeks of conspiracy theory, which I think in 2017 we have to avoid like the plague now that conspiracy journalism has shown itself to be a powerful political force. You do not want to be within a country mile of anything like that, lest it become even more mainstream and legitimized than it already is. Someone doing that would get fired, and no one in Amazon would want to pay someone to do it. That is just crazy talk. At worst a user might be reporting reviews they don't like. I only wrote such an excessive amount because I hope you will think about whether you really want to associate yourself with that.
Read dozens of verified purchase reviews on the very book. Plenty of people have had their reviews deleted and are ANGREE about it with a passion generally saved only for Terran imbalance.
Frankly, this "they would never do something line that" approach is misguided as hell in light of having genuine reason to think that just that happened. And that "censor fake news" is the name of the game right now.
It is 100% more likely they got their review pulled for calling her the C word or something.
The outcry seems widespread enough that I would tend to disagree with you.
I think you misinterpreted this quotation and/or the corresponding passages from Nineteen Eighty-Four:
Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism ... this is what happens in George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.
My reading of the Hillary extract you have provided is that she means the questioning of logic and reason, and mistrust towards leaders and experts etc which follows, is what brings about the authoritarianism that leads to Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth. The novel is about how an individual gets some reason and starts to question the authoritarian state - the state then needs to step in and gives him some torture to get rid of his reasoning.
I don't think she is suggesting that the novel is about how authoritarianism enables people to turn against their authoritarian leaders (Big Brother) and the press (Ministry of Truth).
Yeah, that's how she probably meant it. But there's something to be said for the fact that foot-in-mouth stupidity quotes lead to their own interpretation. What comes to mind most instantly is this Joe Biden quote:
"But folks, I can tell you that I’ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately," said Biden.
We all know what they're trying to say, but tell me it doesn't give a wholly upside down face interpretation when they can't express themselves properly.
the passage in question needs to be re-worked. prolly didn't put enough time into editing and re-editing because they had to hit a deadline to get the book out there in time for the speaking tour.
EPT
