No exceptions, No Excuses, No Escape
I, for one, have always delighted in the magic car imagined by Ian Fleming, and, no, I do not mean James Bond’s Aston Martin. The image of Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang soaring on brightly colored wings has always been one to delight my heart as a child, the perfect image of freedom of the air, an image made golden by the patina of nostalgia which now tints the things of my youth.
If only George Orwell had portrayed the futuristic tyrants of England with music and laughter, costumes and gaiety, as the Big Brothers sings the songs of fond childhood memories about the omniscience of the police cameras, and how there is no escape, the parody could not have been believed. The chains binding the beloved magical car of my youthful daydreams to the ground is like a blasphemy to me.
I find this remarkably more chilling than a stern or officious warning, for the same reason that being beheaded by Jack Ketch is somehow worse if he wears, instead of his traditional black hood, a painted clown suit.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
