Doublethink
A reader with the rangiferine but hunting canine name of Rudolph Harrier comments:
The trouble is that many of the watchers have mastered doublethink. They can simultaneously believe:
- That the riots are peaceful and unobjectionable.
- That the riots are violent, but it’s okay because their cause needs violence to wake people up.
- That the violence was caused by evil infiltrators from the right.
My comment:
Bravo. As Andrew Klavan puts it, “The Riots do not exist — and they are Donald Trump’s fault.”
Leftism is a mental disease. It is a disease of the intellect where one’s fondly favorite fixed idea, theory, or obsession, is rendered immune from fact, immune from correction, because it has become an idol. It is worshipped, not examined.
When the theory fails, that is, when reality fails to perform was theory predicts, instead of stoning the false prophets as religious fanatics would do — because religious fanatics are not all that fanatical, compared with this — an additional theory must be brought in to explain away the failure.
The Left currently claims that systematic racism infects all of our institutions. It is noteworthy that the Left has enjoyed unchallenged hegemony over all our institutions since the late 1960s, four generations of man.
If the systemic racism exists, why tell us? Revise your system.
I might recommend adopting the idea of being colorblind, judging men on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and I might recommend promoting, or, least, ceasing so vehemently to denigrate, the idea that all men are created equal.
But, no, the theory does not allow for self-blame or self-doubt. The core of the theory is the theory that the theory cannot be wrong.
So if the Left openly and visibly controls all cultural institutions, from the National News, Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street, Academia, Silicon Valley, to the American Council of Bishops, the additional theory to explain what thwarts utopia must be found in something clandestine and invisible, yet somehow more powerful than all open and visible cultural institutions.
Hence, the additional theory is always a conspiracy theory.
The additional theory is about an anti-utopian and reactionary counterrevolutionary forces, evildoers, invisible witches, saboteurs, wreckers, or some other force of invisible people, as unseen as a glass ceiling, as inaudible as a dog whistle, as undetectable as a micro-aggression, which prevents the utopia from functioning as theory directs.
But who opposes utopia? Who would sabotage it?
The theory demands that no rational person would have a sound reason for opposing utopia. History herself has decreed the evolutionary progress from caveman to superman to be inevitable.
Hence the opposition must be “reaction” that is, thoughtless and bitter clinging to guns and bibles and all the things evolution has condemned as old fashioned. The motive is power lust, a desire of those currently in power to retain power, because the Leftists have no other motives in their minds, and so can imagine no other motive.
So the theory demands that someone, anyone, who is both invisible and inaudible, but somehow all powerful, sabotage the efforts of the utopia. When the utopia fails, or some unexpected event happens — as unexpected as the election of Trump — as unexpected as Americas preferring their national interest, life, liberty and freedom above the poverty and death promised by the globalist One World Order of anarchist totalitarians and socialist plutocrats — the event has to be explained away by inventing groups of reactionary conspirators, racists one and all, who out of malice and powerlust oppose the march of progress.
And if the racism in America is below detectable thresholds, then it must be manufactured — it is for this reason that Tawana Brawley, Duke Lacrosse Team, Covington Catholic schoolboys, Yasmin Seweid, Amari Allen and Jussie Smollett were all brought to public attention, either falsely accused or falsely accusing.
Why are these false accusations never denounced and exploded by the Left? Because the truth or falsehood or this or any other statements means nothing to them. There is no category in Leftwing theology for the truth-value of a statement. Statements are neither true nor false, correct nor incorrect. They are only politically correct or politically incorrect.
It cannot be otherwise. If statements could be judged on their correctness, then so could theories, and the theory, or idol, would have to be compared to the reality — and anyone convinced to do that is no longer possessed by the mental disease called Leftism.
For when you shall know the truth, the truth will make you no longer a Leftist.
Since truth cannot be used by Leftists for judging or discussing the propositions generated by their worldview, the comparison of one statement with another for self consistency, that thing we call a logic, no longer has any application.
It is not so much that Leftists reject logic as false or misleading. They simply do not deal with it at all. We rational adults know that if two statements of fact contradict each other, both cannot both simultaneously and unambiguously be true.
But interjections or expressions of a purely emotional nature do not share this rule. One can yearn for any number of impossible things, or wish for the fruit without the root, the effect without the cause, or regret the cost or hard work or good fortune needed to earn wealth, prestige, dignities and so on. A cold man can wish for fire without fuel, or an envious woman would regret that she was not born a man, especially when she wishes she could punch someone.
Logic does not apply to these statements. They are statements of emotion, not fact. “There are no riot!” and “Trump is responsible for them!” look like statements, but they are not. They are interjections. “Grr! Orange Man!”
Hence doublethink.
Self-contradiction is not an accident, not a byproduct, and not the result of some momentary lapse or oversight afflicting an otherwise sound and sober Leftwing philosophy.
Totalitarian anarchy is a contradiction in terms, as is socialist plutocracy.
In Leftist economics, Marxism is merely the idea that eliminating the laws of cause and effect that underpin economic reasoning will eliminate inequities and injustices allegedly produced by the free market.
In Leftist politics, Anarchy is merely the idea that men do not need any coercive restrictions on their behavior due to their natural rationality and empathy, ergo coercion must be used to destroy the government and all institutions of law and order … institutions, that is, which are manned by the same men who allegedly are too rational and empathetic to need coercion to compel them.
If men are so naturally benevolent that no government is needed to settle disputes between them, any despot arising from such a host of angels will be a benevolent despot, ergo not to be feared.
Likewise, totalitarianism is the idea that since men can be allowed no freedom whatsoever due to their corruption and ignorance, ergo the men in government service need have no restrictions whatsoever on their freedom to use the force of law as they see fit … men, that is, who are no less prone to corruption and ignorance as their brethren.
If men are so naturally reprobate that no liberty whatsoever can be allowed them in any sphere, not even private thought, anyone arising from such a horde of devils who gains power over his fellows, or influence, will abuse it, ergo cannot be granted it.
In Leftist metaphysics, Nihilism states that it is true that no statement is true.
In Leftist theology, there is no God, no creator, and no objective world, therefore each man is god, and creates his own world.
Doublethink is Leftwing philosophy. Hypocrisy is the point.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
