1984 is great because it bifurcates most responses in a revealing way: there are people who understand it as a cautionary tale against something that hasn't hap

1984 is great because it bifurcates most responses in a revealing way: there are people who understand it as a cautionary tale against something that hasn't happened, and people who understand its many wonderful metaphors as representing recurring themes in human politics. So many of the phrases the former crowd likes to trot out would tickle Syme to death: people come up with their own NewSpeak in the form of thought-terminating cliches to opt out of reason entirely. edit to bring it back to the topic: "ethnic" as a catch-all is actually a brilliant example of what NewSpeak is a metaphor for.