Scrub the Language, Wash the Brain

By Dan Hagen

Change the word, and change the thought. Scrub the language, and wash the brain.

That’s the simple little secret behind much of the American right wing’s success in manipulating American citizens into shouting down their own interests over the last three decades.

Republican leaders don’t dare tell the public what they really think — that ordinary American citizens must be teased, bullied and conned into surrendering all their benefits to line the pockets of billionaires.

To be fair, right wingers always have to lie. If they ever let the public know what they REALLY have in mind, it would be torch-and-pitchfork time for their sorry asses.

That’s why the GOP loathes real journalism, but worships corporate PR with its smooth, polished, useful lies. That’s why their idea of a presidential debate moderator is a reality-show dummy and real estate con artist like Donald Trump. It’s all about the sweet-sounding lies, my friends — hard or soft, small or big.

The chief Republican propagandist, Frank Luntz, admitted that the GOP was terrified of the Occupy Wall Street movement precisely because of its ability to change the terms used in the national debate.

George W. Bush’s pet campaign con, “compassionate conservatism,” was just a Luntz-inspired propaganda term designed to disguise the fundamentally ruthless greed and power lust that lies behind contemporary American right-wing ideas, which are largely fascist.

I think the neocons started to sweat when people began identifying them correctly as fascists, so the Luntz crowd decided to destroy the word “fascism.” Make it mean everything so it means nothing. Simple.

So we got nonsense terms like “Islamofascism” and “liberal fascism” — anything to distract people from the real meaning of fascism, which is the totalitarian corporate state marked by nationalism, militarism, sexism, racism, religious fanaticism, controlled mass media and the destruction of civil liberties.

All sorts of previously abhorrent and even outlawed practices can be smoothly reintroduced into society with just the right euphemisms. This is just part of all those "traditional values" Republicans want to reintroduce us to. Child labor. State-sponsored lynching. Sweat shops. Company towns. County poorhouses. Debtor’s prisons. Economic serfdom. Torture. Slavery (now referred to by the euphemism “contracted private prison labor”).

We’ve had the “Fight against Global Terrorism.” “The Long War.” “The Crusade.” All euphemisms for permanent war to enrich the military-industrial complex. As people start to see through the old lie, a new one is supplied.

Bumper-sticker philosophy like that is a disaster if your intention is to govern well. But it works well if you're running a con job. “Metaphors cannot be seen or touched, but they create massive effects, and political intimidation is one such effect,” wrote cognitive scientist George Lakoff. “It is time for political courage and political realism. It is time to end the political intimidation of the war metaphor and the terror it has loosed on America.”

Want to execute an innocent man who was falsely convicted for killing someone? Call it “closure” for the victim’s family. Actually, it’s just the opposite of that, a situation in which the real killer walks free. But with the right euphemism, you can keep the public too far in the dark to see that.

Many people don't realize just how dangerous a phase of pure corporate-news propaganda we have entered, while independent professional journalism, which should provide clarity, is left weak, starved and punch-drunk.

The right wingers have mastered not only euphemism, but its opposite, dysphemism, smearing any practices and theories they want to discourage. Thus, any interest in economic justice becomes “class warfare.”

“Now would be a good time to think about the term ‘class warfare,’” Helen Kromm warned. “This neat little slogan was chosen as the battle cry of the 1 percent for more reasons than you might think. Forget that it is a catchy little phrase and certainly a lie. Forget the huge cojones it takes to even utter it. Perhaps the only thing more galling than pillaging an entire people is proclaiming yourself a victim of those same people. The operative word here is 'warfare.' It was important to get this word out there front and center and early in this game.”

Funny. When kleptocapitalist Wall Street bankers devise derivative and credit default swap fraud that wrecks the world economy, and then get their lackeys in Congress to bail THEM out with MORE money from the taxpaying citizens they’ve defrauded, I never hear the right wingers describe them as “pampered.” Why is that term only applied to union workers who fight for a living wage, health benefits and a pension?

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the right wingers, though. Think of the sheer, exhausting mental gymnastics required to argue that Wall Street con artists who stole trillions through derivative fraud should walk free, but that unemployed Americans, the elderly and kids should go hungry, freeze and die untreated because they deserve no government help. The right-wing propaganda peddlers must wake up in a cold sweat at night, fresh from nightmares about the glaring truth of what they really are being exposed.

Call it “shared sacrifice.” The corporate billionaires take all the shares, and ordinary Americans make all the sacrifices.

So remember, kids, when a cop orders you to shut your damn mouth and stop taking photos, that's called “free speech.” Permanent invasion and occupation of other nations is called “defense.” And it's “surveillance.” Not police-state spying on your own citizens. And it's “enhanced interrogation.” Not torture. And it's “targeted killing.” Not assassination. And it’s “collateral damage.” Not blowing up unarmed innocent civilians.

And it's not secret permanent imprisonment, not massive unemployment and not a Depression. We've got a million euphemisms, kids. They make all the bad things just disappear.

Ain’t it nice?