So now it seems, thanks to @faisalislam and others, as if Cummings may be going back and editing his blogs to make himself sound prophetic - and then telling us to read his old blogs to see how prophetic he was. More Wile E Coyote Genius level game theory…
There is far more than Cummings' vanity at stake in the issue of his rewriting his blog so he can claim he predicted coronavirus. “Rectifying” the historical record to make leaders appear "prophetic" is *literally* what Big Brother does in 1984. 1/12
Winston Smith edits "news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from The Times of the 17th of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted...2/12
that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite... 3/12
a paragraph of Big Brother's speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, The Times of the 19th of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of... 4/12
1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them ... 5/12
... agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) ... 6/12
that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning ...7
that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed ... 8
and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs-to every kind of literature or documentation... 9
which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct ... 10/12
nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. ... 11/12
In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place." --Geroge Orwell, 1984. 12/12.
