Hostage syndrome

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The sense you get when someone senior is being broadcast around the telescreens in Airstrip one, with a glazed expression reciting the firm’s mission, supporting its diversity and inclusion initiatives — you know, the ones that weren’t in place to prevent him getting to be chief personnel officer — that step-ladder he now kicks away — where you know there is someone from branding standing off-camera with a rifle trained between his eyes. There’s an almost unbearably bathetic ironic tinge of sadness in his tone — it is like he’s sending a message, to God, or the hereafter, or whoever it is that keeps cosmic account of karma and is noting the present dissonance for the purpose of future allocations — as if to say, “HELP I AM IMPRISONED HERE. THIS IS NOT MY IDEA THEY ARE MAKING ME SAY THIS.”

The revolution is coming, and the wall we will all be lined up against has a coat-peg with our name on it. We cannot escape this fate.

See also

• Goldstein
• Diversity and inclusion