Hey America remember when your media spent two years telling you Russia is the most dangerous threat in the world and then one of your whole entire states caught fire because the planet is burning?

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) November 17, 2018

What are you talking about, Putin set those fires! I saw him running about the state with a flamethrower and cackling madly, as all super-villains must do by contract and custom.

Earlier, my partner reminded me of a quote from a book I read long ago, Neal Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Writing well before the public internet, it still managed to presage much about our current situation.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

Huxley was on the right side of his prognostication, except that we’ve become too prudish and isolated for “orgy porgies” to be something likely to occur. About distractions, though, he (and Postman) were completely on target.