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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Pat Buchanan, Double Plus Ungood

 

Doublethink: The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

- 1984, George Orwell

 

In his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell described doublethink as a form of controlled insanity.  He defined it as a form of deliberate hypocrisy, the willful intellectual blindness to contradiction in a belief system.  However, doublethink differs from ordinary hypocrisy in that for a person to engage in doublethink he or she must first deliberately forget the that there is a contradiction at all – and then deliberately forget that he has forgotten the contradiction. He then has to forget the forgetting, and then forget that he forgot that, and so on. Once begun, doublethink must continue forever or else the practitioner faces a complete collapse of his worldview – hence, controlled insanity.

By definition, doublethink is a form of extraordinary hypocrisy.

 

Don’t you love it when bigots explain why they are the victims of bigotry?

Don’t you love it when haters protest when they perceive that others hate them?

Don’t you love it when the fearful rail against those that they think might fear them?

I find it an amusing travesty when privileged old white rich Christian men who have done absolutely nothing for their entire lives but scream hatred, bigotry, and intolerance get that whiny put-upon tone in their voices like hurt little children and then go on to rant about why (pick one) Jews, Muslims, atheists, women, gays, black and brown and yellow and red skinned people, immigrants, liberals, and so on and so forth are stickin’ it to those self same old men.

I find it utterly hysterical when privileged old white rich Christian men who deplore things like affirmative action and engender minorities to suck it up, suddenly start screaming that they themselves aren’t being given a fair shake and they demand the government give them their rightful due.

The pure distilled extraordinary hypocrisy of these people never ceases to amaze me.

And Pat Buchanan is their king.

I swear, I can’t hardly watch Buchanan talk without wanting to punch him in square in his foul sanctimonious mouth (just for the record, there is nothing hypocritical in this urge, I never claimed to a shining example of Christianity in the first place). This guy truly epitomizes everything I despise about hard-line conservatives and Christianity. 

Now don’t get all spun up here. I don’t hate Christianity in general or Christians in particular. But I do detest hypocrisy, and I’m pretty sure the bible has something to say about hypocrites - and in fact the bible has a great deal to say about hypocrisy, and is very specific about it, and nobody in the bible condemns hypocrisy more than Jesus himself – check out Matthew Chapter 6, verse 2 for example. And again, in point of fact, the bible condemns hypocrisy a great deal more, and a great deal more specifically,  than it ever does homosexuality. Which makes me wonder why Christians such as Buchanan aren’t waging war against that, since by volume of biblical emphasis God hate hypocrites a hell of a lot more than homos.

But I digress.

I do utterly despise those so-called Christians, like the Evangelicals and members of the Traditional Roman Catholicism Movement (of which Buchanan is a vocal member), who have managed to turn their prophet’s message of peace, love, and acceptance into hate, fear, and intolerance.  These people are looking for something to hate, Christianity just gives them the excuse – providing, of course, that they engage in doublethink, i.e. specifically ignore the tenets of their belief system that specifically condemn how they think.

The following video is a compilation of clips taken from various news sources and interviews, with Buchanan expounding on why President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayer for the Supreme Court bench is blatant discrimination against white men. 

It hard to tell which minority he hates more, women or Latinos or non-English speakers. Note in particular, 1 minute and 15 seconds into the clip where Buchanan states clearly and in no uncertain terms that white men are the most persecuted minority in America today.

White men.

Yeah.

And he’s afraid that if a Latina like Sotomayer is put on the bench, this rampant discrimination will expand exponentially.

Let’s review a picture of the current Supreme Court, shall we?

 image

Of the nine Supreme Court Justices, seven are white men, one is a black man, one is a white women.  Two of them are Jews and seven of them are Christians – and five of those are Catholics.  If Sotomayer is confirmed, six of them will be Catholics – though we’ll have one less male on the Court.

Holy Hell! Hardly an old white male Christian face to be seen! Hardly a Catholic in sight!

It’s discrimination. Clearly the the court is stacked against old white Christian men.

There’s that Christian Conservative math again, seven out of nine is a minority.  I know that’s hard to wrap your head around, but it’s real similar to how the Earth is only 6,000 years old and all the animals, including dinosaurs, fit on the Ark. Doublethink, just accept it and forget that you ever had an issue with it to begin with.

See, this takes us right back to my previous post on the Conservative assertion that Liberalism is a mental illness; Buchanan epitomizes this type of conservative thinking, this Orwellian doublethink.  Up is down. Black is white. Wrong is right.  War is peace.  Hate is love. Injustice is justice.

Bah.

I guess that’s why I’m not a Christian Conservative, doublethink makes my head hurt.

I’ll tell you what is not doublethink though, the fact that Pat Buchanan is a bigoted, hypocritical asshole.


There is some additional fine commentary on this very subject by the talented and witty writer John Rogers over on Kung Fu Monkey. Please, go check it out.

12 comments:

  1. Okay. Seriously? White men are the most discriminated against group in America? Is that right.

    I don't know whether to snicker at the utter fucking stupidity of such a remark or get wrapped around the axle because there's obviously a group of people who sincerely think that's true.

    This is what kills about entitlement in this country. If someone's white, or Christian, or affluent (or a member of any other majority and/or privileged class), and they have no insight whatsoever into how society works, then they a) think they're entitled to all the goodies life has to offer because they're, you know, breathing; and b) that goodies that are given to people who are not in their "in-group" is an OBVIOUS CASE OF REVERSE DISCRIMINATION.

    Leading such an unexamined life must be a real treat.

    The thing that really kills me about the brouhaha surrounding Judge Sotomayor's selection are the allegations that she's not "intellectually rigorous" enough for the SCOTUS.

    Really?

    I guess editing the Yale Law Review and graduating Summa cum Laude were accomplishments directly related to affirmative action.

    Seriously, who thinks this way? I don't usually agree with Justice Alito (he's too conservative for my taste), but I can be intellectually honest enough to admit that the man's got it going on in the brains department.

    Doublespeak indeed.

    Thanks, Jim. Now my blood pressure's up. Asshole.

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  2. I find 1984 to continue to be one of the most relevant books written in the 20th century.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again, right-wing Christianity has very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus, and it shows. For them, whether consciously or subconsciously, their faith and the Bible is all about reinforcing personal prejudices. Doublethink for sure.

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  3. Janiece, I still have those beta blockers.

    I have a dear friend that was raised in a rather white area with financial privileges I never had as a child. Those privileges haven't been a part of his life for over 20 years and he has to struggle, just like the rest of us. He is, most of the time, a super cool dude.

    But every once in a while he says something that really comes off as "poor little white boy me" and I have to call him on it, telling him he's getting all "white man's burden" again. He is then properly chastised.

    Just shows how deeply ingrained such attitudes can be even amongst the best of people.

    Too bad Buchanan doesn't have someone he respects to tell him to cut that shit out. Then again, if someone he respected did say that to him, he'd probably cut that person from his life.

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  4. But don't you know that "rights" and "privilege" are a zero sum game? If we give the minorities those rights and privileges there's less for us whites to go around.

    And from his point of view, he's seeing his "specialness" being brought down and made "common," so in his eyes, they're taking his rights away. Which, since we're giving those rights to others, and "forcing" him to play well with others, makes him the most prosecuted minority.

    That and the brain damaged caused by the lack of oxygen in the bubbles they like to live in tends to make conservatives of his stripe paranoid.

    Beneath the spreading chestnut tree, where I sold you and you sold me.

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  5. I should add, the only time I ever seriously contemplated purchasing firearms was while watching his speech at the '92 RNC. It was right when he was saying that "we" needed to take back the country just as the 82nd Airborne took back LA during the riots, with him marching at the front.

    It had been that summer when I realized the party I supported had been hijacked by the Christian Conservatives and no longer stood for what it had believed, and that by the dramatic shift to the right the country went through with Reagan I was left of the new center. Watching his speech just confirmed I had made the right choice by switching parties and the Republicans had jumped the shark.

    Now there are people in charge of the party who make Pat look darn right moderate by comparison.

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  6. Now there are people in charge of the party who make Pat look darn right moderate by comparison.

    Paging Dick Cheney, paging Dick Cheney...

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  7. Hey now, Dick's a liberal, he's all about gay marriage (maybe they changed out his heart with the last pacemaker upgrade?)

    But, as usual Steve has a point - Compared to most of the recently departed neocon regime, Buchanan is a liberal.

    I'm not really sure what disgusts me more about that...

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  8. well the real reason Pat hates all those evil little minoritys is because... He touches himself at night

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  9. Many years ago, Pat Buchanan came into the bookstore I work at and bought a copy of his own book.

    I am not kidding.

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  10. But there were no Dinosaurs on the Ark, they died off millions of years ago. And so did the poor trilobites.

    The ark was built only 6,000 years ago. Noah, did not have to deal with dinosaurs.

    I love the way Neil Stephenson in Quicksilver made his characters come up with a scientific explanation of the ark. How many sheep do you need to feed wolves and lions and tigers for a month?

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  11. It's so awesome to hear a white, Veteran, Alaskan male actually say these words aloud and in public. Thank you for being so brave. Rev Prevo will be visiting you shortly - or your Mormon neighbors - in an effort to bring you back from the dark side.

    It takes every ounce of restraint i have to not jump on folks when they dismiss a petition for fairness with.. oh thats....

    Communism
    Liberal
    Socialism
    Affirmative Action
    _______________ (fill in the blank)


    it dismisses and redirects intelligent discussion with irrationality and irrelevancy.

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  12. Minority Report, if that ain't the damnest thing. I was just reading your blog, when you posted on here on Stonekettle Station.

    How's that for coincidence?

    Welcome aboard.

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