Doublethink

"His brain has not only been washed, it has been dry cleaned."
--Dr Yen Lo (The Manchurian Candidate)

For anyone who has read George Orwell's 1984, it is difficult to avoid a sense of life imitating fiction as current events unfold. Increasingly, it seems, the totalitarian novel is being used as a playbook by governments worldwide.

As Larry Arnn recounts, the Orwellian concept of doublethink particularly resonates today. Doublethink is a way of thinking that defies reasoning. Reasoning is grounded in the law of contradiction. The law says that X and Y cannot be true at the same time if they are mutually exclusive. For example, if A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then C cannot be greater than A. By applying the law of contradiction, we make sense of the world and progress toward the truth.

Doublethink seeks to eradicate the law of contradiction. C can be greater than A. War can be peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. 

Applied to our time, church gatherings are too dangerous to allow in a CV19 world, but mass protest marches aren't. A man can declare himself a woman. Protecting voters' rights is a racist act.

In 1984, doublethink is advanced by the Thought Police, an organization that monitors the media and people's actions through overt and covert means. Those people suspected of challenging doublethink conventions are detained, and subject to interrogation, 're-education,' or worse. The Thought Police report to the Ministry of Truth. It is easy to draw parallels to their real life counterparts today.

The ultimate goal of doublethink? To legitimize any act of government, no matter how counterintuitive or morally repulsive. When government takes life, liberty, or property, citizens who have been mesmerized by doublethink don't think twice about it. 

Doublethink seeks to dry clean the brain.