What’s In A Name?
By Nick Paleologos
August 27, 2014
There was this guy named Rick Blair. He died very young--at
age 47. During his lifetime, which ended in 1950, he went off and voluntarily
lived in a variety of different ghettos under a bunch of assumed names. He also
wrote extensively based on those experiences.
His
last book, published in England a year before his death, was a real doozy. In
it, he imagined a creepy future just three or four decades hence in which any
semblance of civil society has been snuffed out by a single-minded minority using
their immense wealth and power to re-label nasty things with nice names.
These horrible human beings work inside a giant pyramid
called “The Ministry of Truth.” Carved into the concrete on the outside wall of
their headquarters are the following three slogans: War is Peace; Freedom is
Slavery; and Ignorance is Strength.
Crazy, huh?
In Blair’s imaginary world, information is filtered through
people whose belief that the strong should prosper and the weak should perish
is relentlessly pedaled under the “Fair and Balanced” banner.
An
immigrant is an “alien.”
Brutal torture is “enhanced interrogation.”
Financial instruments involving huge risk are called
“securities.”
Bone-crushing debt is actually a generous gift of “credit.”
Mass murder is “ethnic cleansing.”
Kids killed in a UN sanctuary are “collateral damage.”
Soldiers killed by their own troops are victims of “friendly fire.”
That last one really fractures me. I mean the only thing
missing from such a grotesque bit of re-branding is a smiley face on the body
bag.
In the frightening world of Blair’s book, rational
decision-making by the public is virtually impossible because the plain,
unambiguous meaning of practically everything has been intentionally twisted to
serve the selfish interests of a privileged few.
The more I think about it, I may have mixed up some of the actual
details in my description of Blair's harrowing book---except for the part about a Ministry of Truth. But the rest isn't far off from what he actually wrote. Anyway, you
should definitely read it. It is guaranteed to scare the bejeezus out of you even
though it was published 65 years ago by a guy from another country!
By the way, this book will make you incredibly grateful to be living in
the good old US of A in the year 2014—where the people in power always tell the god's honest truth. Because if they don't, there's hell to pay. And where every single one of us gets a first rate education so we can call things like we see them and let the chips fall where they may.
You’ll have to forgive me for drawing a blank on the book's title
because it’s been thirty years since I last read it. But you can look it up under the
author’s full name: Eric Arthur Blair. If you can’t find it under his real
name, try one of his pen names: P.S. Burton; Kenneth Miles; or H. Lewis
Allways.
Oh wait. There was one other name he used.
George Orwell.
