The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb Reads '1984' As A Playbook

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no  more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures  of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"'While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.'

"The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer...."

--George Orwell, from "Politics and the English Language" (1946).

Goldfarb has a point. Instead of erupting in self-righteous outrage at those responsible for interrogation enhancements, why not just make them non-negotiable offers of structured housing arrangements? If it's good enough for those who practice lifespan adjustment or who give unprompted internal massages, then surely we owe it to these noble unicorn-chasers.

Putting this kind of bogus, blandifying language in perspective is the only way we're going to reawaken our capacity for outrage. And that's the only way we're going to be able to react like moral human beings. Good job!

Confucius once said something like "If you don't get your terms right, you're not going to have an articulate discussion."  (I've taken some liberties with the original Chinese, but I swear I have rendered their import accurately... :P)  Calling a rose by any other name may not make the rose less sweet smelling, but it'll sure keep a lot of people from coming by the rose garden to sniff that fragrant fleur.  That's the point of this Orwellian use of terms like "enhanced interrogation" (which, be it noted, comes directly from the Nazi term "verschaerfte Vernehmung"): not so much to control the discussion of the moral issues posed by what the Bush Administration is doing in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and other places, as to shut it down entirely.

Well finally we can stop wondering, in mock outrage, how the German people could have gone on with their ordinary lives in the shadow of the concentration camps in their back yards. Back in the day of verschaerfe Vernehmung such volk were called "the good Germans."It is sad and dispiriting how many of those whose conscience is not easily shocked today are Jews. Goldfarb is one of the new "good Americans?" Never again? Try not only again, but this time we ourselves are putting on the jackboots. Oh, the humanity...

For a more nuanced, better researched and less aggressive discussion see David Bromwich's excellent article "Euphemism and American Violence" from the New York Revie of Books, Volume 55, Number 5 · April 3, 2008

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21199

This new use of language is terribly exciting. I hope I'm using it right when I say that this Mr. Goldfarb undoubtedly deserves a hearty pat on the back.