When Words Have No Meaningby: Jennifer DalerTue Apr 20, 2010 at 06:59:48 AM EDT |
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Because of the right wing conflation of communism and fascism (which aren't the same thing), it is increasingly difficult to call out behavior similar to that of folks wearing brown shirts in 1920s Germany. If everybody's Hitler, then nobody's Hitler. His name and image mean nothing in the US any longer, except maybe to the ever dwindling population who lived at the time of his rule.
We have a national figure, who some think should be president, claiming this nation was founded to be a "Christian nation" despite the fact that Jefferson and Adams, who didn't agree on much, both agreed that separation of church and state was vital to the fledgling democracy we now know as the United States of America. And this national figure, unaware and unashamed of her ignorance of elementary school history, is given prime space on news programs. We have people at protests holding signs that say :"Get the government out of my Medicare". How on earth did they even sign up for it? Where do they think it comes from? We have a state representative who accused a school district of showing children pornography in the classroom, which was an out and out lie. But because lying is not a crime per se, she still walks the halls of the State House and Legislative Office Building, supposedly representing her constituents. She still speaks and people still have to listen to her. We have a person running for governor, a man, comparing paying taxes to being raped. False phrases such as "death panels" are made up by folks paid handsomely to do so and spread by others. And people believe them. I love language. I'm an avid reader and writer. I love language so much that I bothered to learn another one. It saddens me to see how words are cheapened to the point of losing meaning. Although I read it ages ago, the whole point of Orwell's 1984 seems to rest on the misuse of language and how that misuse led to the end of human freedom. But one can't even go there anymore, because when everything kills freedom, nothing does. |