The word of the day, week and year is doublethink. The easiest understanding of this word is to hold two contradicting beliefs and accept both of them. Another word I might use to describe this is hypocritical. However a hypocrite says one thing and does another, but someone who participates in doublethink holds both beliefs that they speak of. But who would want to use doublethink? Its primary use is to trick listeners into always believing the speaker. No matter what their argument is it’s always right. They could switch positions from right to left and from left to right but always be on the winning side. Not because they hold facts that are true but because the people believe them. And once the people believe the speaker then anything is possible.
If you’ve read 1984 by George Orwell you know what I’m talking about. In this novel, a dystopian society is depicted. People are under the oppression of the government night and day, unable to speak their thoughts, especially if it has anything to do with the government. One of the main ways that they hold back these people is through the deliberate use of false information and doublethink. Anything that undermines their government is burned, never to be read by the public. Only things that support the all-seeing Big Brother, the name for this government, are to be published and if anyone were to go against this power then you were erased from the records. You never existed. “Vaporized was the usual word”. Doublethink held the people down. Kept them in line. Tricked them into solidarity. A good example from the book would be Big Brothers slogan “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” These are all contradictory statements but Big Brother's grasp on the people is so strong that it’s always true.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
But what does doublethink have to do with anyone today? Well, let’s take a gander at the interview with Kellyanne Conway, the Counselor to the President, during Meet the Press on January 22 of 2017. A point was brought up about Sean Spicer’s statement involving President Trump’s inauguration. Spicer stated that there weren’t any statistics giving information about the amount of people that showed up to his inauguration. Yet only a few moments later he went on to say “This was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period.” How could he have said this if there wasn’t any information to back it up? Conway has an answer for that! When it was brought to light that this was a blatant lie, Conway said on Meet the Press “Don't be so overly dramatic about it… our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.” What an adorable thing to say. It’s almost like she was trying to tell the preschool teacher that her friend didn’t have a fight with another kid. They were just “playing around”. Sure, those bruises are dark and those tears are so real you can see the suns light glistening off them but her friend’s ‘opponent’ is only sad because he lost a game of grab, punch, kick.
The idea of doublethink seemed outrageous to me when I first read 1984. People of power wouldn’t use that in today’s society, would they? Well, apparently my naive high school mind didn’t come to the conclusion that we would have a presidency like this in 2017. Lie after lie has been brought up in these few weeks of Trump becoming president and it makes me all the more scared that we may end up with a White House where lies are deliberate. Sure you can argue that all Presidents have lied but from what I can tell presidents will hide information more so than say provable fallacies straight to the press. Now, I have hope that this will work out. Just a few wrinkles to iron out. But that’s only because I’m living in the United States. I don’t want this to turn out like my nightmares have depicted. Where cameras are placed in houses to keep track of the people and we have no say in matters that affect our everyday lives. Where you have to decide whether or not to eat that ration of bread, which was given to you by the government, tonight or in the morning so you have the strength to go to work. Where your life is meaningless unless you work under the government or face the consequences of never existing at all. But the only way that that would happen is if we blindly followed the government. So far as I can see we’re not that dumb. Things like ‘alternative facts’ are not pushed away. They are brought to light for their idiocy. I just hope the trend doesn’t stop.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
