At a time when Obama is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for waging three simultaneous wars and Osama bin Laden has emerged as the latest climate alarmist, Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" richly repays examination. In his essay, Orwell cautions us against the Structure of Power's use of language. Orwell rules out the possibility that the decline of a language may result simply from a litany of bad writers. To the contrary, the decline of a language is provoked by political and economic causes. To this end, Orwell's analysis focuses on the elite's strategies for shaping the Truth according to their preferences. These linguistic strategies include manipulation of metaphors, pretentious diction, and the use of meaningless words. In America and around the world, the manipulation of language is ubiquitous and has effectively stalled a citizenry that has in its own eyes become sluggish. Too cowardly to "talk about sex, politics, and religion in good company," and too infantile to question the relationship of the State to the issuance of fiat money, much of Americans' usage-time of language in 2010 revolves around to what Orwell (and Plato) would call bad (dangerous?) entertainment. Bad entertainment, entertainment that makes use of lazy metaphors, prescripted figures of speech, and meaningless words, is also ubiquitous in the culture in the form of movies, tv shows, and sports. The motivation is clear: get entertained.
At this point what is needed is a realization that the question about English and politics really leads one into an investigation about banking. To reiterate, Orwell said the decline of a language has political and economic causes. The marriage of the bankers to the politicians in all areas of the world is the locus of and basis for the manipulation of language. To see that Politics is the slave of the bankers, one only needs to review the astounding (and telling) statement by Mayer Amschel...