Two Minute Hate

Perhaps inspired by the fact that I am reading a dystopic novel right now, Oryx and Crake, I found myself thinking this morning about driving in LA and 1984. I am from the east coast, and I have lived in the midwest, and I must say, LA is super-friendly compared to anywhere I have lived. But get these folks into cars, and holy mother of god look out. Total personality schism. So this morning it occurred to me that driving in LA is, in fact, like Two Minute Hate:

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, ... And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies.

Which goes some way to explain why I must restrain the urge to drive into oncoming traffic at times when I have the news on the radio.

So those thoughts led me to look up 1984 and this passage seemed worth sharing:

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

This is perhaps one of the most cogent explanations of the connection between the antigay amendments on so many ballots and the "war against terror" I've seen.