Trolling of Bill Barr shows how language is twisted to politics
By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 04/13/19 10:00 AM EDT
In the novel “1984,†author George Orwell wrote that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.†Democrats appear to be taking that idea to heart this week with their bizarre outcry over Attorney General William Barr referring to the government “spying†that targeted Trump presidential campaign figures. Suddenly, the term “spying†was declared as categorically exclusive of any intelligence surveillance.
As someone who has done classified national security work since the Reagan administration, I was surprised by the new Democratic dialectic, but it is not the first time that I missed the memo on the updated meaning of common terms, from “wiretapping†to “collusion.†The problem for Barr is that contemporary politics has outstripped common meaning. That was evident in his two hearings in Congress this week. His answers appeared immaterial to the discussion, and lawmakers raised the objection that Barr could not possibly have read the special counsel's report and conclusions in the 48 hours that it had taken to issue his summary of the findings.
Of course, after the report was submitted, many pundits suggested that Barr might just “sit†on it or give no information at all while refusing to release any part of it. Instead, he took only 48 hours and the narrative changed. At the House hearing, Representative Nita Lowey sarcastically called it all “quite extraordinary†that he “received a very serious detailed report, hundreds of pages of high-level information, weighed the factors and conclusions at length, outlined, prepared, edited, and released†the memo in less than 48 hours. “To me, to do this, it seems your mind must have been already made up. How did you do it?†Lowey asked him.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/438745-trolling-of-bill-barr-shows-how-language-is-twisted-to-politics
