Alexander Hamilton

The young Hamilton undersells himself a little to his fiancé in a letter.

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Tell me, my pretty damsel, have you made up your mind upon the subject of housekeeping? Do you soberly relish the pleasure of being a poor man’s wife? Have you learned to think a homespun preferable to a brocade and the rumbling of a wagon wheel to the musical rattling of a coach and six? Will you be able to see with perfect composure your old acquaintances, flaunting it in gay life, tripping it along in elegance and splendor, while you hold a humble station and have no other enjoyments than the sober comforts of a good wife?... If you cannot, my dear, we are playing a comedy of all in the wrong and you should correct the mistake before we begin to act the tragedy of the unhappy couple.

-- Alexander Hamilton

(Source: Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”)

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1984 (2,9) Goldstein's Book

‘Doublethink’ is perhaps the biggest meme to come out of “1984", or maybe it is second only to ‘Big Brother’.

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Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

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Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the party has been able - and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years - to arrest the course of history.

-- “1984” by George Orwell

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A true totalitarian power must be infallible and can never be wrong. Such can presumably exist only in the pages of fiction, but, again, Orwell gives us an idea of what totalitarianism aspires to be, while also holding out the grim prospect of the ideal becoming realized in all its horror, where even your innermost thoughts and feelings are not truly your own.

Daily Fun

Marilyn Monroe at the Baby Doll premiere, 1956.

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