A passage from George Orwell's "1984" keeps popping up in my mind these days.

I know Orwell, the term "Orwellian" and references to "1984," especially the bit about the Party's last command being to ignore what your eyes tell you, have been bandied about a lot ever since the book was released. Such references have appropriately intensified in recent years, but I get it if people are a little tired of hearing about it.

Yet, this one part of the book that I don't hear discussed as much as others (though it probably is) keeps coming back to me.

The protagonist, Winston, has by this point been arrested (he's read banned literature, kept a diary and had an affair, among other crimes against the Party) and is in a detention holding area. In the same room is his neighbor, Parsons, which comes

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