Big Brother had an army of typists rewriting history

Democrats tried to force Republicans to vote on a gun bill. They held a sit-in. The Bee condemned Speaker Paul Ryan for shutting off cameras and microphones.

“But this is 2016, not 1984. Orwellian attempts to control the free flow of information don’t work as well as they once did,” you said. I’m glad.

So here’s information not circulated much. I know a retired surgical nurse, who described to me what it’s like to be in an operating room, with a doctor performing abortions, one after the other. Particularly moving was her describing a pile of baby parts on the floor. We need first-hand information.

And we need George Orwell. Psychological portraits of social engineers controlling society are instructive.

But Big Brother O’Brien wasn’t a crude amateur, with infantile insults and simplistic lying. Big Brother was a shrewd manipulator with hands on the controls of bureaucratic power with an army of typists in a back room, re-writing history according to those in power.

This more resembles blocked Freedom of Information Act requests by the State Department, losing FOIA lawsuits in federal court, with staffers and campaign operatives denying access, speaking in veiled language and providing plausible deniability – while expressing publicly matter-of-fact innocence.

This story was originally published July 13, 2016 at 2:14 PM with the headline "Big Brother had an army of typists rewriting history."