The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” George Orwell

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Words do matter. We so-called writers, addicted purveyors of the language, kind of know that, even if we have our doubts in these polarized times. So when the government bans words like ‘substance abuse disorder’ (it implies drug addiction is a disease) or ‘science-based’ (better to use something like ‘science in consideration of community wishes’) or ‘fetus’ (maybe use something like ‘little people who can’t speak for themselves and can’t vote but who don’t want to be killed by liberals who don’t read the Bible), they’re hoping to skew the meaning in their direction.
Nothing new here. You don’t believe in Global Warming, hey, ban the use of the words. Call it the Will of God or Faux Science. Course, if you ditch the words, then you can ask the question, why fund research into non-existent phenomenon? If you refer to fetuses as unborn humans, then you can write them into laws like one where a minus two month old kid can apply for a hunting permit. Validates the idea of life beginning at conception and goes for the twofer of applying the Second Amendment nine months earlier than before. The NRA is happy, the Right to Lifers are tickled, what’s not to like? ‘Right to Lifer’, there’s another nifty use of words.

My favorite this year, of course, was ‘Alternative Facts.’ Kind of sums up the entire Administration’s approach to, well, pretty near everything. Lies? Naw, just Alternative Facts. The News? No, dummy, not alternative facts, they’re Faux News, what we now call Lies. I know, it’s slippery at first, but after a year, we’re all getting used to it. In the Orwellian dystopia, Big Brother had to set up entire agencies to revise the history their Alternative Facts kept creating. In this new paradigm, not so much. Quote Trump from a year ago contradicting the current opinion, no problem!! The news media is biased. Faux!! They are, by definition, Liars. No need to bother about revisionism, it’s built right in. You just have to redefine Truth. Or ban its usage in the Newspeak altogether. Big Brother is smiling these days. And George Carlin is laughing his ass off.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2017 at 4:24 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.