Friday, June 24, 2011

War Is Peace, 2011

In my youth George Orwell's 1984 (a year still well in the future at that time) was THE epitome of the distopian totalitarian future that awaited America if we were not vigilant against the forces of Evil Communism. Perhaps its most iconic element was "newspeak" which defined concepts in terms of their opposites. In the language of newspeak, war equaled peace and freedom equaled slavery.

Imagine my surprise, then, that two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Communist ideology, newspeak is alive and well right here in the United States. Orwell was certainly correct that controlling the meaning of words was a way of controlling thought.

It's certainly allowed Americans to continue to think of their nation as a force for peace in the world even as the nation pursues endless war at escalating costs.

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