A post script to what are our priorities

I was reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm again. I say again, but it has been decades since I last read it. It is that damn library card acting up again.

The book I got though had some commentary on the story, the times, and background on the story.  You might recall it was written at the end of WWII so according to the commentary I am reading there was some effort in getting the book published since the story was very anti Stalin/USSR. The war was winding down and there was still wartime censorship going on and the commenter discussed this in detail before and after the actual story.

A couple of sentences though can be applied to today’s world: “If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution, but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country (remember England) intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.” *

Now indirectly apply it to our modern press. The corporations that own “the press” seem bent on making sure there is no real discussion on how bad the establishments of the democrats and republicans have failed their constituencies. Occasionally you might see an article from a news site blog, but a real discussion on what they haven’t done for this country is very absent. This isn’t cowardice of public opinion though (read Trump and Sanders’ campaigns) but cowardice to their masters yet still advertising we have freedom of the press.

It is not the government censoring our press such as wartime England, it is the cowardice of our writers and journalists to attack the very people they should be the most wary which unfortunately has become the people writing their checks and buying our elections.  Self-censorship by omission is as dangerous or more so than what made it difficult for George Orwell to get Animal Farm published.  “….intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face..” says much

* Appendix 1 from Animal Farm with introduction by Julian Symons