Today's Orwellian Moment

Like most people I am at best an amateur appreciator of the works of George Orwell. I read both Animal Farm and 1984 in High School at a time when I was too immature perhaps to find them much more than mildly depressing, the sort of 'literature-which-it-is-good-for-you-to read-but-wouldn't-otherwise' which was normally a signal to me that I would not like it. They must have made a deeper impression on me than I had thuoght, however. A while ago I bought a collection of Orwell's essays, Shooting an Elephant, which I have been reading slowly and seriously in the way one does with something that is really worth savouring. It's no doubt in part a sign of the turbulent time in which we now live but I am finding in almost everyday something which brings to mind a saying of Orwell's. Today's Orwellian moment was prompted by this article in The Times which reported that because the Government won't do it the Church of England's Bishops want to organize a meeting with Britain's senior Muslim figures to make a 'public act of repentance' for the Iraq War. It called to mind Orwell's exclamation: 'you must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could say something so stupid.' I've always taken that one to heart--being an 'intellectual' I sense that the line between genius and sheer barking madness can be thin--so I'm glad to see that at least one other identifiable group is even more susceptible to colossal stupidity than us: bishops of the C of E.