Reality control

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

-George Orwell, 1984 [public domain in Canada]

The fun thing about having a blog, or, say, a provincial government website, is that you can exercise almost perfect reality control.

So, for example, even though yesterday's version of the Rant from the Throne contained the following, immortal, if blatantly plagiarized line:

Our people are ready to take charge of our future and, under My First Minister’s leadership, our province will achieve self-reliance by becoming masters of our own house.

with the conscious choice of bold face type to drive home the point in case you missed it, today, with reality control in effect, the phrase is de-emphasized.