Orwellian politics

[The Sage of Main Street]

Remember all those topics on this forum over all these years since the Bush Administration insisting Saddam had WMDs?

We had those topics regularly on this forum right up until Trump said Saddam never had those WMDs, and the pseudocons turn on a dime and support him!

There hasn't been a single "Saddam had WMDs" topic since then.

Wrong, "Saddam had WMDs" Assad used some of them.

I get your point, and that is where the media have become corrupt. They no longer report the facts, they spout propaganda for one side or the other. Honest journalist is an oxymoron.

Whoever Falsifies Language Falsifies Thought

Learn what "oxymoron" really means, not what Diploma Dumbo jurinalists tell you it means. At least you didn't use their "WMD" for the plural WMDs. Beware of using those babbling idiots, Left or Right, as language role models. Our hand-picked pundits are either bluebloods or brownnoses, not brains.

I know exactly what the word oxymoron means. honest journalist wasn't an oxymoron in the past, but it is today.

You're Getting a Tailwind From Blowhards

"Honest journalist" is what truly educated people would call a "contradiction in terms" if they didn't believe journalists were honest. An oxymoron, despite your belief that Voices From a Box know what they are babbling about if they are from the Right Wing of the Establishment vulture, is just the opposite. You obviously believed in jurinalists at one time or you wouldn't be using their fake meaning of oxymoron, which is not a pejorative term just because the On-air Airheads think it sounds like something spoken by a moron.

For example, if someone believed that firemen were lazy, he would claim, "Firefighter is a contradiction in terms." But the only oxymoron related to that would be "firewater." So it means a word or phrase that appears to be a contradiction, but not in the way its words are being used. Other examples: jumbo shrimp, less is more, sounds of silence, boneless ribs, plastic glasses, paid volunteers, and Kansas City, Missouri.

If we are ever to think independently, we must totally discredit all media. One way of doing that is by showing that their education is a fraud and they are no more worth listening to than some ignorant drunk mumbling in a bar. If you try to defend their right to their jobs, you're part of the problem.

 

[dblack]

As is illustrated in the OP, that means society didn't want to buy birth control for people who could easily buy a box of condoms.

No it means that states really did prohibit access to birth control. and it continues
Pharmacists In Kansas Can Now Deny Women Access To Birth Control

Words mean things, and that headline is false. The law states that individual pharmacists can refuse to fill individual prescriptions. They cannot deny a woman access to birth control, because all she has to do is walk across the street to another pharmacy. Could I say that a barbershop is denying me access to a haircut because the barber doesn't do the style I want?

False argumentation by the far right.

If the pharmacist says 'no', then that pharmacist has denied a person access to birth control.

The law needs to be challenged in court, and pharmacists must be challenged in court.

So, if a grocer refuses to sell someone a gallon of milk (perhaps because they're in a bad mood, or maybe because the grocery store closed thirty minutes ago, the reason is irrelevant) have they've "denied a person access" to milk?

why special pleading with, "exceptions to the rule"?

danielpalos - I've told you before. If you want me to talk about this kind of stuff with you, you'll need to send me some of that pharmaceutical grade you've been bogarting.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

George Orwell famously warned us of those who would control our thoughts by controlling the words we use. I thought it might be interesting to track efforts to do this in modern politics.

I'll start with the shenanigans around the word "access". It's a popular euphemism for describing poverty, often combined with the equally dubious usage of "denied". Rather than saying that a family can't afford decent housing, they might say that they are "denied access" to adequate housing. Being "denied access" seems to simply mean that they can't afford something, but it has connotations that prompt people to think about the issue differently. Which is the point.

They prefer "access" to "buy" or "afford" because they want to promote the idea that the goods and services in question aren't things you buy, but rather things you are granted "access" to. The usage of "denied" reinforces this stealth assumption by further suggesting that the goods and services in question are, by right, owed to the person in question. They want to equate not being able to afford something with being "denied" a right.

What other orwellian word games have you noticed lately?

The right wing loves to "hate on the poor", but blame the left for allegedly, keeping them poor.

"Pick One" Is an Order, Not a Choice

Both the rich and the poor deserve to be poor. Orwellian also means limiting thought to certain choices, excluding the middle.

 

[danielpalos]

George Orwell famously warned us of those who would control our thoughts by controlling the words we use. I thought it might be interesting to track efforts to do this in modern politics.

I'll start with the shenanigans around the word "access". It's a popular euphemism for describing poverty, often combined with the equally dubious usage of "denied". Rather than saying that a family can't afford decent housing, they might say that they are "denied access" to adequate housing. Being "denied access" seems to simply mean that they can't afford something, but it has connotations that prompt people to think about the issue differently. Which is the point.

They prefer "access" to "buy" or "afford" because they want to promote the idea that the goods and services in question aren't things you buy, but rather things you are granted "access" to. The usage of "denied" reinforces this stealth assumption by further suggesting that the goods and services in question are, by right, owed to the person in question. They want to equate not being able to afford something with being "denied" a right.

What other orwellian word games have you noticed lately?

The right wing loves to "hate on the poor", but blame the left for allegedly, keeping them poor.

"Pick One" Is an Order, Not a Choice

Both the rich and the poor deserve to be poor. Orwellian also means limiting thought to certain choices, excluding the middle.

Where is (a Ministry of) TruthDetector? haven't seen him around lately; conspiracy or coincidence?

 

[whitehall]

Yeah but the Hussein administration tried to control talk radio with the ironic named "fairness doctrine" aka "hush Rush" that would have forced right wing radio to broadcast left wing propaganda. As usual the crazy left misread the attitude of Americans and the bill died somewhere in committee.