The problem with the religious right’s takeover of the Republican Party is that their strategy is to turn "belief" into fact. In Orwell’s 1984, when leaders got to make untruths truth, they called it DOUBLETHINK. It is pure and simple mind control. It is the most powerful totalitarian tool of a demagogue. It is what we are confronting in McCain Palin ticket.
A perfect example of Mccain’s DOUBLETHINK is his declaring that life definitively begins at conception:
WARREN: What point is a baby entitled to human rights?
MCCAIN: At the moment of conception.
When exactly "life" begins can not be known except as a theological belief, a perfectly acceptable belief that many American’s hold including Biden. But McCain doesn’t say "I believe" or "I think" -- he states it as fact, not as his personal conviction, but as proven, unequivocal fact. This is DOUBLTHINK.
Not surprisingly, McCain immediately follows up with a promise to rule based on this new "fact":
MCCAIN: I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate. And as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president. And this presidency will have pro-life policies. That’s my commitment. That’s my commitment to you."
In one fell swoop, belief turned to fact turned to law turned to TOTALITARNIANSIM.
Take a look at the definition of DOUBLTHINK found in 1984:
"The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has 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. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But 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 is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
– Part II, chapter IX - chapter I of Goldstein's book
Now consider another vivid example: the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Yesterday I revisited this $30 million dollar fantasyland designed to scientifically prove to children and their parents that the world is 6,000 years old. All that money and 30 thousand square feet professionally designed to the highest standards to turn "belief" into "fact."
While I have gone several times before to bear witness to religious fanaticism, this visit was my first in the context of the Palin appointment. Through that lens, knowing that this is what she intends to eventually bring into the classroom, this multi-media, high-tech indoor theme park (sans rides) became the clearest example of DOUBLETHINK available today.
First of all, understand, this museum attracts over 400,000 tourists a year. On a Tuesday morning at 10:00 there were at least 400 visitors there, of all ages and from around the world. These weren’t interested skeptics; they were clearly "believers" eagerly taking in all the diabolical deception, hook line and sinker.
The museum’s message is very simple: world created in 7 days, world 6,000 years old, Jesus Christ is our Savior and if you don’t’ accept him you will burn in hell. A simple message, or should I say, belief, but one linked to a sophisticated and complicated mind-control strategy designed to turn theory into absolute truth.
Rather than one or two sources of proof, they present hundreds: room after room of saying the same thing but just from a slightly different angle, all to overwhelm the visitor and wash his brain clean. The more ways they can tell it, the truer it becomes. The underlying message is that there is so much proof, it must be true and you’d be an idiot, a "damned idiot" to believe otherwise. They cover every possible argument against evolution and in favor of creationism using advanced tools of indoctrination: movies, animatronic life-size characters, planetarium, hands on exhibits, scientific testimonials, scare tactics, special effects, books, books and more books, guest speakers with scientific credentials (like the PHd Nuclear Geneticist from Ohio State that was lecturing there yesterday), etc. They make it very clear that the only source of authority you can trust is the bible – not your teachers, not your parents, not your government.
And this is what Sarah Palin would like to see as part of our public school system. She is being given a pass on this one simply because she decided to postpone her creationist ambition during her first two years as Governor since it was politically expedient to do so. Right now if McCain wins, let’s be real about it, we are heading to a President Palin by 2012, if not before. Sooner than later, imposing creationism into our public schools will become just part of the plan. If you consider how the Republicans are drinking her Kool-Aid now, do not underestimate what she will be able to serve up to them in just a few years.
Understand why it is so important to Palin and her ilk to convince you that creationism is real. They clearly state that by proving that Genesis is the literal word of god and the true history of mankind, they can then officially declare that the rest of the bible is true too. And the bible now becomes the new DOUBLETHINK dictionary for ruling our land. Many hard-right evangelicals already believe that the Bible trumps the constitution as the ultimate source for civil authority. With Palin as president, consider what our nation will look like if this "belief" becomes "fact" to understand just how dangerous a road we are now on.
First the Book of Genesis, then the Book of Revelation with all it’s end-times theology and you can kiss our foreign policy good bye. We are actually so much closer to this distorted reality than you might think. For a topline insight, consider an excerpt from a diary I posted yesterday:
How in America, one must ask, could a presidential candidate choose to keep as one of his closest foreign policy advisors, Senator Joseph Lieberman, a man who for the second year in a row referred to end-time theo-con, Pastor John Hagee as Moses while speaking to thousands of Hagee’s disciples at the Christians United for Israel annual lobbying event in Washington DC, the same John Hagee who in his bestselling 2006 book, Jerusalem Countdown, wrote:
"Just before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran, followed by the final battle: the battle of Armageddon . . . . The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad. The best is yet to be."
I urge you to take a look at the full diary. I originally labeled it Nader: Not on My Watch, and got comments that it was a very important piece but that my title didn’t do it justice. I just changed it to HOW TO STOP MCCAIN PALIN NOW, and I hope that helps it get broader exposure. It will give you a sense of how the McCain / Palin fundamentalist and uber-patriotic rhetoric is reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Even though Hitler did not use religion to rally his minions, he used the same fear and propaganda tools to expound his exclusivist vision where his Aryan theories were solidified into facts on the ground.
I am scared that we are approaching a perfect storm: religious fundamentalism plus severe economic downturn plus corporatocracy. It is on this dangerous three-legged stool that our future rests. The good news is that there are enough rational-minded good people around to knock out that first leg of religious fanaticism, if they were just to speak out. The bad news is, for whatever reasons, the media is not following this close enough and all those many "good people," including all my moderate-Republican friends who supposedly deplore the religious right, are deafeningly quite on the subject. A little economic insecurity and a whole lot of greed goes a long way towards allowing the unthinkable to take root. We need to find a way to wake these folks up – before it’s too late! If not now, when? If not us, who?