From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

Usually this award is meant to poke a sharp stick at government officials or media outlets. This month I’m spotlighting Vicki Gray’s important article detailing how newspeak affects the way we think about war. Instead of my usual sarcasm I praise her for her brilliant insight.

Click through and read the entire article to understand how language was and is used to de-sensitize us to reality. In order to fight the mind-numbing effects of newspeak, we first need to understand how it works.

The Militarization of the American Language
By Vicki Gray

Once was a time when we used to joke that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. You musicians get the point. Trouble is, military justice is no longer a joking matter. And we have moved apace in other regards. Now we must add: military language is to language as … well … Orwellian “newspeak” is to reality. And unfortunately for those in the “reality-based community,” military newspeak has replaced standard American English as the lingua franca of the United States, thanks to the spinmeisters in the White House and a pusillanimous press corps eager to lap up whatever Karl Rove, Tony Snow, and Ken Mehlman feed them.

What is military newspeak? It is a mumbling, numbing speech by an Al Haig or a George W. Bush. More subtly, it is a TV ad by Boeing - soft music and soothing voices over images of bombers gliding noiselessly through the clouds. Their mission? To defend our freedoms. How? We don’t need to ask. We know. They will soon be dropping bunker busters on un-shown apartment blocks, producing … well … “collateral damage” - all off-screen of course. Military newspeak is, in short, a mèlange of obfuscating euphemisms designed to hide the truth, desensitize our sense of morality, and re-image reality. Like that Boeing ad, it can manifest itself in non-verbal, sometimes subliminal, forms such as that little American flag that keeps flapping in the upper left hand corner of the Fox News screen or the steady drum beat (literally) that opens each CNN newscast, virtually shouting “War, War, War! Terror, Terror, Terror! Fear! Fear! Fear!” It’s all designed to jangle your nerves, disorient you, instill fear … and conflate fear with patriotism.

 

One danger of military newspeak is that it conditions the mental muscles in much the same way that video games do - to react instinctively, violently to perceived threats. Enemies are not to be understood or reasoned with. They are to be bombed - killed - as quickly as possible. No questions, no regrets. The worst danger of all, however, is how it creates obstacles to clear thinking. For clear thinking - critical thinking - is necessary to a well-functioning democracy. And, in the current circumstance, our democracy is crumbling under the weight of military newspeak just as surely as Lebanese democracy has been battered by American-made bombs. Our capacity to resist has been dangerously eroded by the rapidity and thoroughness with which the militarization of the American language has proceeded, and there is no Edward R. Morrow or Walter Cronkite out there to shout “Wake up, America! Before, it’s too late, wake up!”

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