The Destruction of Truth
Words have new definitions. Your eyes and ears are lying to you. Who knew George Orwell was writing non-fiction? Brace yourselves, this one is a little saucy.
August 3rd is a special day in my family. It’s Tom Brady’s birthday. Actually, August 3rd is significant because it’s the day my wife and I celebrate the anniversary of our nuptials. The fact that it’s also Tom Brady’s birthday has been a running joke for several years because I’m a New England Patriots fan. Don’t hold that against me. I swear I didn’t know the date was Tommy’s birthday until after we got married; I think she believes me but I’m not totally sure. Regardless, she got the last laugh because she’s a Tampa Bay fan and now the GOAT belongs to her.
This year, August 3rd was a little weird because Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, 2 of her staffers, and a fourth person in an additional vehicle tragically died in a car accident not far from where my wife and I met. We found out while we were getting ready to go to dinner. I actually met Walorski when I worked for a TV station in Indiana. I helped her get mic’d up for a “Candidates and Issues” segment that was taping in our studio. It was brief, but a memory nonetheless. Today, Biden pretty clearly forgot Walorski is dead.
The explanation given by KJP was that Walorski was simply on the “top of his mind.”
George Orwell is on the top of my mind right now but I don’t think he’s in the room with me. Seriously though, there have been too many examples of the president’s cognitive decline for him to run again, it’s obvious. But my bigger concern today is I don’t know how this guy is going to possibly make it two more years. I don’t think I’m alone in that and the gaslighting regarding where we currently are with Biden’s ability to do the job makes it so much worse optically. The press secretary can’t say, “well, President Biden is almost 80 years old and would have probably already had his car keys taken away if he were a normal citizen, but don’t worry, he’s not the one really running the country.”
That would create even more questions. Like, who is actually running things? How long before we get the cricket burger policy? And what are our mysterious leader’s pronouns? We can’t have that, so we get fed this top of mind wink wink nonsense and are just supposed to accept it as tRuTH. Government for the people by the people, amirite?
And that brings us to what I originally had planned to write about this evening; albeit a more abbreviated version. What is truth? What do words mean? We’ve experienced so many changes in definitions over the last 24 months that it has become difficult to keep up with all of them. Here are just a few examples that are top of my mind:
Recession: used to be 2 straight quarters of negative GDP growth. Now, it’s whatever the NBER says it is.
Anti-vaxxer: used to be someone opposed to taking vaccines. Now it’s someone who is against mandated mRNA injections even if they’ve had said injections.
Insurrection: used to be a violent attempt at overthrowing the government. Now it’s when unarmed activists in Viking costumes walk in the capital building after the police remove barricades.
Racism: used to mean treating people differently based on race or ethnicity. Now it means not treating people differently based on race or ethnicity.
Terrorist: used to mean a person or group who plan and carry out violent attacks. Now it means someone who disagrees with the policies of the regime.
Fascist: where do I begin…
George Orwell wrote about what we’re currently dealing with in America (everywhere, really) decades ago. What we have now can be described as The Destruction of Language. We damn near had an actual Ministry of Truth for Christ’s sake. And now the cries of “fascist” are coming out again because this woman is the new PM of Italy:
If Giorgia Meloni is fascist because she champions identity, then how is the progressive left not also fascist? This is from a scathing critique of Meloni recently published by The Guardian:
In her hands identity becomes a propaganda tool for dividing the world into Us and Them, where “they” are LGBTQ+ communities, migrants or those who don’t see themselves represented in established structures or the labels imposed by others. The impression given is that they are the bad people, who jeopardise the identity of the entire nation.
Could we not replace a handful of words in that quote and completely flip it to the other side of the political horseshoe? What if it read like this instead:
In his hands identity becomes a propaganda tool for dividing the world into Us and Them, where “they” are MAGA supporters, the unvaccinated or those who don’t see themselves represented in established structures or the labels imposed by others. The impression given is that they are the bad people, who jeopardise the identity of the entire nation.
Is this statement still “fascist” or nah? Because this is exactly the kind of rhetoric Joey Ice Cream used in a primetime speech just a few weeks ago.
We must be honest with each other and with ourselves. Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
Biden, 9/1/22
Are we the baddies?
If ya have to ask…
But back to Meloni for a moment. I don’t know anything about this woman. I don’t really know or care who she is affiliated with or what her stance on every single social issue is. I didn’t hear any of those things in that speech from the tweet above. You know what I heard? I heard a lot of very similar sentiment that can be found in a brilliant George Carlin bit from 17 years ago…
It’s almost like Carlin was on to something. He just couldn’t have known how global the “perfect consumer” has become.
At this point, I do want to provide some perspective. Despite my concerns about privacy, the future, and my rants; I’m really a Doomer-optimist. I am incredibly excited for the future. We have a lot of problems, but I still believe at the end of the day, we are free. Nearly a year ago, I wrote the You Have the Power series. I still believe every word of it. We don’t individually have power over the President, that’s not what I mean. But we do have the power to control what we do at the individual level. When you accept that you are free, you will be free.