Friday, November 18, 2005
Excerpt - The Truth (with jokes)
"It's a cliche to say that the Bush administration's use of language is Orwellian. After all, the "Healthy Forest Initiative" won't make forests healthy. Much to the contrary. It will make them gone. And the pro-air pollution Clear Skies Initiative is designed to clear the skies of birds. And then there's the slogan of Bush's newly created Ministry of Truth: "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." All of those things can be justly described as Orwellian. I mean, who's he kidding?
But Newspeak isn't the only thing Orwellian about this presidency. In Orwell's dystopian classic 1984, the totalitarian state of Oceania is kept in a state of permanent war by Big Brother, who is the oldest of four sons of a former president. Big Brother's younger brother Younger Brother is really named Jeb, and is much smarter than Big Brother. Eerie, right? Anyway. Back to the permanent war. It doesn't matter who the enemy is or whether the enemy is actually threatening Oceania; the important thing is to keep the population thinking that it is under attach from an external threat. And just like in 1984, where the enemy is switched from Eurasia to Eastasia, Bush switched our enemy from al Qaeda to Iraq. Bush's War on Terror is a war against whomever Bush wants to be at war with." - Al Franken The Truth (with jokes)
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