1984 came a little late this year. Happy NewYearThink.

My favorite — and I say proven — conspiracy theory is that Bush et al. did not mind one bit that FEMA was a failure and let countless people die or suffer needlessly. Bush et al. want every government program to be a failure. That way, private companies can take over and reap billions off a shrinking government bureaucracy. I refer you to my piece from last April, “Dead By Sunset: Kill it, and make it look like an accident.”

Think about it. Think about everything in the government that’s failing and the privatization process that’s seeping in.
They succeed by failing.

We check their falling poll numbers.

But they’re several steps ahead of us.

They’re checking their fattening wallets.

bellyfeel – Full emotional understanding. Blind, enthusiastic acceptance of a concept.

blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever “truth” the party puts out, no matter how absurd it may be. Orwell described it as “…loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”

crimestop – Orwell’s definition: “The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short….protective stupidity.”

crimethink – To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime. “Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death…. The essential crime that contains all others in itself.”

crimethinker – One who engages in crimethink.

dayorder – Order of the day. The “Order of the Day” was a real-life propaganda technique used by America during WWII.

Disputed Territories – These are areas of the world NOT permanently included in any of the Superstates : The quadrilateral between Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong; Equatorial Africa; Middle East; Southern India; and the Indonesian Archipelago. These area are always occupied by one of the three superstates, but are constantly changing hands. The borders of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and the northern shore of the Mediterranean; The islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania or by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is never stable; round the pole all three powers lay claim to enormous territories.

doublethink – Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An excellent example of doublethink in modern society is the war on drugs. If you ask people their opinion on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, most people would agree that it was a complete failure. People agree that it only caused more crime, it made gangsters rich, it corrupted politicians, and most importantly … it didn’t keep people from drinking.

Yet, we have almost the exact same situation today with war on drugs, yet most people think that our modern prohibition is a good idea … and more than that, they believe that anybody that thinks that the war on drugs isn’t a good idea must be completely out of their minds. In order for a person to be effective at doublethink, they must master the art of crimestop.

Here is how Winston Smith described doublethink in the novel:

    “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.’

goodthinker – One who strongly adheres to all of the principles of Newspeak. (goodthinked, goodthink, goodthinked, goodthinking, goodthinkful, goodthinking, goodthinkful, goodthinkwise, goodthinker )

malreported – When the Times reports a fact which the government later deemed untrue. You see, the government is never “wrong”, the paper merely reported the facts incorrectly. This term was often used in describing newspaper articles that contained references to unpersons, unfulfilled economic projections, or altered government policies.

malquoted – see malreported

memory hole – A system of pipes, similar to pneumatic tubes, which were used to destroy documents. A document stuffed in the memory hole would be conveniently whisked away to the furnaces below – quickly & easily wiped from history.

Miniluv – Ministry of Love (law and order). “The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons… One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.”

Minipax – Ministry of Peace (war)

Miniplenty – Ministry of Plenty (rationing). The Ministry of Plenty controlled the entire economy.

Minitrue – Ministry of Truth (propaganda) – Department of the government in charge of all record keeping, history re-writing, and prolefeed “It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 meters into the air. The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided.”

misprints – see malreported

Newspeak – The official language of Oceania. Newspeak is “politically correct” speech taken to its maximum extent. Newspeak is based on standard English, but all words describing “unorthodox” political ideas have been removed. In addition, there was an attempt to remove the overall number of words in general, to limit the range of ideas that could be expressed.

The most important aim of newspeak was to provide a means of speaking that required no thought what-so-ever. It uses abbreviations or clipped conjunctions in order to mask or alter a word’s true meaning. For example, words such as Miniluv and joycamp, allow the speaker to speak without actually being force to think about what they were talking about.. or at least, not as much as if they were required to use complete phrases such as “Ministry of Love” or “Forced Labor Camp”. These words just roll right off the lips before the speaker can even contemplate what he is really saying.

Reducing the number of words also removes any literary value to writing, because there would only be one distinct way to present any particular concept. It would be impossible to write a book like Common Sense , Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or even 1984 in Newspeak. Not only would the correct words for certain concepts not be available, but a lack of adjectives would cause the writing would be completely bland and unemotional, which in itself would keep people from reading at all.

oldthink – Holding on to old ideas and patterns of thought not consistent with current government policy (Ingsoc). Maintaining a belief that is no longer acceptable, but was normal just a few years prior.

ownlife – Individualism and eccentricity. A desire to do something for your own benefit. (i.e. hobbies, ownership of property, love, or any other Thoughtcrime)

Pornosec – Department of Minitrue. Produces the “lowest-kind” of pornography for the proles. In the Novel, it is described as a “sub-section of the Fiction Department which turned out cheap pornography for distribution among the proles. It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who worked in it”. They “produced booklets in sealed packets with titles like Spanking Stories or One Night in a Girls’ School, to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal.

prole – Proletarians. Approximately 85% of Oceania’s population are in this class. Members of the party viewed them as animals. They are not as rigidly observed as members of the party, and very few (if any) have telescreens in their home. They are permitted to indulge in pornography, prostitution, and other acts considered thoughtcrime, simply because it would be impossible to observe all of them as rigidly as the party observes its own members. Plus, allowing them to indulge in these “little joys” helps to keep the masses content.

prolefeed – Rubishy “Entertainment” and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses. This includes written literature, movies, porn, music, and other various propaganda created for the proles. (For a modern example of prolefeed, just turn on your television or radio. With the exception of some scientific programming, everything else is prolefeed.)

Thinkpol – ThoughtPolice. Police force in charge of eliminating crimethink. The thought police monitor the public by way of spies (narcs), helicopters, and telescreens.

two minute hate – Daily telescreen specials in which various elements of crimethink were packaged into a parade of horrible images and sounds, at which, the viewers were expected to boo, hiss, curse. and release any negative emotions upon.

unperson – Person that has been erased from existence by the government for breaking the law in some way. A unperson is completely erased from history. All records of their existence is removed from record, and all party members are expected to removed them from memory. To mention their name is considered thoughtcrime. This eliminates any possibility of martyrdom.

upsub – Get authorization from superiors (Submit to “Higher-ups” for approval)

vaporized – The act of being executed by the state, and having all records of your existence erased. Becoming an unperson.

versificator – A writing machine. A mechanical device that produced “literature” and “music” for the masses. This was necessary so that a party member would not be forced to cloud their mind with such frivolous concepts. It produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and even sentimental songs.