“Every term must be redefined…” That is not precisely a citation from the prophet George Orwell. It is however quite akin to his discussion of Newspeak, the linguistic distortions imposed by the Party. But we do well to recognize that the shift from objective parlance to Newspeak did not happen in a fortnight. Totalitarianism is very patient. And its most fervent hope is that we the people take the distortions lightly and laugh them off as some sort of a joke.” For example, consider:
“Assault on democracy” per Democrats now means any attempt to preserve the constitutional republic by requiring registration and other protections against their brand of fraud.
‘Illegal immigration’ for Becerra now means insurmountable red tape for Afghan interpreters still prevented from arrival in the nation they served, and threats of repatriation for Cubans who try to make it to Florida to escape bona-fide persecution and hunger, while ‘free-ins’ for all who sashay across our southern border is still a given.
‘Great Sacrifice’ per Kamala Harris now means to charter a private jet for a D. C. vacation and photo-ops with the President, complete with cold beer and the ritual incantation of “We Shall Overcome”, while derelict in their duties to the people who elected them.
This word-twisting is nothing new. Retired Nevada Senator Harry Reid in 2007 described illegal immigrants as “undocumented Americans”. It’s been around a while, a while longer than you younger folk might realize.
The new feature of verbal distortion is that its source used to be regarded as ‘white male establishment’. The late comedian George Carlin in one of his monologues on “soft language” noted that the white men who run things might describe a poor man as “a culturally disadvantaged entity stigmatized by a negative cash flow,” then exclaiming “He’s f______ broke!”. And the Rev. Bob Harrington, the “Chaplain of Bourbon Street”, spoke of linguistic distortions in an early 1970s comedy sketch where prominent business figures might label “stealing” as “misappropriating funds”, or adultery deemed merely an ‘affair’. It was funny back then. Is it now?
For now the Left regards convoluted meanings as their own party’s modus operandi, neither attributable to some white male establishment nor particularly directed at them. As the ‘preferred pronoun’ issue clearly shows, meaning is now a tool of Orwellian Newspeak, useful for manipulation of mass emotions by labeling a given entity or quality or quantity its exact opposite. A singular becomes plural. That portion of the electorate rendered ignorant via the public education system and servile to the party will take the bait, feeling defrauded of their “rights” if opposed, just as they are kept oblivious to the distortions of the ways in which to communicate with opposing views. The predicate is social confusion, the results conflictual.
We call for integrity as its basic level, the language that we use to speak with others. We must keep the “soft language” hardened, calling to account the fraud and abuse by facts, hard numbers, and keeping ourselves to the avenues of thought that offer no detours to detractors. We expose the sins of false witness simply by confronting the scenario with a true witness, reining in meaning of terms and concepts with an emphasis on objectivity. And we confront the distortion of meanings grounded in the objectivity of particular terms not only by their etymology but also their usage.
For the sins of false witness are best exposed in usage, confronting the people using them, calling forth illuminating searchlights on their shadowy lies…
Keep up the struggle, the good fight for the foundations, even the language that we speak,
Father David+