Snowden Leak: The NSA Has Been Monitoring Phone Calls of 35 World Leaders

[Maedhros]

78. Even more, to be Good Americans we must believe exactly what we're told

AND THEN, when told the exact opposite, we are to fully believe that as well, until it's necessary to revert back to our previous believe upon further instruction.

Obligatory excerpts from 1984:

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.

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... 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 as 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.

For example widespread warrantless surveillance was unconscionably bad under Bush, but is now vital to our security under Obama. In a few years, it will once again become unconscionably bad when a Republican is elected to the White House.

Just like the ACA was a great idea to Conservatives when the Heritage Foundation dreamed it up and Romney supported it in Massachusetts, but is now teh Soshalisms since Obama signed it into law.