Can the GOP Demonize Pelosi One More Time?
An ominous ritual unfolds in the opening chapter of George Orwell’s 1984. Staffers in the Records Department gather for an exercise known as the Two Minutes Hate. This gathering is disturbing and predictable, yet ever-changing.
It goes like this: On an oversized telescreen, Big Brother’s party apparatchiks flash the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, a designated “Enemy of the People.” As Orwell tells it, “The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure.”
And the response, as intended, was always Pavlovian: “There were hisses here and there among the audience … uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out … the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically … People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in
