The Orwellian DoubleSpeak of Anti-
Everybody's talking at me
I don't hear a word they're saying
Only the echoes of my mind
People stopping, staring
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes
— Harry Nilsson
Upon the road to Damascus I encountered a Christian.
He smiled. "Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, friend?"
I smiled back. "No. I was in to all that when I was younger but have found that the societal constructs that surround that belief system don't make much sense to me."
He stopped smiling. "So you are anti-Christ?"
"No. Not anti-Christ. Just not pro-Christ, I guess."
He launched into an increasingly angry monologue. Highlights of this polemic were a few simple concepts. If I wasn't pro-Christianity then I was, by his definition, against it. By refusing to see and capitulate to his faith, I was his enemy. By not joining him in his beliefs, I was actively denying them.
I decided to walk on, his taunts and rage following me for a half mile before he got tired of yelling.
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Upon the road to Starbucks along Clark Street in Chicago I encountered a Cubs fan.
He smiled. "How about them Cubbies, huh?"
"I smiled back. "I don't really follow sports. Not my thing."
"So you hate the Cubs? Why do you hate the Cubs? Are you one of those fair-weather fans or what? Motherfucker!" He spit on me as he stormed off.
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Upon the road to Circa on Fremont Street in Las Vegas I encountered a transgender woman.
She smiled. I smiled and continued walking.
"What? Are you fucking transphobic or what? What's your fucking problem?
I turned. "I don't know what you're getting pissed about. All I did was smile."
"But I could tell. You're transphobic, right?"
"No. Not transphobic."
"You didn't even ask for my pronouns!"
"Oh. I don't really care what your pronouns are because I don't know you. It seems you assume I'll be talking about you to someone. Otherwise, your pronouns are irrelevant to me."
"TRANSPHOBE!" she screamed and pointed. She collapsed on the cement walkway. "I can't take the micro aggressions!"
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The further into the tribal mindset we submerge ourselves into in America, the less likely we are able to communicate effectively.
I recall, years ago, as I was directing the very popular series of DADA Soirées in Chicago, realizing that the nonsense poetry and onstage chaos required a certain set of rules the DADAists needed to grasp onto lest the shows become a bunch of poorly improvised faux-German moments.
Each DADAist performed nonsense poems but I directed them to have each poem mean something that they are trying to communicate to the audience but the audience doesn't understand the language and thus cannot receive the meaning. It made the characters of the DADAists frustrated and angry and made the show increasingly confrontational.
We're now entering the DADAist stage of American dysfunction as we are all desperately trying to communicate ideas to others who simply aren't using the same language. It sounds the same but meanings are changing and it fuels more frustration and anger and results in an almost non-stop confrontation.
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Ricky Gervais, on a radio talkshow, makes a point that racism is horrible but, in his opinion, it is the intent that makes it racist rather than the reception. "That's why," he added,"wearing blackface is racist but wearing a mud mask is not."
The caller rejects this and claims that Gervais is practicing white supremacy. He continues to tell Gervais that racism and white supremacy are the same thing which Ricky disputes. They talk over each other until one of the hosts get frustrated and dismisses the caller as being completely full of shit.
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As used in 1984, doublethink is the ability to hold two completely contradictory thoughts simultaneously while believing both of them to be true. In Orwell's book, doublethink was critical to the success of the Party as it supported the state-imposed practice of language control, or newspeak.
Our new version of doublethink proliferates itself as different tribes redefine ideas and intentionally confuse communication.
How bizarre that when cops kill people, we blame cops but when 108 people are shot in Chicago over the July 4th weekend, we blame the guns. Which is it? The doublethink holds that both are true with no explanation. It's either guns or the people or perhaps a far more complicated cocktail of reasons that include cops, criminals, poverty, and the proliferation of guns but, fuck, isn't that too many problems to solve so let's simplify it down to cops and guns are bad, criminals have excuses, and what the fuck does this all mean?
How malfunctioning is it that for half the U.S. population cancel culture means holding the powerful accountable but for the other half it means online bullying to punish people for stupid things they did or said 20 years ago. For every Weinstein there is a Franken, for every Louis C.K. there is a James Gunn.
"Equality" is now "equity" but only for 50% of the country. For a tiny but increasingly vocal bunch the term "mother" has been replaced with "birthing person". "Riots" are "protests" or "rebellions" unless you are on the other side of the issue. Blacks who marched on the Capitol with the predominantly white mob are now considered to be suffering from "multicultural whiteness."
Even Orwell would've had a hard time imagining this bullshit.
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We are not speaking the same language between tribes these days. There has to be common understanding of usable terms and insisting upon preferred definitions only makes it more difficult to communicate. No communication, no unity of purpose. No unity of purpose, no society.
For me, given my completely unexceptional position in society, I will go with the definitions I prefer and do my best to be respectful of the lunacy of others.
No matter what you call elbow pasta with cheese sauce, it's still Mac n Cheese. And bullshit is bullshit even if you want to have it identify as stroganoff.
