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Shades of Orwell

Just a few thoughts on doublethink and the news lately. In which I describe some of the doublethink that I perceive in the Bush administration.

Dictionary.com says:

dou·ble·think n.

Thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination

The entry in Wikipedia says:

Doublethink was a form of trained, willful blindness to contradictions in a system of beliefs. In the case of Winston Smith, Orwell’s protagonist, it meant being able to work at the Ministry of Information deleting uncomfortable facts from public records, and then believing in the new history which he himself had written.

One particularly memorable passage (for me) from 1984 is the following, where Winston and O’Brien are discussing the all-important photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. (I’ve edited it down here, but you can read the chapter in its entirety online )

An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O’Brien’s fingers. […] It was a photograph, and there was no question of its identity. It was the photograph. It was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly destroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.

‘It exists!’ he cried.

‘No,’ said O’Brien.

He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.

‘Ashes,’ he said. ‘Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.’

‘But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.’

‘I do not remember it,’ said O’Brien.

Winston’s heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that O’Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O’Brien had really forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated him.

Of course, this is just a prelude to the news.

One contradiction that has struck me lately is the amazing one of Bush supporters telling us that the war was necessary for two contradictory reasons:

1. We’re fighting for the freedom and wellbeing of Iraq.
2. We’re fighting over there to attract terrorists to Iraq rather than The United States.

Think about that. We’re going to help you, Iraqis, in a way that attracts (and undeniably has attracted) terrorists, violence and the horrors of war into your backyard. And front yard. And, just maybe, your living room.

It really fries my bacon that Bush supporters (and Bush) can criticise Kerry for his opinion on a murderer like Allawi, saying that this is no way to strengthen ties with our allies. Meanwhile, this is the administration which preemptively waged war in their land on thin and now evaporated pretence. That’s confidence-building? Allawi is not the ally whose confidence we need. If it’s to be a free Iraq then it is the Iraqis who need to trust us, not a puppet. Telling the truth about Iraq is the best way to gain the confidence of the American people and the Iraqi people. Bush has blown for too many chances at that, and his credibility is nil.

Paul Krugman points out that ignorance isn’t strength. Another echo of Orwell came during the first debate when the president made it clear that criticising mistakes was more of an issue for him than making the mistake in the first place. And, please, forget that criticism can lead to correction. Read Krugman’s article for a decent tour of how reality control is a hallmark of the Bush presidency.

And new examples of reality control present themselves daily. Take Paul Bremer for example. Former administrator of Iraq, he was recently overheard saying:

“The single most important change — the one thing that would have improved the situation — would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout.”

He highlighted a pretty tangible mistake of the Bush administration. He wasn’t alone in his observation (Gen Shinseki agreed) It was only news, really, because he was the administration’s guy — a true believer.

Now, as Josh Marshall points out, he’s been made to publicly swallow his words, since they could mean disaster in tonight’s debate. Oops! You told the truth. Damage control time. How many times have we seen this in the Bush administration so far. Intense pressure, followed by a “clarification” of what they meant that cannot explain their earlier statements. In this case, Bremer weakly says that maybe he was wrong because some people disagree with him. What?

Loyalty to this Republican administration is increasingly becoming an exercise in doublethink. As in Bremer’s case, the inconvenient facts keep creeping around and biting us in the ass.

Posted by James at October 8, 2004 8:49 AM
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