Affirming Democracy, Gathering Resistance

The so-called “double-tap” – a terribly sanitizing word – attack on two stranded Venezuelans in the Caribbean continues to be front and center in the news, and now some members of Congress have had access to video of the attack. Sadly, the reactions have broken down over partisan lines, raising the specter that Republicans will yet again quash the Administration’s accountability for murderous actions.

There is much that is unknown as well as new details emerging: the two men did not appear to be radioing for “back up,” which had been claimed as justification at one point; it is possible that a JAG officer signed off on the second attack; and that attack took place over a half-hour after the initial attack, during which time the men struggled to flip the boat. That the boat remained afloat appears to have been used as the rationale for the second attack:

Ultimately, [Admiral] Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.

This to be sure an absurd bit of reasoning, but it is of a piece with the arguments made by Republican lawmakers on this matter. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) had these things to say:

• I “saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight.”
• “Just like you would blow up a boat off of the Somali coast or the Yemeni coast, and you’d come back and strike it again if it still had terrorists and it still had explosives or missiles, Admiral Bradley and Secretary Hegseth did exactly what we’d expect them to do.”

Welcome to the Oceania of George Orwell’s 1984.

Orwell’s great work famously introduces two ideas that have become part of our vocabulary but that are not always understood as he intended them: Newspeak and doublethink. They are perfectly applicable to this situation.

Newspeak’s purpose “was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. . . . Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.”

Doublethink, a Newspeak term, “means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual 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. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.” [Emphasis added.]

The overarching context of Bradley’s and Cotton’s remarks is the promulgation of the idea that we are “at war” with . . . well, with whom, exactly? “Narcoterrorists” in some form or another, supposedly, but not in any clearly identifiable form, and not people who are staging armed landings on the shores of the US with the intention of terrorizing Americans, since such terrorism could only serve to undermine their drug market.

The doublethink here works this way: (1) I know this is not really a war and that we are not in a combat situation; (2) But, I am going to use the word “war” to describe it, because I know that is what I am supposed to say to support My Leader; (3) The more firmly I commit myself to this formulation, the more I come to know that I am speaking truth. What I know to be absurd becomes acceptable.

The doublethink extends to the particular situation, in which two men trying to survive are transformed into combatants who pose an immediate threat, like a terrorist with a missile. 

As many have pointed out, if this is our newspeak, we are opening the door to all kinds of repressions and oppressions in the name of “wars” in which due process, evidence, justification, and transparency are supposedly inapplicable.

None of this is meant to diminish the dangers of illicit drugs flowing into the U.S. or the grave extent of our drug addiction problems. These are problems we must deal with more effectively. It does suggest, though, that the Hegseths, Bradleys and Cottons are not so much intent on dealing with that problem as they are – like Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four – intent on using “war” to promote Big Brother.