The Doublethink Party

George Orwell described “doublethink” thus: “to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic” and “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”   With the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination getting underway, we are seeing numerous examples of doublethink in action. So much so, that it is more than fair to call the Democratic Party the Doublethink Party.

This is most evident when it comes to immigration. On the one hand, leftist (i.e., mainstream) Democrats lament that Central American countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are so wretched, poor, violent, and oppressive that it is our moral duty to admit any migrant from those countries (and others equally benighted). Indeed, during last night’s Democratic candidate debate, Kamala Harris gave an impassioned plea, saying that conditions in these countries were so brutally awful that it was perfectly understandable that a mother would subject her child to a high probability of rape, and a non-trivial probability probability of death, by paying a human trafficker (a “coyote”) to get her to the United States.

Boy, those countries must be real shitholes if it is worthwhile to pay such a price to escape them, right?

But you know, metaphysically, that the same people will call you a racist, or worse, if you make the simple declaration: “those countries are shitholes.” You know that, because that’s exactly what happened when Trump referred to immigration from “shithole countries.”

That’s 99.9 percent pure doublethink.

Another immigration-related example. No doubt you’ve heard the shrieking over the terrible conditions in which asylum seekers, children in particular, are held. Sleeping on the floor. No toothbrushes.

But the same people–yeah, I’m looking at you, oh bucktoothed bug-eyed one–fought tooth and nail against a bill funding the detention centers, and said it was totally righteous for employees of a company contracted to supply beds for the centers to walk out in protest.

Again, doublethink in its almost purest form.

Doublethink is so pervasive on the immigration issue that it is beyond certain that the Democratic Party position on the issue, and the position of every Democratic Party presidential candidate, is open borders. If a country’s corruption, violence, poverty, and oppressiveness imposes a moral duty on the US to allow anyone from those countries to claim asylum in the US, since every country south of the Rio Grande is corrupt, violent, poor, and oppressive, per the Democrat’s logic everyone from those countries has a right to enter the US. Indeed, immigrants from African and Middle Eastern nations (again uniformly corrupt, violent, poor, and oppressive) have been transiting to the US via Mexico. Meaning that they have a right to come here too.

And of course, even if the US adopted that policy, the “logic” in the Democrat’s position would be that’s not enough: we should actually provide the means for them to come here. If you doubt that, note that every Democratic presidential candidate supports free medical care for immigrants.

I am of a mixed mind on this. On the one hand, the position seems so stark raving insane that it will be political suicide for the Democrats to run on it. On the other hand, if they win . . . . Meaning that although encouraging this insanity has a positive expected value, the downside risk is severe. Especially as immigration is only one issue on which the Democratic Party is now starkers.

Although I’ve focused on immigration doublethink, this Orwellian mindset is not limited to that issue. Not at all!

One more example–I could spend all day and many days to follow adding other ones. Donald Trump is routinely lambasted for his unilateralism. But when he says things like the US should not be unilaterally responsible for securing oil flows out of the Persian/Arab Gulf, the lamabasters freak out on him for turning his back on American policy that dates back to the halcyon days of the Carter administration. I guess the “logic” is that the United States is obligated to provide security services that everyone (including rivals like China) free rides on, and is also obligated to be nice to the free riders and say only nice things about them.

One closing thought. I’ve used the word “logic” several times (in scare quotes!), but this is one way in which Orwell’s definition of Doublethink doesn’t do justice to its modern practitioners. Recall that Orwell said that doublethink “use[s] logic against logic.” But postmodernists and deconstructivists and leftists generally strenuously oppose privileging logic. To them, logic is an instrument of oppression, a weapon of the white patriarchy wielded against women, LGTBQ, “people of color,” and most of all, the intersectional (i.e., those who can check more than one of the above boxes). Orwell anticipated that logic would be twisted. He did not anticipate what has actually transpired: logic has been denied.

The objective is the same, however. Orwell portrayed Doublethink as an instrument of power and control. Since logic is a constraint on the will to power, it must be destroyed. Nothing good can come of that: indeed, many evils will follow in its train.