The Very Newest Beautiful Newspeak
In George Orwell’s iconic sci fi classic, 1984, the totalitarian government of the fictional superstate of Oceania invents and promulgates a new language called Newspeak. Using this change in language, they shrink the number and usage of words in order to limit the population’s ability to think critically or to hold thoughts in opposition to those of the government. In many cases, words are defined to mean their polar opposites, so as to forcibly shape thinking to match the point of view of the dictatorship.
In our language, words that have two meanings that appear to be in opposition are called contronyms and include words like sanction, which can mean to permit or to penalize, bolt, to leave quickly or to immobilize, cleave, to cling to or to split apart, oversight, accidental omission or close scrutiny, and many others.
Today, in our country, however, the goal is not to hold two thoughts about a word at the same time, but rather, in the spirit of Newspeak, to supplant the meaning of a word with its opposite by using it to describe outcomes directly contrary to their original meaning.
For example, The Department of Health is the title of an administrative agency better named the Department of Illness. The curiously warped and muddled Robert Kennedy, Jr. has halted vaccine funding, altered vaccine recommendations, reshaped vaccine committees by replacing experts with anti-vaccine crazies, reduced the HHS workforce by at least 20,000, shifted focus and resources away from infectious diseases, opposed water fluoridation, halted important research, gutted the CDC injury prevention team, and so much more. As a result, the Department of Health is now the Department directly responsible for alarming increases in cases of measles, flu, and, recently, polio by promulgating whacko alternative medical experiments, eliminating vaccinations, and doing anything but improving the health it was founded to protect. The defunding of important research at many leading universities only adds to the carnage.
Then there’s the Department of Homeland Security. Ha! Thanks to their rampaging vigilante raids, Americans have lost any sense of security. More and more are afraid to shop at their local grocery store, stand and seek work at a Home Depot, wait at a bus stop or take their kids to a park. They and their friends and family are hyper-vigilant, constantly scanning every corner for a sudden influx of thuggish ICE agents in masks. It doesn’t even matter if you are here legally, if you run, they will assume guilt, chase you, bind you and haul you away without probable cause, due process, or notice to your family.
The Department of Defense is now engaged in military Offensives against the American people, illegally sending troops into US cities, and staffing more and more concentration camps on American soil.
And don’t get me started on the Department of Justice. Since Pam Bondi was confirmed at its head, the concept of Justice at the department has been turned on its head, by its head. It has been honed and shaped solely as a tool for retribution against those who have rightly sought to curb the totalitarian actions of the Offender In Chief. The Attorney General of New York is now the subject of a grand jury probe. The FBI is being deployed to track down and arrest Texas legislators. The regime is imposing huge fines on American Universities in order to silence any voices with whom the regime disagrees. And, of course, it continues the perversion of justice by colluding with those who want to protect Trump in the Epstein debacle.
What’s in a word? Apparently, the white house resident thinks he can, like Humpty Dumpty, forcibly shape a word to mean whatever he wants it to mean. If so, perhaps we can hasten Humpty’s fall off of that wall, and stand aside as they fail to put him back together.
The Unconsenting Soul
Ursula K. LeGuin wrote, in A Wizard of Earthsea, “It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul”. We see examples every day of those who have consented, in the majority party in the House of Representatives, in the bobble-headed Cabinet, in the legions of ICE agents. But we are also seeing, thanks to the maintenance of a free press (so far), those who are unconsenting and, therefore, not taken by evil: the courts, the neighbors who turn out and capture illegal and out-of-control ICE raids on their phones, the universities who say no to the administration’s extortion, the medium and small law firms who are banding together to defend against the evils of government, the crowds on the street.
How nice to have such clear examples of the power of consent and non-consent. How ironic that Nancy Reagan was right when she told us to “Just Say No”. Lately I have been carrying little bits of paper with the word “no” written on them, and, when people ask me what they can do, I hand them one and tell them to refuse, if they can, to help the government in any way. And, indeed, to throw as much sand in the gears as they can, wherever they are, and add their actions to those of the rest of us by joining the informal “monkey wrench brigade”. Could be fun.
