****************************
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.
― George Orwell, 1984
***************************
Two plus two still adds up to four.
But just barely.
There is ample evidence that there are some out there right now who are most likely thinking, “Why shouldn’t 2 plus 2 equal 5? If our great leader say that it is 5 and I feel that it is 5, who has the right to tell me that I am wrong?”
Based on what I have seen over the past four nights from DC, the world of George Orwell‘s 1984 is just a little too close for comfort.
There is already the embrace of its concept of Doublethink. That’s where one holds two contradictory beliefs to be true at the same time. For example, there are people out there who believe that it was our government who actually flew the planes into the World Trade Center in 2001. Or they might also believe that the current pandemic is the result of a huge Deep State conspiracy.
These same people believe at the same time that this same government, one that is capable of a huge, complicated conspiracy that would require the silence and complicity of literally thousands of accomplices, is totally inept, too stupid and flawed, to do anything well.
We have become people who believe what they hear so long as it doesn’t involve critical thinking and aligns with what they want to believe. But because there is no critical thinking, most don’t even truly know what they want to believe.
They wait for The Word from some elevated other to tell them that.
The Word shall be whatever strokes their egos and stokes their fears.
It is a scary time, one that is not normal in any sense of the word, and we are rapidly descending down a very slippery slope right now. Who knows where we will be when this plummet ends?
Or if it will end.
As Orwell asks: For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
Use your mind. Think critically. Speak out. When they say 2 plus 2 is 5, tell them they are wrong. Our world is depending on it at this moment.
Redtree Times 