But I thought we’ve been told for over 2 years that the monthly jobs report averages 200k? – The Donald – America First" title="But I thought we’ve been told for over 2 years that the monthly jobs report averages 200k? – The Donald – America First" />

But really, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Abundance figures, it wasn’t even a fake. It was just the substitution of one nonsense for another. Most of the material you’re dealing with had no connection to anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that an outright lie contains. The statistics were as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. Most of the time you were expected to make them up in your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast had estimated boot production for the quarter at one hundred and forty-five million pairs. Actual production was given at sixty-two million. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, reduced the figure to fifty-seven millions, in order to allow the usual claim that the quota had been exceeded. In any case, sixty-two million was no closer to the truth than fifty-seven million, or one hundred and forty-five million. Most likely no boots had been produced. Even more likely, no one knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All that was known was that astronomical numbers of paper boots were produced every quarter, while perhaps half the population of Oceania was barefoot.

~George Orwell, 1984

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