“ There is only one truth. Whoever controls your eyeballs runs the world.
—
The character Charlie Wainwright, in Underworld, by Don DeLillo (therefore, take it with a pinch of salt. Charlie’s a fairly ugly character, who runs an advertising agency in the sixties.)
I also wouldn’t be surprised if DeLillo is making a fairly ironic reference to the line from the manifesto in Orwell’s 1984: “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” — even that shouldn’t necessarily be seen to be a reduction of Orwell’s views.
