Orwell smiles
In the last century, George Orwell predicted that government and corporate power centers would use propaganda to hoodwink citizens and obscure the truth. Recent developments in SV show he was spot on.
Masking subsidies
One of our guiltiest pleasures is watching lefty media mangle the language to reframe bad ideas so they seem nice. A local housing advocate added a new one to the list, claiming that subsidies--when government takes money from taxpayers to provide sweetheart pricing deals to their favored constituencies--are really nothing more than (drumroll, please!) an "investment."
This is nonsense, of course, as a subsidy is a one-way financial transfer not (like an investment) an exchange for equity, ownership, or a guaranteed financial return.
A run for George's money
"No writer explains the re-purposing of language and 'doublespeak' better than George Orwell, famous for his references to the Ministry of Truth, and phrases such as War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
"But, the wordsmiths behind the title of the new Updated Unity Map deserve, at the very least, an honorable mention. New map proposals don't provide 'unity' in the least. Neighborhoods are cleaved and severed, rather than unified."
--Peter Verbica, on the 2021 gerrymandering schemes.
How Orwell put it
"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms.
"After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well—better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not."
--George Orwell, 1984
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