{"id":545,"date":"2009-01-22T23:02:29","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T04:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=545"},"modified":"2009-01-22T23:42:38","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T04:42:38","slug":"2-2-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=545","title":{"rendered":"2 + 2 = 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.” -Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t watch the inauguration. I found I wasn’t interested in the hype. I have been very supportive of our new president – particularly since his speech on race relations last March – but unlike many others, I don’t find myself swept up in the dreaminess. I find I don’t trust adoration in the political sphere – it can lead even very good people to some very bad places.<\/p>\n

Today my brother mentioned to me the above quote from Orwell’s “1984”, and it helped me to realize that I have been holding my breath all this time, waiting to see what Obama would do the day after<\/i> he took office, when it came down not to making the lovely eloquent speeches about the future, but to making the day-to-day decisions of a chief executive.<\/p>\n

I am heartened not just that he has moved immediately to order the closing of the prison at Guantanamo, but that he is going about it in a careful and gradual way – over the course of a year – so that there will be time to find where the truth lies in that mess of a situation.<\/p>\n

And I realize that my difference in expectations before and after January 20 comes down to what Winston Smith said so eloquently in “1984”. There came a point, after having been disappointed too many times, when I simply stopped expecting straight talk from the Bush Administration.<\/p>\n

Obama still holds open the possibility – so delicious to contemplate after having been denied by our leaders these past years – that he might not lead through deceit and misdirection – that he might actually level with us, as equal and thoughtful participants in a republic.<\/p>\n

It’s so simple and so fundamental, this freedom we had lost, that may now have been restored: The freedom to have our intelligence respected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.” -Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 I didn’t watch the inauguration. I found I wasn’t interested in the hype. I have been very supportive of our new president – particularly since his speech on race relations … Continue reading “2 + 2 = 4”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}