And the useful GOP idiots all sing along:
The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. . . . He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions — 'the Party says the Earth is flat', 'the Party says that ice is heavier than water' — and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them.
. . .
Crimestop means 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. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.
People who'd rather not live in an Orwellian novel should not vote Republican.
On Thursday morning, in what was meant to be the powerful culminating moment of the hearings, [Dr. Fiona] Hill gave a searing statement to Republican members of the panel about the big lie behind Trump’s demand that Ukraine investigate its own alleged intervention in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, an obsession of the President’s because he hoped to disprove the massive Russian interference on his behalf in that campaign. Trump and his defenders, she made clear, are simply trafficking in Russian-fuelled conspiracy theories. It is a “fictional narrative,” Hill told the committee calmly and authoritatively, a hoax “perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.” What’s more, Russia’s sweeping effort has been confirmed by the U.S. intelligence community, as well as by Congress and the very Intelligence Committee holding the hearing. “The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016,” Hill, who served as Trump’s top National Security Council expert on Russia until she announced her resignation, in July, said. “It is beyond dispute.”
Republicans, though, chose to dispute it. They had accepted this fact in the past, but now it was politically inconvenient for the President. Trump did not want to believe it, and so Republicans wouldn’t, either. If anyone thought that Hill’s stirring insistence on the facts would have any effect, that notion was quickly dispelled. By 11:23 a.m., the Trump campaign had sent out a “rapid response” to its e-mail list, with the subject heading “Ukrainian election interference.” It was a two-sentence missive, introducing a new conspiracy linking the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Adam Schiff, to the one that Hill had just so eloquently debunked. “There’s a simple reason Adam Schiff wants to deny Ukraine interfered in U.S. politics,” the e-mail said. “He was willing to collude with them.”
For hours afterward, Republicans on the panel dismissed Hill. Some of them yelled at her. Some of them refused to ask her any direct questions. Some made false equivalences between Russia’s massive state-sanctioned campaign in 2016 and Ukrainian expressions of dismay that Trump publicly backed the country with which they are at war and employed as his campaign chair a man who had worked for their ousted corrupt, Russian-backed leader. Confronted after the hearing with Hill’s unequivocal statement that Ukraine had not interfered in the U.S. election, the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, a man who once mocked Trump for being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, simply refused to accept it. “I think they did,” he told reporters. On Friday morning, Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and repeated the Russian conspiracy theory about Ukraine all over again on live TV.
The denial was telling. If Republicans were now willing to disavow a fact they had previously acknowledged, it seemed more and more apparent that they could not be swayed by any of the actual evidence against Trump. On Wednesday, Sondland told the committee that Trump had personally directed him to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to force Ukraine’s hand on the investigations, leveraging a White House meeting sought by Ukraine’s new President. “Was there a quid pro quo?” Sondland testified. “The answer is yes.” But many committee Republicans simply twisted that statement around, repeating Trump’s misleading words to Sondland that there had been “no quid pro,” as if the President’s denial were the only proof needed of his innocence. As Thursday’s hearing wound down, Will Hurd, a retiring Texas representative who was once seen as a possible Republican vote for impeachment, used his questioning time not to engage with Hill but to announce that he saw “no evidence” of impeachable offenses. There was no one left to persuade, at least in the House of Representatives. It was a surprisingly definitive moment.
Needless to say, Putin is quite pleased:Republicans, though, chose to dispute it. They had accepted this fact in the past, but now it was politically inconvenient for the President. Trump did not want to believe it, and so Republicans wouldn’t, either. If anyone thought that Hill’s stirring insistence on the facts would have any effect, that notion was quickly dispelled. By 11:23 a.m., the Trump campaign had sent out a “rapid response” to its e-mail list, with the subject heading “Ukrainian election interference.” It was a two-sentence missive, introducing a new conspiracy linking the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Adam Schiff, to the one that Hill had just so eloquently debunked. “There’s a simple reason Adam Schiff wants to deny Ukraine interfered in U.S. politics,” the e-mail said. “He was willing to collude with them.”
For hours afterward, Republicans on the panel dismissed Hill. Some of them yelled at her. Some of them refused to ask her any direct questions. Some made false equivalences between Russia’s massive state-sanctioned campaign in 2016 and Ukrainian expressions of dismay that Trump publicly backed the country with which they are at war and employed as his campaign chair a man who had worked for their ousted corrupt, Russian-backed leader. Confronted after the hearing with Hill’s unequivocal statement that Ukraine had not interfered in the U.S. election, the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, a man who once mocked Trump for being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, simply refused to accept it. “I think they did,” he told reporters. On Friday morning, Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and repeated the Russian conspiracy theory about Ukraine all over again on live TV.
The denial was telling. If Republicans were now willing to disavow a fact they had previously acknowledged, it seemed more and more apparent that they could not be swayed by any of the actual evidence against Trump. On Wednesday, Sondland told the committee that Trump had personally directed him to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to force Ukraine’s hand on the investigations, leveraging a White House meeting sought by Ukraine’s new President. “Was there a quid pro quo?” Sondland testified. “The answer is yes.” But many committee Republicans simply twisted that statement around, repeating Trump’s misleading words to Sondland that there had been “no quid pro,” as if the President’s denial were the only proof needed of his innocence. As Thursday’s hearing wound down, Will Hurd, a retiring Texas representative who was once seen as a possible Republican vote for impeachment, used his questioning time not to engage with Hill but to announce that he saw “no evidence” of impeachable offenses. There was no one left to persuade, at least in the House of Representatives. It was a surprisingly definitive moment.
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin says he’s pleased that the “political battles” in Washington have put on the back-burner accusations that Russia interfered in U.S. elections.
“Thank God,” he told an economic forum in the Russian capital on Wednesday, “no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine.”
George Orwell explained this Republican way of thinking in his dystopic novel 1984:“Thank God,” he told an economic forum in the Russian capital on Wednesday, “no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine.”
The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. . . . He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions — 'the Party says the Earth is flat', 'the Party says that ice is heavier than water' — and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them.
. . .
