Election Murk

There is no better time than election time to study the human shadow.

When we point our finger at another and accuse them of doing what we ourselves are doing right at that very moment, we are talking straight out of our shadow.

As in, "Barack Obama will say whatever he needs to to get elected." --John McCain

Accusing others of doing what we are actually doing ourselves--the best offense is a good defense--is now so pervasive, elections in this country have gotten so unreal, so much stranger than fiction, that we might as well quote George Orwell:

"...Newspeak words have two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts... it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink...

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party member knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt...

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 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. "

--from 1984, by George Orwell