When This Blows Over

“It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted
independence, were a great colonial animal, an
animal made up of countless clustered organisms
responding to a central nervous system. In the late
1950's (as in the late 1970's) the animal seemed
determined that in all matters of national importance
the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting
moral tone, should be established and should
prevail; and all information that muddied the tone
and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown
down the memory hole. In a later period, this
impulse of the animal would take the form of blazing
indignation about corruption, abuses of power, and
even minor ethical lapses…”
“Loneliness wasn't just a state of mind, was it? It was
tactile. She could feel it. It was a sixth sense, not in
some fanciful play of words, but physically. It hurt... it
hurt like phagocytes devouring the white matter of her
brain. It wasn't merely that she had no friends. She
didn't even have a sanctuary in which she could simply
be alone.”
- Tom Wolfe