As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
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About Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal was a 20th-century American writer. Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his cynical epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays criticized the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power