The Doom Loop of the Commissariat

don't think of an elephant

Twenty years ago, the progressive linguistics professor George Lakoff wrote a book that became a thing on the left for a while: Don’t Think of an Elephant. Language triggers neural pathways that shape perception, Lakoff argued, and progressives risked adopting a right-wing framework, even while trying to argue from the left, if they didn’t learn to speak carefully. A disciplined political activist learns, for example, not to console a friend after a miscarriage by saying, “I’m sorry you lost the baby.” That’s far-right framing, Lakoff said, an accidental acceptance of regressive politics that advances an anti-abortion political framework in the course of attempting to make a personal statement. Good cadre learn to say, “I am sorry that your fetus became non-viable.” Shame about that clump of cells, friend. If you’re pro-abortion but say in social settings that women get pregnant and carry “babies,” you’re undermining your ideology.

However silly Lakoff’s argument was in practical terms, it was rooted in a useful observation about unconscious and automatic thought processes. The title made the point: When someone tells you, “Don’t think of an elephant,” the image of an elephant appears in your head. An attempt to say don’t think about this makes you think about it.

The contemporary American political left, having no remaining purpose but the performance of language policing and joyless scolding from the smoldering remains of the places and institutions they’ve turned to shit, does this constantly. And it…makes people think of an elephant. The scolding is a structural trap. A transgender dude just shot a bunch of children at a church in Minneapolis, and the reliably insipid Mayor Jacob Frey….

….held a press conference to warn people that DON’T YOU DARE talk about the fact that the shooter was transgender, which is villainizing trans people. Transgender shooter transgender shooter transgender shooter. Don’t think about that! It’s not appropriate for you to think about the thing that I am telling you to keep out of your mind.

Screenshot, with captioning:

Stop talking about the transgender shooter, which is being a hater, and just focus on the kids. The obvious rejoinder being that a discussion about the person who shot the children literally is about the children, but whatever. No one goes looking for logic from Jacob Frey. The point is that a stern lecture on what you may not think or say makes you immediately and persistently think about the thing that the commissar is demanding you eject from your mind.

This structural trap is appearing everywhere:

1. “[X] is not an appropriate thing to think or say or notice,”

2. Which makes everyone notice the hell out of [X].

I TOLD YOU TO STOP THINKING ABOUT THE THING THAT I JUST TALKED ABOUT RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU FOR SEVERAL MINUTES.

The Daily Beast:

First paragraphs:

MAGA has seized on reports that the 23-year-old who opened fire on children as they prayed inside a Minneapolis Catholic school is transgender.

FBI Director Kash Patel identified Robin Westman as the murderer who gunned down two children—aged 8 and 10—before committing suicide in the parking lot behind the Annunciation Catholic School.

Right-wing influencers were quick to assert that Westman’s motive to kill stemmed from being trans. Police described Westman as a “man.” Records show that a petition was filed in 2020 to change Westman’s first name from Robert to Robin.

It is very inappropriate to seize on the entirely real thing that we have just described to you in detail. Stop seizing on [extensive details follow].

The institutional left in media, academia, and politics does this all day, every day. Intellectual Wile E. Coyote, it constantly cuts off the tree limb it happens to be sitting on. An MD-bureaucrat resigned from a senior position at the CDC yesterday, blasting HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for being opposed to science. You can read that hilariously self-refuting letter here, and keep your own count of the number of times dorkface saws off his own branch and falls off the tree. I lack the patience to parse a whole turd, but read it for yourself and see how many times you laugh out loud.

A commissariat signals reality by its acts of prohibition. Don’t you dare say the five-year economic plan didn’t work! It is forbidden to discuss the absence of fresh food in the markets!

It gradually and inexorably loses every argument that it has no ability to make, and does so in the course of trying to prevent argument. Anything Jacob Frey tells you not to criticize is already dying. He’s unwittingly the assistant executioner.