George Orwellian Bush
by Hank Edson
Nothing better exemplifies the sinister intent of the Republican Alliance toward the people of the United States and the democracy that is theirs than the Alliance’s unabashed usage of Orwellian doublespeak. In his landmark distopian novel, 1984, about a world ruled by an authoritarian government, George Orwell foretold a world in which every evil of authoritarian rule was officially labeled it opposite. In the same way, the dehumanizing oppression of the government monitoring and controlling the most intimate details of each individual’s life was lovingly referred to as “Big Brother.”
In the Bush administration, we find that 1984 has finally arrived. The most evident sign is that proposed legislation is screened by an Orwellian doublespeak transcriptionist, who engineers the perfect title describing the opposite of what the law actually aims to do. Although frequently referred to in passing, the deceitful manipulation of this practice deserves some kind of comprehensive inventory. A couple paragraphs here at least makes a start.
Most widely cited is the galling example of Bush’s “Clear Skies Initiative.” Far from improving air quality, this law changed existing public safety protections to allow polluters to release into the air higher levels of mercury, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides and other airborne pollutants scientifically linked to respiratory diseases. Of similar sincerity is the “Healthy Forests Restoration Act,” which opened up large swaths of national forest land to clear cutting by the logging industry—hardly an act of restoration. More recently, Bush has proposed to sell of huge swaths of public land as part of the “Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act,” in order to make up lost revenues from declining timber harvests. As if funding schools and providing a political process for community self-determination required rewarding big business corporations with below market subsidies siphoned off the people’s natural resources! Then there is the President’s pet project, the “Leave No Child Behind Act,” which Bush, himself, under funded by $7 billion dollars, leaving millions of children, not just behind, but subject to severe consequences the law imposed for poor performance, hypocritically, to insure “accountability.”
In response to the Abramoff lobbying scandal, House Republicans attempted to use the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act” to remove limits on the amount of money national party organizations could direct to individual campaigns, and to get rid of “527 groups” that operate independent of political parties that have greatly increased the political participation of America’s often apathetic citizenry. At the same time, they sought to leave in place 501(c)(6) trade associations usually controlled by Big Business. Finally, no list of Orwellian legislative titles would be complete without mentioning the Uniting and Strengthening America Act (U.S.A.) and the Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (P.A.T.R.I.O.T.) both of which define terrorism in such an extremely broad manner that they have empowered the government to subject Americans engaged in peaceful picketing and other forms of protest and civil disobedience to electronic surveillance, internet spying, indefinite detention, and secret court proceedings. In this way, the Bush White House has used the acronyms USA and PATRIOT as facades for a “Big Brother-esque” foray into the authoritarian rejection of citizen’s rights guaranteed under both the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
The Republican Alliance's application of Orwellian doublespeak to almost every piece of legislation passed during George W. Bush’s presidency is just the tip of the propaganda iceberg, however. If these hypocritical titles for Republican legislation are the trivia of the propaganda of the Bush White House, Orwell’s 1984 again provides the basic doublespeak principles the Bush White House has used to make of our democracy an authoritarian oligarchy. Inscribed in the marble front of the government ministry in 1984 were the following three mottos: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
In the Presidency of George W. Bush we find the three motto’s of 1984’s authoritarian government extensively employed. With respect to “War is peace,” we have, of course, the unending war on terror, with its alert system, which provides fear like pain medication for the White House, every time it needs to distract the public. As in 1984, war never ends; the enemy just shifts from one theatre to another. George Bush has told the American people ad nausium that the unprovoked, undeclared war on Iraq is a matter of securing safety for peace-loving, democratic people. Of course, now that we have destabilized the Middle East and only intensified the threat of terrorist attacks by invading and occupying Iraq, the insanity of this “war is peace” rhetoric is finally becoming clearer to us, notwithstanding the pervasive propaganda the Alliance has used to make us all believe it.
Regarding “Freedom is slavery,” the paternalistic interpretation of Christianity, (which Karl Rove has ordered woven as subtext into all Bush’s speeches), asserts that submission to the Religious Right’s hierarchy is a sign of self-discipline and virtue that are the keys to the freedom of Christ’s salvation. Those who choose to independently develop their own worldview, however, are cast as slaves to their own immorality and weakness, which makes them unfit to surrender themselves to Christ. Thus, the Constitution’s freedom of religion is slavery. By categorizing the first group of people as “saved” and the second as “left behind,” the Religious Right manages to assert that there is a higher moral code that trumps democracy. Leaders among the Religious Right, who President Bush frequently praises, courts, and supports, openly describe theocratic aspirations that reject democracy for America. To them democracy is tainted by those who do not submit to their concept of salvation through obedience. To them, such people should not be empowered by the freedom to vote to spread their “slavery” through the American government. For this reason, Bush has actively worked to tear down the Constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. America is not supposed to be “the land of the free,” but rather “the land of prostration to fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity.” A further complement to this “freedom is slavery” rhetoric is found in Bush’s false gospel of free markets and free trade under which even the American middle class is becoming enslaved to the merciless dynamics of our slanted economy. Religious freedom is not only moral slavery, but economic slavery is the just and moral judgment of the “free market.” Or so the Republican Alliance wants us to believe.
Finally, Bush, himself, is the living, breathing mascot of the third motto, “Ignorance is strength.” Taking his cue from Ronald Reagan, but with even less skill as an actor, Bush has cultivated an artificial Texan swagger both in his image and in his style of simplified, yet still embarrassingly garbled oratory. By affecting a cowboy’s disdain for “fuzzy math,” the “liberal elite,” and his fellow students at Yale who actually studied, Bush has tried to position himself as rejecting the value of intellectual accomplishments, rather than as being rejected by accomplished intellectuals. Bush is the perfect puppet for the Republican Alliance because his biggest weakness is the same weakness the Alliance wants to cultivate among the public.
If the Alliance can convince the public that Bush’s ignorance is strength, then everything it has done to succeed in that effort will also encourage the American public to emulate the President’s embrace of ignorance as a matter of personal identity. This identification with ignorance as a form of personal strength is a powerful psychological took in rendering the American public willing to accept that freedom is actually slavery, and war is actually peace. This is the heart and soul of “compassionate conservatism,” another Orwellian equation, in which unrelenting degradation of the state of humanity equals compassion.
As public outrage over the multiple abuses of power perpetrated by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney grows louder and louder, our nation is becoming disenchanted with their puppet’s brand of compassion and the way he recklessly wields his ignorance. We are being forced to recognize that should his puppet masters be barred—through impeachment or indictment—from further pulling the strings of the presidency, Bush’s ignorance leaves him stunningly unfit to manage the United States government.
Although the real corruption and crime of the Bush White House and the Republican Alliance runs far deeper than these examples, still the nature they reveal is sufficient to draw a fundamental conclusion: Where Orwellian doublespeak is the rule, communication is not in good faith and dialogue is just another opportunity for abusing the American people. The way to counter the Republican Alliance is to expose it, to oppose it, and to dispose of it--by election, indictment, and impeachment. If we raise ourselves above the echo-chamber of corporate media and government propaganda, we will find ourselves more strongly in resort to all three remedies. We must renounce their mottos and their claims to be patriots of the American Dream.
copyright © 2007 by Hank Edson