Newspeak

[Lightning Rod]

How many times have you heard officials of the BushCo administration, from the president on down, utter this phrase: "It is important for the American people to understand......(insert bullshit here)" or "The American people MUST UNDERSTAND....yada yada yada."

To be in the power clique you probably have to take at least a semester just to master the use of this phrase. It's part of the patriarchal vocabulary that dominates the speech of those in control.

My bullshit filter goes into overdrive when I hear those words. Why? Because I know that the practical translation of the phrase is, "You have to see things my way."

George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science, claims that the reason that the Repugnicans are in control of our government presently is because of their lockstep ability to 'frame' issues. They have learned to establish the terminology. They have been more successful than liberals or progressives at defining an agenda by using phrases again and again which provoke the type of thinking that they prefer. They would rather talk about 'gay marriage' than human rights. It has a more emotional cachet.

When Will Rogers said, "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat," he was joking, but the reason jokes work is that they have the truth in them. And Rogers' words were never truer than they are today. The Dumbocrats have little leadership and no voice.

But the Repugnicans don't suffer from this malady. They are so organized that they speak with the same marching voice. Hup-two-three-four. "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.' and 'Stay the course." and "Just cause." oh, and here's a great one--"As soon as the Iraqis stand up, we can stand down." How many times have you heard these slogans?

What Joseph Goebbels called the Big Lie and what has long been referred to as propaganda, the Repugnicans call 'talking points.' Have you ever noticed that if you flip around the channels on a Sunday morning, you can hear various administration spokesmen on the news shows and they are all using the exact same phrases? And many of them begin with. "The American people need to understand....."

This technique is taken straight from Mein Kampf. "the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie."--A. Hitler

Thus our government's invasion of Iraq for the purpose of raping their resources and establishing a strategic base in the region becomes 'a battle of liberation.' And handing over our medical care to the drug cartels and the insurance companies becomes 'health-care reform.' And resting the cost of doing public business onto the shoulders of those who can least afford it becomes 'tax-relief.' It's like magic. Linguistic magic. In this world just saying something works better than actually doing something.

And the list goes on and on. Some of my favorites: "no child left behind." BushCode for privatization of our education system. And how about "Death Tax?" Sounds sinister doesn't it? Why wouldn't you want to have it repealed? What it really means is that brats like George W. Bush can continue to be born into privilege. Oh, and then there is "Culture of Life," Sure, that sounds good to rabid anti-abortionists but try to sell it to the families of the thousands who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where it borders on the ridiculous is when they start talking about "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" when they really mean "we're gonna strip mine the Environmental Protection Agency to the point where it has no balls at all and our corporate buddies can further rape the landscape."

This bunch ain't foolin' around. If George Orwell was still alive they would hire him to oversee the Dept. of Newspeak.

The Poet's Eye observes that every politician worth his salt knows, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. and how often.

[stilltrucking]

http://www.dubyaspeak.com/fratboy.phtml ... 7f8c3619ed

did you check this out from the same website. Takes about a minute to load.


"It starts when you are always afraid." His "True Believers" will stick by him. But maybe enough republicans will splinter off to bring him down. The shit is just starting to hit the fan for him. Reporters and whistle blowers may become bolder. I believe they have only scrtached the surface of the corruption.

Speaking of framing the issues

A Free Frame Of Reference, remember that?

[hester_prynne]

This is all too true LRod, but my question is, why do we continue to fall for it/go for it? How many years is it now that Bushco been invited by us to prey on us?

Or better asked maybe, is why do they continue to get away with it? Why is it that Roberts still got confirmed anyway, despite the fact that we all know without a doubt that he is another crummy nominee of the Liars and Failure Brothers club? Why didnt' we filibuster him, refuse him? Why are we all just standing by and watching it all happen to us on our tvs?
For that matter, why are Bush and his cronies still even in power after the havoc they've wreaked, the embarrassment they have made of us?

I can't help but wonder if Americans are more comfortable as backboneless victims, thus the utter willingness to allow the nation to become victimized by our own government, to watch daily, the inexcusable government crimes happen, to rail intellectually against them, but still do nothing really, but rather amble along in timidity under the pompous outworn modes of operation that at this point are being used against us by our own leaders.

The breaks I feel in my own spirit these days are manifesting in lethargy, apathy, and hopelessness. There is nothing I can do anymore but watch things get worse and worse, and be horrified at the fact that it seems that nothing can or will be done, that all I can do really is just pleasantly and willingly go down with them.
That seems to be the role I'm stuck with here.

It really fucking sucks, it has for a long time, and I'm tired of it, obviously....
H

[Arcadia]

interesting..! yeah, it´s hard to frame asambleas.

[Doreen Peri]

My mother has been angry for years knowing that when she dies, her children will have to pay taxes on the money she already paid taxes on. And we don't stand to inherit any huge amount of money. I never heard it called the "Death Tax" before.

Where you get the idea that "Clean Skies" and "Healthy Forests" really mean stripping power from EPA so they can further rape the landscape is beyond me.

Yeah, there's a lot of Newspeak they offer! That's for sure! You can't listen to them without it being quite obvious that they have Madison Avenue script writers trying to sell us an agenda that has nothing to do with the actual words.

Interesting Hitler quote.

I like "Reputridcans" and "Dummycrats."

[stilltrucking]

"the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily;

Oh yes interesting Hitler quote, right out of Freud.

Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. ... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

http://www.answers.com/topic/edward-bernays

Edward Bernays (November 22, 1891 - March 9, 1995) is regarded by many as the "father of public relations," although some people believe that title properly belongs to some other early PR practitioner, such as Ivy Lee.

Born in Vienna, Bernays was both a blood nephew and a nephew-in-law to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and Bernays's public relations efforts helped popularize Freud's theories in the United States. Bernays also pioneered the PR industry's use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns. "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it," Bernays argued. He called this scientific technique of opinion molding the "engineering of consent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

Freud, Propaganda, and the Total State
by Ron Liebermann

Most people live in a fantasy world of their own creation. As first described by Sigmund Freud in his study of psychoanalysis, each person fights an internal emotional battle with his childhood caretakers, siblings, perceived enemies, and society. The building blocks of this fantasy world are powerful tools for control of a civilian population, if you have a government that knows how to use them.

Edward L. Bernays, nicknamed the Father of Spin, was the creator of modern propaganda. Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew, and applied Freud's work to the art of mass persuasion by blending advertising techniques with an understanding of human psychology. Bernays worked for the Committee on Public Information, otherwise known as the CPI. This government agency was created by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 for the purpose of mustering public support for World War One.

The original propaganda campaign had three rules:

Stress emotion over logic,
Demonize the enemy, and
Promise a war that will make the world safe for democracy.

http://www.libertarianstudies.org/

[hester_prynne]

Indeed yes, it is an act of hypnotistic terrorism really, underneath everything. This I can easily believe. I think it's downright despicable.

But it's not everything.
I'm so fortunate that despite all the idiocy, all the greed, all the crap, that I am, at depth, very happy, even go lucky these days. Happy with myself I guess, and what I am achieving, even though the odds seem even more stacked against me than ever. Heh.

Something about muddling through, becoming a huntress of jobs daily, and sustaining myself that way, has led me to realize that so much of what I thought was important IS just a psychological diversion that some other insecure freak hammered into me and millions of others.

The resistance I have felt to letting go of those notions, has diminished now, into a sense of real freedom....a release from a traditional entrapment, into a place where I can really appreciate a modest enough is enough, and I can actually laugh at the thinking that there must be so much more than enough.

It's the more than enough we think we have to have, that keeps us tied down, right where they want us.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Not meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Am I ever grateful that I have enough....barely, but it's enough.

H

[stilltrucking]

Hester you know there is not a man more ignorant or more immature about women than me. The crucial vote (according to Kokie Roberts, Nina Totenberg and other pundits on NPR) was the "Security Mom VOte" apparently Bush did very well. And of course the NASCAR dad vote was a no brainer. SO I wonder about Lynde England and her "complient personality"

Me I am just waiting for the tables to turn. Thinking my "black thoughts" and wondering how it will play in Harlem.

I suppose I have been blessed with a mother like The Rose of San Antonio. I never lose any sleep over money, or having "enough." I am just stupid that way. I myself have nothing to be pissed about. Except for the starving babies in Africa and the men who put them there. I eat a lot of hot dogs and beans myself. So know you know where my careless farts come from.