Things can only get better?

Mark Rosenfelder has been reading George Orwell, and compares the world of sixty years ago with the world today.

Current politics is always dismal; it always looks like the bad guys are about to win. The best way to get some perspective is to look at something from half a century back. I've been rereading a book of essays by George Orwell, and it's perked me right up.

What's remarkable, and rather reassuring, is how much better the world is than it was sixty years ago. Orwell wrote at a time when to believe in democracy was to be as isolated and irrational as Don Quixote. The intellectuals were mostly communists of the most irresponsible sort; the upper classes were solidly and stupidly reactionary; and Europe was caught in a totalitarian nightmare-- and worse yet, the totalitarians seemed immeasurably more practical and successful than anything the free world could come up with. . (Despite Tolkien's protestations, the atmosphere of near-hopeless confrontation with near-omnipotent evil in LOTR was very much of the times.)

You can read the whole article on the Zompist Rants Page. While it's not update that frequently, and isn't really structured as a blog, whatever he writes is always worth reading.