Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Today's Word—Hot Air

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Political language:

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

—George Orwell (Eric Blair, 1903-1950), writer
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2008 at 9:24 AM

    Maybe the political-governmental process is the culprit....

    Whenever one needs to rely on capturing the support of others to have access to and wield the tools and mechanisms of power, then I guess its easy to fall into the trap of telling people what they want to hear to garner their support....

    Dont think its a question of there being a difference between a democracy or a dictatorship, capitalism or communism per se - each of those social and economic forms have a long history of 'spinning' language for their own ends....

    So, if the essence of the political mechanism itself generates this lie-telling phenomenon, what do we do about creating a more truthful, transparent, equitable formal social and economic organisation?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting StuffOctober 7, 2008 at 10:48 AM

    Simple conversation among humans is a good start.

    —TP

    ReplyDelete

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