They annoy me to no end as well. Orwellian you say? Yes, that seems the appropriate word. I think the new word will end up being something like McRumsfeldism, McBush or something else that shows that it is very closely related to McCarthyism in action.
Whenever I hear the phrases “Patriot Act” and “Homeland Security” I immediately think of the Third Reich, myself.
The difference bayonet1976 is that the words “military industrial complex” and “double speak” are not trying to euphemistically cover up what they really mean.
Do ya’ll find terrorists, hijacking 747’s, slamming them into the Twin Towers and The Pentagon, killing over 3,000 people “Orwellian/Huxley Repulsiv?” (Whatever the fuck “Huxley Repulsiv” means :rolleyes: ) Huh?!?!!!
Terrorists have always been hijacking 747s and slamming them into the Twin Towers.
Moving this to the BBQ Pit.
Polliticians are always prettying up names for their pet projects and legisltaion so they sound apealing. Right and Left do the same thing. Are you anti-abortion or pro-life? Are you pro-abortion or pro-choice? Is that a bum or a homeless person? Is that an illegal alien or an undocumented immigrant?
The “Patriot Act” sure makes you want to read the fine print, doesn’t it? As for “Homeland”, I do remember wondering how that term got into common use. Did anyone use that term before 9/11? To me it sounded like something out of Star Trek-- Homeland/Home World.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board. Pity you won’t be staying longer.
Too bad this has gone to the BBQ Pit, considering it was a good thread in “Humble Opinion” until two people turned it into what you might consider a BBQ flaming rant.
My original OP was to get feedback from people who might possibly know who the fuck Orwell and Huxley are, and opine as to what they felt about such usage of the English language in today’s political arena.
If anywhere, I would have assumed this would be moved to Great Debates.
Oh well…whatever…
The expression I find creepy is “loyal opposition”
Well, for obvious reasons they aren’t ‘opining’ at all about modern usage. What they did do was warn against several slippery slopes surrounding the ease with which political ideology can slip into usage and acceptance.
Fwiw, I think the best example of this in recent times was the French refusal to accept the US terminology during all that UN malarkey. The French argued that to accept the language of war (as demonstrated in US arguments and submissions) was to implicitly accept the inevitability of war, when there were plainly other options (the US didn’t want to entertain). Lets try an example:
“If Saddam Hussian does not assist us in locating the WMD . . . .” implies that there are WMD to be found yet, by agreeing with the need to continue to search (always a good idea), you are implicitly accepting the second premise (that there are WMD).
If, in reply, you say ‘whoa’, it looks like your against the whole deal.
This pre-emtive manipulation of your opponents has, of course, innumerable applications on any number of political issues and it works well on matters domestic, especially if things are draped in emotional terms like ‘Patriot’.
I really dislike the phrase “Homeland Security” in particular, even aside from how I feel about the agency itself and its behavior thus far (which would be a whole different Pit thread). As a linguist, I think “Homeland” applied in this context carries a connotation of “people whose ancestral roots are in the U.S.” versus “people who have chosen to make the U.S. their home,” thereby excluding immigrants and anyone else who happens to be in the U.S. at any given moment from the “Homeland” definition. Aren’t we supposed to be protecting everyone who is here?
I was born in the U.S., but do I consider the U.S. my “homeland”? In some contexts yes, in some no. I tend to associate the term “homeland” with “ancestral homeland,” which would only be the U.S. for a couple of generations. Or my college roomie, who was born in El Salvador, but has been a U.S. citizen since age 12? Is the U.S. her “homeland”? She doesn’t think of it that way, no matter how loyal a citizen she is otherwise.
And don’t start me on the “Patriot Act,” or we’ll be here all night.
And yet, oddly, in nearly every thread I’ve posted in concerning the Patriot Act on this board, there has been a surfeit of posters saying they were against the act, but, when pressed for specifics, were unable to articulate precisely what provisions bothered them or what those provisions actually did.
Is that better, or worse, than the hypothetical speaker the OP posits?
Want to bet?
Hint: Think World War I and outfits like the Seventh Missouri.
Let me know if you’re interested in a wager.
- Rick
I was hoping you were going to relate these terms to the ‘Mc’ification of America (McDonalds’, McMansions; I can’t think of any others right now).
I am firmly convinced that no-one would have voted for the ‘Patriot Act’ if it weren’t so name, but can’t find the entire text on-line. Does any-one have a link handy?
And now I will admit I LIKE the phrase Homeland Security; it evokes Britian in WWII for me. [And my only experience with Britian in the middle of the previous century is romantic black and white movies.]
Frankly, the phrase "Homeland Security reminds me of the opening scene of 1984:
V.O.: This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania.
[scenes of happy agricultural workers]
V.O.: These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people.
[scenes of industrial workers in factories and blast furnaces]
V.O.: These are the builders of our future, struggling, bleeding, fighting, dying.
[soldiers on a battlefield, burning buildings]
V.O.: On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields
[airplanes crashing, men screaming]
V.O.: Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams
[burning buildings, cut to Party members watching telescreen]
V.O.: Who are they? (Crowd shouting) Eurasia! Eurasia!
[Gun aimed at audience from telescreen; cruel Asiatic face leering)
V.O.: They are the dark armies. The dark, murdering armies of Eurasia.
[cut to Party members watching telescreen]
V.O. In the barren deserts of Africa and India, on the oceans of Australasia, courage, strength, and youth are sacrificed.
[cut to Party memebers watching telescreen, some standing up with forearms crossed in the Ingsoc symbol of loyalty.]
V.O. Sacrificed to a barbarian horde whose only honor is atrocity!
All you need to do is throw in 9/11 and “Orange Alert” and it could have been written by John Ashcroft and his fearmongering toadies in Justice.
As for the provisions of the Patriot Act, I am concerned that with a very fuzzy defin’tion of “terrorist” that could be stretched to cover an act of oppostion to the government, including nonviolent protest, the government can seize library records, computers, records of Web sites visited, and hold prisoners for interrogation without writ of habeas corpus or access to lawyers. It’s already happened to foreign nationals from Muslim countries with no demonstrated ties to terrorist groups.
And if you think I’m being unnecessarily alarmist, from the Washington Post:
I dislike the phrase “Patriot Act”, as it does not, indeed, seem to have anything to do with patriotism. In that sense it seems to indeed be Orwellian; however, not knowing exactly the contents leads me to not blatantly condemn it, either.
“Homeland Security”, on the other hand, I see as no more misleading than the “Department of Defense”: both names seem more, well, “Defensive” than in actuality. However, this is business as usual and no worse than a lot of political spin.
“Homeland”, on the other hand, does have the annoying characteristic of being a little-used word picked sheerly for its patriotic qualities: were it not for its evocative power, a more common word would have been used. Of course, it’s not as annoying as “Workman’s comp”: “Workman”, an uncommon word used purely for its populistic imagery, wasn’t even accurate, and I applauded the change to “Worker’s Comp”.
Along with"Homeland Security" anf the Patriots Act,’ We also have garbage like the “Clean Skies Initiative” (which is legislation which eliminates or reduces environmental controls) and “Leave no child behind” (which artificially raises aggragate test scores by booting low scoring children out of schools…a tactic that GWB also used in Texas) and, of course, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” [snort].
This administration excels at selling destructive policies by simply calling them the opposite of what they are. It is the very definition of Orwellian doublespeak. That’s not a cliche and it’s not hyperbole. That’s what the Bushistas really do.
I might feel a bit more confident that my government officials are pledged to “preserve, uphold and defend the Constitution” if they didn’t use slogans that sounded like they came off a 1930’s fascist recruitment poster. The people who run these departments are certainly old enough to remember when such slogans were in regular use by some pretty fucking evil people. Is this really the kind of association they want or need? Why would anyone with even a passing knowledge of history choose to name a government department this way?
You know what I’d like to see? A definition, in law, of exactly what “the homeland is.” Does that include the outlying islands? What about the former territories which are now independent countries but rely on the United States for defense–are they SOL?
And a related question: Has there ever been, in the history of the US, any other executive department that’s done as little as the Homeland Security Department?