So when you hear Newspeak coming from the highest places - when peace is war and life is death and losing is winning and the meaning of words become distorted to the point where they mean nothing, really, that doesn't even give you pause?
No pause, I just engage the BS filter and try to see what's behind it all. I am curious as to the root of your "losing is winning" meme. What's that about? More reductionism? Quoting someone else who thought that up? Detailed analysis of . . . what?
I've been hearing political BS, and recognizing it as such, for just under 40 years. My dad was a poli-sci major, in college, and interested in current events. Thanks to his influence, my brother and I were politically aware and inquisitive from a very young age.
When phrases like "extraordinary rendition" or "collateral damage" or "incontinent ordnance" become part of the vocabulary, that doesn't phase you in the least?
Nope. Collateral damage is a curious way to frame the concept of "unintentionally killed or destroyed." It's a more concise phrase. It is a rhetorical reaction, a counter if you will, to the fallacious "zero defects" demand of garden variety critics of military operations.
I have for the first time in my life now read "incontinent ordnance" which evokes the image of a constipated artillery shell. What does that phrase mean?
"Extraordinary rendition" is also an interesting neologism, describing something that has been going on since the Cold War.
Nobody is saying we live in "1984" and this is at totalitarian state.
I'll accept that you are not, but given the level of rhetoric in the past 12 years, since about Waco and Midwest city, the amount of "police state" memes floating around has continually increased. Please engage shanek in a discussion about Elian Gonzalez if you'd like a taste.
Better yet, don't.
When our political conversations are reduced merely to euphemisms intended to deflect criticizm or responsibility
Is that was it is? Do you really feel my pain at reading your "chicken little" assessment? I don't disagree with your distaste for spin, it's a pain to deal with. I disagree with your assessment of its effect.
and avoid dealing with the real life consequences of the choices our leaders make - that is a bad thing.
How are you and I avoiding dealing with the consequences of what our leaders choose to do? *looks around* Did you not go over to the theme park in the desert? Are you not paying taxes? Did you choose not to vote?
When plain speaking is discouraged
That's been going on since before you were born.
killing becomes something other than killing - that is a bad thing.
War is war, killing is killing, civil war is civil war. You seem to be deliberately allowing someone to pull the wool over your eyes, or maybe, you object to the spin machines. They were not invented by GW Bush, nor by Dick Cheney, nor by James Carville, who is quite the master. Lyndon Johnson implemented a patronage system and called it "The War on Poverty."
When our thinking becomes shackled to code words,
Speak for yourself, pal. I don't suffer from that problem.
the meanings of which is so maleable or non-specific that it becomes impossible to engage in anything like genuine critical or original thinking - that is a bad thing.
Welcome to the wonderful real world. Check out the latest used car ads in your neighborhood. You have been inundated with half truths for most of your life, if you have watched television.
It is hard for me to imagine, when I hear this sort of language coming from out leaders, that either they read "1984" or they understood it or that they took away any message except exactly the wrong one. I believe that the neocons, for example, look to books like 1984 as sources of inspiration in the worst possible way.
I find it hard to believe that a critically thinking adult resorts to a pigeon hole. I'll also point out that anyone in a position of power is influenced by that position. The job grows on people.
There is plain, honest communication and there is communication contrived to obfuscate reality and to mislead.
Correct. The latter has been with us since speech was invented.
There is no way an honest man can say he has not seen a buttload of Orwellian sort of language coming from those who have run this country over the past number of years.
Since the nation was founded, words have been used, at times disingenuously, to persuade and to sway.
You may not find that creepy and frightening, but I do.
I find it to be politics.
And you can see the effects of it in any "man on the street" interview. They unconciously use the same dissembling sort of language that we hear coming from our leaders - language that prevents thinking and critical assessment. Exactly what it is intended to do.
They. Let's look into this faceless "they" who you seem to hold in such scorn. Who are "they?"
Business speak was at a high tide where I work a couple of years ago and all memos and communications where cloaked in buzzwords and phrases.
Yes, it is an obstacle to clear communication.
In fact, incorporating the buzzwords into your dealings was the way to get ahead and plain speakers were considered old school. We would get memos and such from on high filled with crap like "proactively leveraging cross-functional incentivization" or "achieving forward mobility" and so on - all of which having only the effect of enervating those of us who were genuinely looking for guidance and direction.
Yes, using such speech is a behavioral norm.
My personal belief is that these sort of words and slogans are contrived by people with the specific intention of thwarting genuine progress and understanding and communication.
They are crafted so that old ideas are repackaged and sold by consultants.
Likewise, I believe the use of obscuring language in government is intended to prevent genuine debate and critical thought on the part of their citizens. Maybe things are not as dire as some of us may think, but those sort of people who are first to react to this sort of behavior in their leaders are our bellwethers and our canaries in the coal mines and dismissing them as hysterical wacos does them a serious disservice.
Prevent genuine debate? How does someone else speaking like a buzzwording nitwit prevent you from holding honest opinions, and expressing them?
I think you meant "whackos," not "wacos."
DR
