WAR IS PEACE or WHO IS READING 1984 TO TRUMP AT BEDTIME?

I saw a brilliant segment on Democracy Now! yesterday – Scahill & Greenwald: What If All Victims of War Received the Media Attention of Manchester Victims? Today DN! posted a related article by Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan – Let the Media Coverage of Manchester Victims Be a Model for All Young Victims of War. Both pieces point to the disturbing way our media disappears the fundamental role of US intervention in wars around the world. Watching trump visiting the Pope, days after sealing a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, had me once again thinking about how this administration deploys the Nineteen Eighty-Four concept of DOUBLETHINK, on a grand scale, and on an international stage.

Been a while since you last read Nineteen Eighty-Four? Now would be a good time.

DOUBLETHINK 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. 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 it back 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. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. 

Upon leaving the Vatican trump tweeted:

Honor of a lifetime to meet His Holiness Pope Francis. I leave the Vatican more determined than ever to pursue PEACE in our world.

trump presented the Pope with a set of Martin Luther King’s writings. Cause, you know, this Jesuit Pope needs to bone up on the evils of militarism, capitalism, and racism. Actually, it’s more likely just a cynical reference to the Pope’s 2015 address to the United States Congress: 

Here too I think of the march which Martin Luther King led from Selma to Montgomery fifty years ago as part of the campaign to fulfill his “dream” of full civil and political rights for African Americans. That dream continues to inspire us all. I am happy that America continues to be, for many, a land of “dreams”. Dreams which lead to action, to participation, to commitment. Dreams which awaken what is deepest and truest in the life of a people.

And here is the Pope so eloquently sticking it to all the war profiteers in Congress during that same address:

Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world. Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.

The Pope presented trump with a copy of his 2017 World Day of Peace message on nonviolence, commenting “I signed it personally for you.”

I was pretty amazed when the Pope got to come to the US Congress and talk shit about America’s #1 export – WAR. Seems like the Vatican had no choice but to allow trump the same courtesy. Sticking it to the Pope like only a snake oil salesman can. Just look at that smile!

“That was a tremendous day. Tremendous investments in the United States. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs.” WAR IS PEACE.