Stop Me Before I Vote Again

SMBIVA's own super Al passed along a link to an essay by Thomas Pynchon -- a close impersonal idol of mine, or was, 'till I caught that often incurable thought virus, the Trier flu, in the summer of 1974.

Tommy's piece introduces a new edition of 1984. Here's Tommy:

"... one of the great achievements of this novel, one which has entered the everyday language of political discourse [is] the identification and analysis of doublethink."

"... doublethink is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time. This is nothing new, of course. We all do it. In social psychology it has long been known as “cognitive dissonance.” Others like to call it “compartmentalization.” ... the idea seems to have presented Orwell with his own dilemma, a kind of meta-doublethink — repelling him with its limitless potential for harm, while at the same time fascinating him with its promise of a way to transcend opposites..."

"We believe and doubt at the same time — it seems a condition of political thought in a modern superstate to be permanently of at least two minds on most issues. Needless to say, this is of inestimable use to those in power who wish to remain there, preferably forever....

[Orwell] in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own—the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human addiction to power were already long in place, all well-known aspects of the Third Reich and Stalin’s USSR, even the British Labour party—like first drafts of a terrible future.

What could prevent the same thing from happening to Britain and the United States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean living?"

"The question remains, why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what appears to be a scholarly appendix?

The answer may lie in simple grammar. From its first sentence, “The Principles of Newspeak” is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some later piece of history, post-1984, in which Newspeak has become literally a thing of the past — as if in some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now free to discuss, critically and objectively, the political system of which Newspeak was, in its time, the essence.

Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak English language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has even, somehow, been restored."

In a 1946 article in The Managerial Revolution, an analysis of the world crisis by the American ex-Trotskyist James Burnham, Orwell wrote, “The huge, invincible, everlasting slave empire of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established, or if established, will not endure, because slavery is no longer a stable basis for human society.”

In its hints of restoration and redemption, perhaps “The Principles of Newspeak” serves as a way to brighten an otherwise bleakly pessimistic ending—sending us back out into the streets of our own dystopia whistling a slightly happier tune than the end of the story by itself would have warranted."

But didn't "standard English" get memory-holed? What if it's precisely Doublethink that saves the proles from Newspeak -- or better, forces Newspeak to split against itself?

Heeere's ... Hegel!

Profounder insight into the antinomial, or more truly, into the dialectical nature of reason, demonstrates any notion whatever to be a unity of opposed moments

And with that insight, 1984 collapses in on itself -- or for short, becomes 1989.