It's not quite right to call George Orwell was a proto-blogger--he wrote prolifically about current events, but largely because it paid the bills. Still, grand and petty tyrants would set him off on rants well before they became objects of satire in "Animal Farm" and "1984." He also emerged from a wartime BBC stint with an abiding bitterness about writing that ignored or twisted inconvenient truths.

Here these views on alternative facts and their propagators are isolated and excerpted for current consumption. Trump tweets about an "Obama judge," Orwell claps back the slur about Jewish science. Instructive enough, but at these points Orwell often was off on a ramble from some other subject. IN "Why I Write" he says he can't help "to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information." I'd rather explore his whole world, so as to take more pleasure in discovering that it's in our current orbit.

EXCELLENT curation of Orwell writings on the subject of truth, justice, honesty, power, corruption and the civic job of politicians and civilians in a **functioning** democracy. ( )

Orwell was an absolute genius at just seeing things clearly. A truth is a truth, no matter what side of the divide you are on. And this is more poignant today than ever. When Republicans see non-truths in things because its Republican and when Democrats do the same. When Christians do the same, when group X or Gender Y or Party B or Country C does Atrocity/Stupid Action/Mistake/Scandal those in said grouping ignore it, but then when the other party/country/gender/grouping/religion/etc. does the same Atrocity/Stupid Action/Mistake/Scandal then its 'an outroar' or 'such a public farce'. Its a truth regardless of your political leanings, its a truth regardless of political parties, of countries, etc. If you want moral high-ground, then its the same for YOUR guy or YOUR president as it is for THEIR guy or THEIR president.

Orwell saw this THEN, and we need to see it NOW. Sadly - we don't.

Hitchens explained Orwell probably the best in that he never wavered on any of his stances. What Orwell said Day 1 was how it should be, and how he viewed it, and how he stood on Day 25 and on Day 285. Its not to say he was irrational and couldn't be changed in his stances, its meaning that when he saw evil (Russian regimes, Nazism, totalitarianism, etc.), he called it what it was - evil, and then never wavered on calling it that. If it was evil when it was the bad guys doing it, its still evil when said bad guys now become your allies ("good guys").

A voice of (and for) intelligentsia and intelligence in a dark age then and now, we need more Orwell and we need more writers like Orwell in today's society and times. ( )

I had read Orwell's three most famous books, but he wrote a lot more and of very high quality. Many of these excerpts prefigure what he wrote in '1984'. Background for today's discussions on Fake News.