The GOP has become the party from George Orwell’s nightmares

[meow2u3]

In a recent column by Dana Milbank, the Washington Post columnist addresses what has become the ultimate straw man for Republican presidential candidates this year. Ever since Donald Trump dodged Megyn Kelly’s question on his derogatory comments about women at the first debate with his declaration that “the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” political correctness has been the go-to boogeyman for the entire field of GOP candidates. Whenever challenged on controversial or offensive comments, political correctness is to blame. Whenever the media fact-checks a statement, political correctness and that other boogeyman, “liberal media bias,” is to blame — and not their factually challenged statements.

As Milibank writes:

“Once a pejorative term applied to liberals’ determination not to offend any ethnic or other identity group, it now is used lazily by some conservatives to label everything classified under “that with which I disagree.” GOP candidates are now using the “politically correct” label to shut down debate — exactly what conservatives complained politically correct liberals were doing in the first place.”

When an entire field of candidates tend to thrive on bullshit (especially the current front-runners), it is not at all surprising that they have certain reliable terms that vilify critics of their bullshit and shut down debate. The truth is, Republicans have long utilized a manipulative phraseology, full of euphemisms and doublespeak, used either to shut down criticism and debate, as shown above, or to acerbate the listener’s emotional state — think “baby parts” and “death panels” — or provide a positive light on something that is generally frowned upon. (Ergo: Tax-avoiding billionaires become “job-creators.”) The GOP has become truly masterful at distorting political discussion through language, and at each Republican debate, just about every candidate showcases this manipulation. In George Orwell’s classic essay on this subject, “Politics and the English Language,” he seems to describe modern Republicans to a tee, repeating the same tired, yet convenient phrases (the phrases have changed, of course). Orwell writes:

“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has the curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/27/the_gop_has_become_the_party_from_george_orwells_nightmares/

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