Publius Returns

George Orwell – Born Eric Arthur Blair
Quotes:
- In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
- If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
- War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength (On the manipulation of language
for political ends.)
- But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Words We Use

The Principles of Newspeak – Newspeak was the official language … and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought – that is a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. George Orwell - 1984

Sometime during the last five years I reread George Orwell’s anti-utopian novel, ‘1984.’ I was a teenager the first time I read it and I thought it was a science fiction story. Consequently, I was disappointed and found the book to be boring. There were no bug eyed monsters, no ray guns, and no space ships. When I reread the book, I found it a terrifying scenario describing some of the situations that are possible when Looters are not constrained.

Orwell included an appendix to his book, which I did not bother to read the first time. The appendix is entitled ‘The Principles of Newspeak,’ the official language of the government in the novel. The Appendix is a description of that language and the design of the grammar used. When I read that Appendix, about 2004, I was impressed by the power of language, as presented by Orwell, to suppress critical or rational thought. The Newspeak of 1984 is a powerful metaphor of the language of Political Correctness in 2009.

The language of the Looters tends to have the same effect on their followers as Newspeak did on the citizens of Ingsoc. I am developing some material comparing Newspeak and 21st century political correctness.

Weapons of War: One of the things that is important in a big engagement is to destroy, capture, or spike the big guns of the opposition. One of the big guns of the Looters is the categorical label ‘Racist.’ Usually a single barrage of Racist clears the opposition from the field. The person or group at which it is fired find themselves disarmed and unable to continue the attack. The big gun, ‘Racist,’ and all similar heavy artillery, such as ‘sexist, homophobe, ageist, isolationist, speciest,’ and such have presented a problem to our assault troops every since the civil rights movement. In Orwell’s world instead of accusing a person of being a Racist they would accuse the person of committing ‘Crimethink.’ In our world, although it is not against the law to be a Racist, it is proscribed and not permitted.

Even when Limiters capture the big guns and turn them on the Looters it does us no good for they are adequately protected by the armor of their ideology. ‘Only those afflicted with whiteness can be racists.’ The Looters safely ignore any such assault. So it appears capturing their guns avails us little or nothing.

As a practical matter, the Looters will continue to use their big guns as long as they are effective in sowing confusion and baffling the Limiters. The big guns are only words and consequently are manufactured in any quantity that a particular situation requires. It takes only a keyboard or vocal chords to produce these big guns. It is obvious that we cannot destroy or deprive the Looters of these weapons. This leaves only the third alternative of our battlefield analogy. We must spike them so they are no longer effective weapons of either offense or defense.

The reason so much of what the Looters do and say appears insane or irrational to us is that they and we exist in alternate realities. We hold different truths to be self-evident and use a different metric to measure reality. Their big guns are only effective on the alien terrain of their alternate reality. If we can shift the battlefield to our reality, those guns become useless to the enemy; they are spiked. The desire to combat the Looters with precise language and rational discourse is an attempt to fight on our own turf. The Looters will attempt to drag us back over to their reality where their weapons work better.

Currently we have witnessed a dustup over a statement that Judge Sotomayor spoke a decade or so ago. Her statement was something like, “My experience as a Latina makes me wiser in adjudicating cases than a white man.” When this statement became widely know, some spokesmen of the Limiters grabbed the big guns of the Looters and commenced to bang away. Ann Coulter said “If the judge believes what she said, then objectively she is a racist.” Newt Gingrich solemnly intoned, “There is no way to deny that this is a racist statement.” Sean Hannity repeated, for several days, “The judge claims to be anti-racist, but she makes racist statements and is therefore a hypocrite.” This carpet-bombing with the Looter’s own big guns left the judge unscathed. She did not receive a scratch.

The Looters were bemused by the silly ranting of the Limiters, because they knew that only those whose identity was whiteness could be racists. To a Looter, to call a woman who identified as a Latina a racist, is an oxy-moron. The field of battle was alien terrain.

To fight the battle on our turf would have been easy, in my humble opinion. Whether the person is a racist or not should be as unimportant, to us Limiters, as the person being a Jew, Mormon, Catholic, Baptist, or Muslim. Only Looters care about a person’s personal beliefs about race. It is not against the law to be a racist, so why should anybody care. In the land of the Limiter, what is important is the behavior and actions of the person and the quality of their thinking and speech.

If the validity or truth content of what she said had been examined, then the battlefield would have been moved into the world of reality’ the world of us Limiters. Her statement could have been cast into about twelve propositions for consideration. For example:

1. Because of her life experience, this Latina is wiser than all white men.
2. Because of their life experiences, all Latinas are wiser than all white men.
3. Because of their life experiences, some Latinas are wiser than all white men.

Anyway, you get the idea. Out of the twelve the one that seemed, to me, to make the most sense, within the context of her statement is - Because of her life experience, this Latina is wiser than some white men. Some means more than one and there are a lot of white men who are idiots. The problem is the statement is now so trivial that although it may be true, there is little value in it. Why would she brag that she is wiser than an idiot, or a dozen idiots?

An examination of why a Latina’s life experience makes her wiser than the experience of white men would begin to expose the whole silly, hateful body of identity politics and its illogical assumptions about the world, society, and politics. Such an examination would call the quality of the judges thinking and judgment into question. Why did she choose to be a Latina, a victim, in the world of the Looters?

Of course, the Looters would fire their big guns, as soon as the inquisitors made their first inquiry, and call them Racists for questioning a Latina. Our response should be that that is an entirely irrational response to questions about experience, wisdom, and comparing the wisdom of Latinas and white men. If they persist in lobbing volleys of artillery, the Limiter can dismiss their entire spiel by simply shaking his head sadly and loudly saying ‘Duckspeak,’ or ‘badthink.’ (See the endnote on these words.) If we can maintain our footing in the land of reason, and avoid being pulled back into the mad world of Looter emotion, we win the skirmish, and their guns are spiked.

The wisdom of my white man life experience is that our worldview approaches reality much more closely than the alternate universe of the Looters. I also believe quite strongly that reality bites if you ignore it for very long a time. Therefore, I have faith that when reality bites, the Looters will lose big time. Unfortunately, they do not seem to learn from experience, and they just keep coming back. That is why our founders told us about the necessity of Eternal Vigilance. We failed to be vigilant and let our guard down and look what happened.

ENDNOTE:

“Newspeak, indeed, differed from almost all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately, it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning “to quack like a duck.” … Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment.” 1984 Appendix

Duckspeak is an effective one-word rebuttal to all the Big Guns of the Looters. It would also work on those who spout identical talking points on every TV and media outlet. Imagine some outraged Looter yelling “That’s racist,” and the response being a look of bemusement, or confusion, a shrug of the shoulders and “That’s duckspeak” as a response.

If several thousand persons began referring to Obama’s programs and initiatives as badthink, and calling him a doubleplusgood duckspeaker, enough persons have read 1984 to make the connection and begin doing it themselves.

Doublespeak notwithstanding, it makes good sense to render the Looter’s defense indefensible.