Foreword "A Condition of Political Thought"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Doublethink also lies behind the names of the
superministries which run things in Oceania--the
Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth
tells lies, the Ministry of Locve tortures and
eventually kills anybody whom it deems a threat.  If
this seems unreasonably perverse, recall that in the
present-day United States, few have any problem with a
war-making apparatus named 'the Department of
Defense,' any more than we have saying 'Department of
Justice' with a straight face, despite well-documented
abuses of human and constitutional rights by its most
formidable arm, the F.B.I.  Our nominally free news
media are required to present 'balanced' coverage, in
which every 'truth' is imediately neutered by an equal
and opposite one.  Every day public opinion is the
target of rewritten history, official amnesia and
outright lying, all of which is benevolently termed
'spin,' as if it were no more harmful than a ride on a
merry-go-round.  We know better than what they tell
us, yet hope otherwise.   We believe and doubt at the
same time--it seems a condition of political thought
in a modern superstate to be permanently of at least
two minds on most issues.  Needless to say, this is of
inestimable use to those in power who wish to reamin
there, preferably forever."  ("Foreword," pp.
xii-xiii)

Again, cf. ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up" (1936)

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability
to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same
time, and still retain the ability to function. One
should, for example, be able to see that things are
hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

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