2006 - 22 years later

"In the ramifications of (our governments) doctrine she had not the faintest interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles of (North American democracy)... the mutability of the past and the denial of objective reality...she became bored and confused and said that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed... Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the (government) imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most fragrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird"

(excerpt updated for our year)