“I tell you, America, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. … That is the fact that you have got to relearn, America. It needs an act of self-destruction …”
Many readers will recognize these words, lifted from the scene in George Orwell’s novel 1984 in which O’Brien, a government enforcer, tortures Winston Smith. (I have substituted “America” for “Winston.”) O’Brien holds up four fingers and asks Winston, who is strapped to a table, how many fingers he sees. When Winston answers “four,” he is zapped with electrical pain. Its intensity is increased again and again until he desperately answers “five.” Then, it is increased further, for O’Brien knows Winston still believes there are four fingers and is saying “five” only because he thinks that’s what his tormentor wants to hear.
Pain and confusion are finally brought to an end only after they have been dialed up so far that Winston genuinely does not know how many fingers are in front of his eyes, and answers, honestly, that he does not know. The torture is not intended to get Winston to say one specific number or another. Its point is to make him mistrust the evidence before him, relinquish his judgment, make no effort to come to an individual conclusion, and merely accept what the government tells him is so.
That is where tyranny can succeed most securely, the point at which subjugated people give up judging for themselves and parrot what the central power tells them.
Why this scene comes to mind just now, I cannot say for sure. Perhaps it is connected to recent news stories reporting that Rachel Levine, who for five decades was Richard Levine, had been appointed “the first female four-star officer” of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. But, since we are all asked to accept such nonsense almost daily, Orwell’s prescient fiction and deep understanding of totalitarianism would be apt at any time. The author is, indeed, frequently cited.
We seem to have crossed a threshold, and the Left doesn’t bother trying any longer to be credible. As with O’Brien holding up four fingers and punishing Winston Smith for saying “four,” the intention is now surely to force people to accept and affirm what everyone knows is untrue. That can be achieved only if the falsehoods are obvious. If there is any remnant of ambiguity or doubt, there is still a loophole for individual conscience and judgment.
When falsehood is the blithe and brazen currency of government, men can be women, all white people are racists, darker-skinned people are perpetually and irrevocably infantilized and in need of compensatory equity, unlimited government spending costs nothing and reduces inflation, Republicans are a greater danger to democracy than Democrats are, the border is not open, and rudeness in politics started after Joe Biden became president.
Now, what was that about self-destruction?
