Trumpian newspeak
President Trump issued his “most essential command” on Tuesday during a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He commanded,
Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. … Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.
(CNN, July 25, 2018)
In other words, we all saw him kissing Putin’s ass in Helsinki. But, you see, Trump would have us believe he was kicking it. The average high-school student would recognize that as an unwitting riff off George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. After all, it includes the following:
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
Undoubtedly, that is why mainstream and social media reacted with paroxysms of disbelief — and dread.
Trump, a born Orwellian
Trump’s newspeak has merely vindicated the Orwellian analogies I’ve been harping on since day one of his presidential campaign. After all, he displayed a congenital knack for turning truth on its head.
Yet millions of once-sensible people keep swallowing and regurgitating Trump’s Orwellian claptrap. That’s the most concerning feature of his phenomenon. I presaged this descent into American dystopia in “Trump’s ‘Law and Order’ Doublespeak Has RNC Raving and Roiling” on July 21, 2016.
Sure enough, Republicans once championed national security, fiscal responsibility, and moral character as articles of faith. Now they’re hailing Trump, a man who personifies reckless disregard for those very principles. Nothing betrays the groupthink that now defines the Republican Party quite like that.
The Republican Party becomes a cult
“The Message for Today in Orwell’s ‘1984’” explains the transformation of consciousness afoot as follows:
The large mass of [Republicans] do not find in themselves the need to think independently, to question or to investigate what they have been taught. [Republican leaders] have sold their inalienable right to think freely for security and a semblance of [political] well-being.
(New York Times, January 1, 1984)
There’s no topping that. But I think I came close to doing so in “Evangelicals Supporting Trump like Israelites Worshipping Golden Calf” on January 20, 2016.
Still, not since Adolf Hitler has a leader used Big Brother rhetoric as reflexively and effectively as Trump does. Many of us have sounded alarms about his dystopian rhetoric — as “Women Worldwide March against Trump” on January 23, 2017, attests.
Unfortunately, we had about as much impact as the proverbial John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. So, be afraid, be very afraid. Believe me!