Given the tone and tenor of this presidential campaign,I thought this would be the time to publish this entry.
Also,I don’t have anything else to post.
Being a "creative writer"with lots of "fans"and acolytes,people invariably want to know "Who are your influences?"If I’m in a buoyant mood,I’ll say "Faulkner,Ellison,Atwood,Dickens,etc."
If,as is more likely,I’m in a pissy,angry,enraged mood,about to kill myself or a conservative,I’ll say,"My influences are beer,sex,professional wrestling and extra-absorbent Pampers,and just go away,I hate stupid questions like that."
Actually,nobody has ever asked me about my literary influences,but if they did,I’d probably lie and give them the usual suspects,adding,at the end,"and of course,Chekov."
One name I might not mention is George Orwell,because he isn’t "literary"enough in some quarters,and also because I’ve read only 3 ½of his books:1984,Animal Farm,A Collection of Essays,and half of A Homage to Catalonia. And I read the first two books before I was 18,the third when in college,and the last half-volume when I was in my mid-20s.
His work all had its particular impact,but his masterpiece "Politics and the English Language" resonated on the tabula rasa of my young brain unlike few essays before or since.
In short,Orwell decried the decay of language in public discourse in "Politics."In order to hide the truth when it can’t be hidden,politicians and bureaucrats will turn to obfuscation via language. And when language goes bad,liberty will follow.
Torture:it’s not just for despots any more
Orwell lists several examples of bad writing,and then enumerates why they stink. But the key to the entire essay (at least for an impressionable 21-year-old) was just how language related to political argument,circa 1946:
In our time,political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India,the Russian purges and deportations,the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan,can indeed be defended,but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face,and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism,question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
It’s an easy jump to the present.
Take,for instance,our current jokers running the White House and their attempt to hide the truth regarding torture. "Enhanced interrogation techniques."* "Black sites.""Extraordinary renditions.""Illegal combantants."These proclamations are bogus and designed to obscure the truth,and when the public accepts them at face value,you get monstrosities like Guantanamo,warrantless searches,Abu Ghraib,waterboarding,kidnapping,and out-and-out torture.
Or one can turn to the current election —oh,can you ever —and see lies being turned into "truths"through the currency of language. A know-nothing,incurious governor suddenly has "executive experience"that qualifies her for the vice presidency,for instance. Twisting the meaning of a phrase like "economic fundamentals."And so on.
Unfortunately,we’re fighting a losing battle. Falsehoods like "collateral damage"and "downsizing"have made it into the daily lexicon. Citizens blindly accept bogus language as long as it doesn’t challenge their preconceived notions of wrong and right. People are careless with language,and worse,they don’t seem to care if you make something plural with an apostrophe s,much less use euphemisms that hide meaning.
Waterboarding,skateboarding,what’s the difference?
Now,if I were a true intellectual,I would have repudiated Orwell as a overrated socialist hack,pointing to the ordinariness of his diction as a sign of his simplicity.
But I’m not smart enough to be considered an intellectual,and Orwell’s ideas are still rattling around my brain like an atom in a particle accelerator (or some other clichéd simile that Orwell would have loathed). Orwell may not have been an intellectual either,but he was a brilliant writer,and was so brutally honest as to be painful.
If it didn’t inspire me to pursue writing,Orwell’s essay changed how I view language and how I use it. I think about "Politics and the English Language"every time I write,even if I’m not aware of it.
*It has been pointed out that the Gestapo used the same phrase – "verschaerfte Vernehmung"—to describe their torture techniques.
Loved this entry,thank you! I can’t agree with you enough about the sloppiness with which people use language (and in that vein,I think you meant to write “know-nothing”rather than “no-nothing”
).
I was recently trying to explain racism to my five-year-old daughter—”some people don’t like other people because they look different”—and realized how ridiculous that must sound to her. If something can’t be described simply,frequently that’s a sign that it’s messed up somehow. Even in the most esoteric scientific and engineering disciplines that seem dreadfully complex to the layman,there’s usually an element of simplicity and beauty in the truth.
language lover:imagine my horror when i saw the mistake. in an entry about language,no less. thanks for pointing it out. since corrected.
People ARE careless with language but as you also point out,they are frighteningly purposeful with language –hence these f**ked up euphemisms we are now so nauseatingly familiar with.
Great post.
NEWS speak
in other words
Waterboarding,skateboarding,what’s the difference?
Since you asked:
ANSWER:You’re more likely to obtain a substantial physical injury from skateboarding.
Dude,you decry the symbolic absurdity of political words,and then you turn around and employ the same irrational liberal lexicon of goofiness.
“you get monstrosities like Guantanamo,warrantless searches,Abu Ghraib,waterboarding,kidnapping,and out-and-out torture.”/
What? You left out “Haliburton?”Finger cramp?
Guantanamo is an American holding on the island of Cuba. When trying to decide whether terrorists would be tried by a military tribunal or under US civil law,somebody said,“Hey,we can warehouse them on Guantanmo while we figure this out.”This is the first time we’ve gone hard against an enemy that is not signatory to the Geneva Convention,nor do they abide by it’s tennants. Kinda tough/stupid to “play fair”against an enemy with no moral code at all. Not a great solution,but I’ve yet to think of a better one.
Abu Gharib? What are you gonna do? Are you really going to paint 400,000 soldiers with an icky brush because a dozen retarded rejects from the Stanford Prison Experiment stacked naked prisoners like cordwood? I’ve seen the Al Queda torture manual depicting how to pop out eyes and use a blow torch. Bad behavior doesn’t excuse bad behavior,but I’m sure if Daniel Pearl was here he’d opt for the naked pyramid. I sure would.
Waterboarding. This is an issue like abortion. You’re either freaked out by the concept or you aren’t. To an extent,torture works. Sorry. John McCain says it doesn’t but he should know better than anyone. He cracked. If John McCain had been waterboarded,he would have given up the same information after six minutes,gone back to his cell to sit for five years,and today he’d be able to reach the jar of peanut butter on the top shelf. Waterboarding is the most humane flavor of inhumanity we currently know how to employ. It’s icky. I’m glad there are people on our side who are willing to get a little icky to save American lives.
Kidnapping. Nobody has tried to crack down on rendition more than Dubya. By and large,a lot of the reasons you state for hating Dubya spring from his attempt to legally codify behaviors which had been going on behind turned backs for the last 70 years. Face it,brother. You were okay with extraordinary rendition when it was Clinton’s bailywick. Blame Dubya if you will. All evidence shows he tried to reign in the CIA on renditions.
Out and out torture. Uh? Help? Besides five documented uses of the aforementioned waterboarding,this thing you call torture would be…? Bueller?
Much like Mulder,you want to believe. You want to believe the worst. You want to believe the direction of our country is getting worse.
Don’t listen to me. Listen to the brilliant playwrite screenwriter David Mamet.
Good luck,man. You’ve breached my moonbat-o-meter yellow zone. I’m deleting your RSS feed,but I wish you well. I hope after the end of Obama’s first term you look back and truly,TRULY believe that things are getting better.
I highly recommend you read one of Orwell’s lesser known,but brilliant works,“Down and Out in Paris and London.”
I also have to HEARTILY recommend “Down and Out in Paris and London.”In fact,I started this comment just to say that,and then noticed Mr. Kelley’s comment above mine. You won’t be disappointed (although you might be a bit less likely to want to eat in fancy Parisian restaurants.)