The Newspeak American Lexicon

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

I wonder if that's how supporters of the current White House administration feel after perusing the cynical 160-page Republican strategy piece by pollster/marketer/language master Frank Luntz - recently leaked for all to download.

Cheated.

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The farmers are feeling it. The AARP is feeling it.

The brazen bait-and-switch. From an administration that claims to put trust and loyalty above all.

Are you next?

Mind you, nothing in the Luntz document is about substance: it's all just how to sell, sell, sell it. Image is everything. Appearance is everything. Language is everything. Convince the people that you're selling what they wanna buy. And you're selling it cheap. Pay no real price, everything so nice. Sell. Sell. Sell.

Look - I know that politics is politics, it's dirty business, everybody does it. Whatever.

It's the science of it these days that kills me. There are no accidents.

Orwell said that the Newspeak employed in his novel 1984 was a distillation of language "designed to diminish the range of thought."

Is Luntz's "New American Lexicon" any different from Orwell's Newspeak?

Designed to diminish thought? Diminish debate?

Elimintating words from the lexicon when they don't work in his focus groups?

His "words that work" and "words that don't work?"

Language as a tool of control?

Encouraging Republicans to "resist the temptation" to use "facts and figures?"

Resist the temptation to use facts?

Man.

I mean, I'm just digging into it, and it READS like 1984. Like O'Brien's big explanation to Winston of how the machine that is Big Brother works.

"You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."

But it doesn't get more cynical than this. Witness, from Mr. Luntz's strategy document:

"The defecit is a touchy subject for both Republicans and Democrats - your supporters are inherently turned off to the idea of fiscal responsibility, and Democrats see nothing but hipocrisy. The trick then is to contextualize the deficit inside of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, which Republicans sometimes do, but not early enough in their answer."

A "trick?" 9/11 is a "trick?"

Let's re-write the first part of that last sentence for Mr. Language:

The crafty procedure we should employ to deceive or defraud so we can spend even more money we don't have is to bring up the subject of the murder of 3,000 innocents on September 11th.

Which is not to mention the death of 1,500 American soldiers in a nation that had nothing to do with the murder of 3,000 innocents on September 11th.

And yeah, check your dictionary: "trick" connotes deception.

Frank Luntz is a master of the language.

He knows what "trick" means.

There are no accidents.

Think about that the next time someone invokes the tired "9/11 changed everything!" bit when they're losing an argument.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

VIDEO: For a peek behind the Luntz curtain, go to PBS Frontline: The Persuaders and click on Segment 5, "Give the People What they Want." Fascinating stuff. Scary, but fascinating.