March 13, 2019
Democratic Presidential Candidates' Perfect Orwell's Language Manipulation
By Jeffrey Folks
Seventy-three years ago, in his now classic essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell examined the deceitful nature of political speech in his day. He offered some superb examples of words that mask their actual meaning and of rhetorical devices intended to fool the reader. "In our time," he wrote, "political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." The imprecision, pretentiousness, and staleness are deliberate, intended to conceal what the writer does not want to admit. His examples, most of them from leftists like Harold Laski, were bad enough, but even Orwell could not have foreseen the nonsense coming from progressives this election season — and it's still early in the game.
Take defenses of the "Green New Deal." Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who popularized the idea (which has been around for a decade or more), doesn't seem to have any comprehension of its cost, or the cost of anything else. When asked about how she would pay for it, her initial response was "tax the rich." The truth is that there aren't that many rich, and under her 70% and up federal tax plan, there soon wouldn't be any. Now she seems to believe that one can simply print money to pay for it all. This radical extension of Modern Monetary Theory would bankrupt the country and render our currency worthless.
Read more:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/democratic_presidential_candidates_perfect_orwells_language_manipulation.html#ixzz5i3l7TqsZ
