In 1984, Doublethink was the ability to know what should be said while carefully circumventing the truth with cleverly constructed lies.
Yesterday, Sam Crawford led a discussion of zoning changes in rural areas in anticipation of completing work to, after almost two decades, bring Whatcom County into compliance with the Growth Management Act as ordered by a state judicial board after much of its rural zoning was deemed urban sprawl.
Listening to this discussion was strange and a little shocking. You'd think one would be a bit more circumspect when basically undertaking to re-gerrymander the zoning map to avoid compliance with the law.
But in fact, Crawford and his clients, and their attorneys, had given the left-overs at the Planning Department orders (and a rationale) for rural zoning that would not sacrifice the old carve outs for friends and clients.
Sitting there, as slide after slide illustrated rural areas around the county, I couldn't help but wonder how many of Crawford's clients had interests, ownership or options, in land in one or another of these areas.
And it was particularly amusing when old Sam indulged in some very transparent theatrics, pounding the dais and pronouncing, "I wasn't elected to downzone my constituents, I'm here to protect their property rights." Right on Sam! High fives all 'round.
Were there qualms about supporting state laws or ignoring oaths to do the same? No, for Crawford and company, the whole exercise was a search for any loophole, or any, even the thinnest, excuse to ignore the broad purpose of the laws to regulate growth; find cover of any color-able exception, and search for the least obnoxious, though uncompelling, interpretation of rulings in other counties.
Time and space do not allow a complete account of this absurd side-show. My favorite moment, though, was when Sam, Barbara Brenner and Bill Knutzen seized on an idea to get around the law's requirement that zoning preserve rural character.
After honestly designating resource lands, GMA only mandated two things. First, protect those designated resource lands, and second, preserve the rural character of our state's rural counties.
In Whatcom county in the early '90s, however, this process entailed creating commissions of landowners, insiders, and others keen on profiting from prospective regulations, most of whom were entirely self-interested. The result was huge amounts of resource lands zoned rural, and even more blatantly abusing the intent of the Act, some resource lands were even designated for more intense suburban development where no rationale in the law existed.
The upshot, large amounts of forest and agricultural lands were zoned rural for special interests. And to further add injury to this insult to intelligence, most of these newly ruralized areas were allowed to develop at the highest possible density under the law. Five acre tracts, and even less, as far as the eye could see was their idea of rural character.
This instead of a rural element as described in the Act: where the natural environment dominates over the built, and there are a variety of lot sizes, 10, 20 and 80 acres.
So, now the council is trying to redo, but not undo, zoning the Hearings Board has rejected. They announced they will accomplish this légère de la main in large part by tailoring the meaning of "rural character" to suit their desire to maximize developable lots thus minimizing the impact of the Act.
Each of the areas earlier mis-zoned will be redefined to have their own, unique rural character. Like beauty and the eye of the beholder, the idea here is that rural character will mean different things in different places.
Sort of like "moral virtue" meaning something different depending where you are or who you're with. In Lynden it might mean a chaste and charitable woman in the church choir. But if you happened to be in a local bar or brothel, moral virtuousness might be the bar fly or care-giver free of venereal disease.
Or, you could say, like pornography, Sam, Bill and Barbara know sprawl when they see it, and this is art. The law should be flexible.
The council will apply this new and unique concept (we'll call it "rural relativity") to the problem and, wallah, black is white, old is new, sprawl is rural character, and the Hearing Board's ruling is oldthink.
Another skill of doublethinkers is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. I of course have always enjoyed property rightswingers complaint that Futurewise, or other opponents, suits challenging county excesses are an abuse of taxpayers, but when their own lawyers sue us, they are silent.
Obviously this hypocrisy is the result of goodthink, ideological exceptionalism in the name of orthodoxy.
But even more remarkable doublethink is the blind faith (maybe better described as "blinded" faith) or groupthink, which holds they can create ever increasing demands for costly government services by planning more sprawling, scattered, far flung development, and simultaneously claim we should cut taxes and defund government, all the while decrying planning as an evil enterprise, a socialist plot, meant to enslave us.
You could call this doublespeak, but listening to Sam Crawford, all I hear is the same old double talk half-baked demagogues customarily leave us with; like a horse ahead on the trail.
But it's nice that the newly ordained high-priests and priestesses of gobbledygook are making headway on one critical problem in the community, employment. Too bad, though, when they submit the same old zoning densities in their brand new wrapper, the only jobs will go to lawyers.
