Posted on 11/06/2013 1:02:06 PM PST by Kaslin
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984,” which describes life in an oppressive, virtually inescapable Surveillance State, the vocabulary of the populace is so tightly controlled and manipulated by the central government, it becomes a language unto its own: Newspeak. The purpose of Newspeak is to limit individual thought and provide the government virtually complete control over how citizens communicate. This, in turn, allows government agents to engineer whatever reality best serves the interests of the State. As a result, “truth” is whatever government wants it to be at a particular time and under specific circumstances; and the vast majority of citizens, happy in their status as cogs of the State, are none the wiser.
Many Americans like to think our “enlightened” society would never fall for such obvious trickery; unfortunately, they’d be wrong. The Obama Administration routinely employs its own campaign of Newspeak to facilitate the implementation of a deeply authoritarian political agenda designed to reduce individual liberty, while simultaneously making citizens more reliant on the State. Obama has turned the White House into a veritable Ministry of Truth, creating any reality he wishes by manipulating the Mainstream Media through intimidation, misdirection and outright lies.
“This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger told the Washington Post in a report on the state of journalism under Obama.
Sanger and other members of the national press aptly note that the Administration is creating a toxic environment for reporters – at least for those who maintain roots in old-school journalistic ethics. Regular polygraph tests of government employees intimidate whistleblowers from “leaking” information that might be harmful to the Administration’s agenda. The Administration also strictly limits press access, using super-exclusive, “off the record” briefings, and relies on “staged” photo ops to create the best public image possible.
This “control-freak” culture of Obama’s Ministry of Truth has been on full display following the launch of ObamaCare. When asked about initial enrollment numbers, Administration officials claimed such data was currently unavailable -- logically absurd in this day of instant online metrics and Big Data. Yet, by refusing to release any information to the media, officials were able to craft their own, customized narrative of ObamaCare “success,” without having to objectively prove the statements they made.
When that “truth” was no longer viable, as the true devastation of ObamaCare began to be felt by millions citizens across the country who received insurance policy cancellation notices, the Administration flipped the script again. Suddenly Obama’s (repeated) promise of, ‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,’ became a media misinterpretation of what Obama really meant, and the rash of cancellations was simply “transitioning” people into “better” insurance policies. In this contorted universe, ObamaCare was working as expected, and the truth was exactly as Obama stated. Up is down, left is right, and bad is good.
Did it matter that Obama knew for years that people would lose individual insurance coverage, and that he intentionally lied to the public so he could pass ObamaCare before being re-elected to office? Of course not, since that would be inconvenient for the President; so those facts were sent straight down the memory hole. Obama and his apologists simply blamed citizens for failing to understand the complexities of the new healthcare laws, and “bad apple” insurance companies for not being team players.
Those who dare speak out against such manufactured realities face a culture of mockery and intimidation that permeates every level of government. For example, Ruben Santiago, interim police chief for the City of Columbia, South Carolina, recently took to the department’s Facebook page to threaten a commenter with police action for doing nothing more than questioning his department’s focus on marijuana-related offenses. The message thus delivered was crystal clear -- question law enforcement at your own risk -- even after Santiago stated later that his comment was misunderstood (sound familiar?).
This 21st Century version of Orwell’s alternate language has found its way onto Capitol Hill; and appears to be a bi-partisan force. For example, former FBI Special Agent and current U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, recently mocked privacy watchdogs during a hearing on NSA surveillance. Rogers declared that privacy rights “can't be violated if people are not aware their privacy is being violated.” Such a facially absurd comment encapsulates the mentality of Big Government advocates like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi and Obama himself – public officials all -- who regularly rely on blatantly illogical arguments to justify the paranoid reality they are engineering.
In order for a democracy to function, citizen voters must be informed and educated about key public policy issues. This requires that the government provide full and accurate information -- free from political manipulation. If government is intentionally misleading the people, then the people no longer have control of their elected officials and become pawns in their political scheming.
If there was ever paradigm for how the citizens of Orwell’s “1984” could be so systematically mislead by their government -- sometimes even contradicting itself one day to the next – it is this Administration. Employing the tools of the digital age, the federal government and those who administer it, have been able to take Orwell’s fictional “Newspeak” to a very real and frightening level.
“This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger told the Washington Post in a report on the state of journalism under Obama.:
Most transparent administration, EVAH!!
(oh wait.. Is that racist?)
“Is that racist?”
I don’t even give a rat’s patoot any more.
I still want Thomas Sowell as president, but I’ve had my limit on the racist crap.
“This is the most semiopaque, pellucid, limpid administration I’ve ever covered,”
Makes more sense now.
Yeah, there's freedom for you, right?
Directly from the neo-communist "progressive and liberal" agenda to turn the united States of America into the same kind of shithole that all the other communist "utopias" instantaneously turn into.
Brought to you by the little bammy regime.
Supported by RINOs and turncoats.
.
...U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) declared:
“privacy rights can’t be violated
if the people are not aware their privacy is being violated.”...
-
Bizarro World.
That's like saying he "manipulated" whores with money.
s/ Winston Smith
Julia and I are getting married on the basis of the raise.
I'd believe "limp" not "limpid". And "opaque" not "semiopaque".
Isn’t Mr “limpid” a fish?
“Limpet”?
There is no sugarcoating it: The Obama Admistration is less than perfectly transparent. Its utterances are also terminologically imprecise.
>>Isn’t Mr “limpid” a fish?<<
pretty incredible..
The Democrats and media all speak Newspeak. The real-world version is more subtle than Orwell’s: for the most part it sounds like English, no bizarre “double-plus ungood” style constructions. Words, though pick up multiple denotations between which they slide so as to best serve the needs of the left.
“Health care” is a perfect example: the Newspeak phrase “health care” can denote what the English phrase denotes (services provided by physicians and allied health professionals), or what the English phrases “health insurance”, “government-issued health insurance” or “government-approved health insurance” denote, and an utterance in which the phrase was intended to have one meaning changes into one where it has another meaning after the fact as the left needs it to.
“Racist” is another: the Newspeak word can mean what the English word means, function as a meaningless pejorative for use in debate against someone who opposes the left’s current projects (I suppose on the plea that the left’s projects, and only the left’s projects can benefit racial and ethnic minorities, massive evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) or (thanks to the wonders of ‘critical race theory’) mean simply a white person.
In both cases (maybe in all cases) a Newspeak word or phrase always carries the emotive content the English homophone carries, even when it is being used with a different meaning — thus, whatever it means, “health care” is a good thing, and and “racist” is a bad thing.
This article is excellent.
Pardon my edit. I just figured I'd get it in before the jack-boot-licking SHeepers come along to support the police state and the murder of liberty.
Oh, and I'm calling these folks SHeepers who join up on FR to support the police state with their bleatings that "If you have nothing to hide then why do you oppose being searched, burglarized, anally probed, etc."
Orwell insisted, in the years after World War II when he embarked on Animal Farm and 1984, that this practice was what made the Communists at once so dishonest and so lethal. It was precisely what they did when they went after the French syndicalists in Spain during the Civil War, changing the meanings of things after the fact to try, convict, and execute their erstwhile allies in order to seize control of the Republican forces.
Orwell, forced to flee the Communists for his life, learned the lesson and insisted for years afterward that everyone needs to learn to use words precisely, in order to spot dishonest operators.
My favorite is, "we have to stop being purists and help support someone (a statist RiNO) who can win, someone who can attract moderates and undecideds and 'capture the middle'."
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