In the book 1984, George Orwell claimed that one of the ways
that the totalitarian regime that controlled the nation used the method of
controlling the language in order to control people. The crime that enveloped
all crime in Orwell’s dystopia was thoughtcrime, the crime of thinking things
that were unorthodox, or that didn’t follow the party line. Newspeak was the
solution to this problem, a language that stifled the ability of the people to
think thoughts that were unorthodox, to conceive of a world that didn’t fit
into Big Brother’s plan.
I will not be so dramatic as to pretend that I think this is
happening today, I don’t believe that there is anything approaching this level
of organization at work. What I will say is that much of the political
conversation is being manipulated by trying to get people boxed in to a belief
system by manipulating the language that you associate with certain ideas. I
won’t pretend that this is one sided, both parties want you to use the
buzzwords that they use, and just by associating things or ideas with a certain
word can dramatically change the way you see that thing. One example where both
parties have tried to get you to use their vocabulary is regarding tax
increases, specifically on the wealthy. The democrats would love for you to
refer to the wealthy as “Millionaires and Billionaires,” which is accurate, but
has a connotation that associates them with excess and overabundance, making
you more likely to be in favor of increasing their taxes. On the other side you
have the Republicans wanting you to call the same people “Job Creators,” which
is intended to make you feel like you can’t tax those people, or they’ll stop
creating jobs. Some other examples of this would be how the Republicans use the
term “job killing” to describe several things that they disagree with,
including taxes, government regulation, and various bills they don’t want to
become law. Democrats speak often about how tax loopholes coddle the rich.
These terms all have in common that they elicit emotional responses,
galvanizing beliefs people already hold and encouraging changes to existing
contradictory views.
I think that the most widely used and most successful
example of this by the Republicans is the use of the word “Socialism;” this is
also the most dishonest example. Socialism implies government ownership of the
means of production, meaning that very few businesses are privately owned, and
the state controls the rest. Republicans use this term to describe any move to
the left politically. Taxing the rich at a higher rate becomes “redistribution
of wealth” rather than just a return to a more progressive tax system, the kind
we had only a decade ago. I’ve heard time and time again how Obama is making
America a Socialist country. If that were his goal, this is the least
successful socialist revolution in history. People cite the fact that Obama
“nationalized the automobile industry.” The scary thing about this is how many
people believe that this is actually the case; that the government bailout of
the auto industry actually purchased those companies from private owners and
made them public. This is not the case. All the bailout money for the auto
industry did was offer government loans to those companies that let them stay
afloat. So rather than a purchase of the stock of that company, there was a
loan given out, a loan which would be paid back to the government. Now there’s
been some controversy about whether that’s been the case, but in any event much
more of that money came back to the government than would have in an outright
bailout. This does not bode well for the Socialist takeover of the auto
industry since the money did not purchase controlling shares of any company.
My point is that most of the examples that people use when
they point to Obama and say he’s turning the US into a socialist nation are
merely small shifts to the left, and most of those are shifts that only restore
conditions that were already in place in the past. A socialist takeover this is
not.
