At the end of George Orwell’s “1984,” just before the novel’s antagonist, the Inner Party member O’Brien, straps a cage filled with starving rats onto Winston Smith’s face, Winston has already admitted that two plus two equals five, as if that could be the deepest and darkest betrayal — a betrayal of the truth. But for Orwell, there is far worse. The power of the state to trammel every single value that we hold dear is the most appalling thought.

“If you want a picture of the future,” O’Brien tells Winston at one point, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.” One can only hope that Orwell was describing a nightmare that could never become a reality.

(becomes depressed because the best Google Images could come up with for a search for "human face resists boot" was this):

<img src="https://displacedpalestinians.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/orwell-vs-huxley.jpg"&gt;

Read |this harrowing and gripping story| this morning and….well I don't know. It's a powerful document.