A whistleblower’s horror story

Whistleblower’s denunciations can have a lot of negative consequences for them, they take real risks. Obviously, they can be sent to prison or exile like Manning or Snowden. If they manage to escape these sanctions, they will still suffer harassment and financial hardship, they will have to pay to protect themselves, for example with lawyers. There are a number of whistleblowers who have paid with their lives : they got killed or worse.

Through this quote, it can be seen that Winston isn’t much pleased with the situation. Because of financial deals, many scandals had been hidden to the higher ranked majors by the authorities that have been « corrupted ». This extract demonstrates how difficult it is to trust the national american finance department to change its ways of avoiding manipulations of this sort. They seem unfair and that’s not what Winston wanted, his expectations were higher.

It can be seen in the text that the consequences about the revelations are taken in a very wrong way by the government that is what the whistleblowers denounce. Although they do sometimes have very important salaries, they only request equality and fairness when judging and therefore they ask the government and the judges to make the correct decisions and so give the correct punishments to those they denounce. In case the whistleblowers are certain that the government won’t make the right decisions, then there will be no snitching from them, they think they are responsible for doing justice. The fact that whistleblowers exist sometimes shows the ineffectiveness of government : some men have to destroy their lives for the truth to triumph.

To disappear : recede L7

Careless : reckless L14

Vengeance : retaliation L 20

Unfair : wrongful L 20

Comfortable : cushy L 38

To go unpunished : gets swept under the rug L 70

To lead : helm supervise steer run

To encourage : overinflate L 49 aiding L 72 push L 85

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