One of my longest-standing arguments is that we are not living in Orwell’s 1984, where truth is centrally suppressed and censored by force (that’s former communist societies, modern-day China, Russia, North Korea).
We are living in something much closer to Huxley’s Brave New World.
The truth is not hidden - it is almost always readily available. But it is buried beneath an industrial quantity of noise: propaganda, outrage, half-truths, conspiracy theories, influencer theatre, algorithmic rage bait and an endless stream of content designed not to inform us, but to keep us emotionally stimulated.
The modern information system does not need to censor the truth when it can simply drown it in noise.
A fact no longer has to be disproven - it only has to be surrounded by a hundred competing claims, stripped of context and nuance, turned into partisan ammunition and pushed into the same feed as celebrity gossip, memes and 15 second videos engineered to deliver the fastest possible dopamine hit. By the time the truth reaches us, it appears as just another piece of content competing for our attention.
That is the more sophisticated form of control: not preventing people from knowing, but exhausting their capacity to care.
Orwell feared a world in which people would be deprived of information. Huxley feared a world in which they would be given so much distraction, stimulation and triviality that they would lose the desire to seek it.
The defining struggle of our age is therefore not simply between truth and censorship, but between truth and indifference.
America is a constant work in progress. Every generation must take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further—protecting what’s right, fixing what’s wrong, and making our union a little more perfect. 250 years later, that’s more important than ever.
New York City Mayor Mamdani just gave one of the most amazing speeches you will ever hear:
"We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, and more powerful than everyone else.
"The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed. We may have walked on the moon. But the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, and it belongs to us all.
"It belongs, too, to our newest Americans: those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I, too, felt what you feel: the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American, too.
"You each hold a special power: the power to determine what America means.
"The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy where only a select few are allowed freedom; where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.
"How small they are. How weak. How unoriginal.
"At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics — and the cheapest.
"But time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress."
🗣️ "President Trump destroyed his credibility with this stupid message."
Former Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi reacts to an AI image depicting Donald Trump as Jesus Christ - since deleted by the president himself after widespread backlash.
🌍 https://t.co/vQTO7fOScm
Bill Maher on Artemis II: "I don’t mean to be the wet blanket on the moon, but I just don’t get it. Everybody’s like, if we’re on the moon, we can get to Mars. I don’t want to go there either... Let’s fix the sh*tshow here on Earth"
Donald Trump: "I'm going to raise tariffs and start a war to make everything more expensive for no reason."
MAGA: "I can't afford to support my family because Joe Biden made schoolchildren trans."