An Orwellian 'conversation'
Ann Althouse complains that under the Obama administration, the term 'conversation' has started to take on Orwellian connotations. Man, "conversation" has become one of those Orwellian words. There it is in Obama's NYT interview, where he's saying something that invites the relabeling that Sarah Palin so effectively slapped on it — "death panels."Welcome to our world. President Obama has been having 'conversations' about the Middle East since long before the campaign started, and that was fine so long as theIt is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that's part of what I suspect you'll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.Conversations! Damn! As if the government does not have power! Oh, but it's "not determinative," you say. It's just "some guidance." He said that, see? Ugh! Spare me! We're right to be afraid now, while the man is burbling about conversation. You know damned well he's about to say and now the time for conversation is over, and we must pass legislation. Before, he was all quick, shut up, it's an emergency, pass the legislation. People freaked, so then he deemed the period of freakage part of the conversation, and there, it has occurred, and now: shut up, pass the legislation.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."Read the whole thing. The entire pattern of how Obama has 'conversations' about Obamacare, cap and tax and so many other issues on the domestic front - in which only those who agree with him are allowed to speak - fits right in with the way he has approached the Middle East since Day One.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:35 AM
2 Comments:
Don't forget how Obama praised the "robust debate" in Iran after the election of Ahmadinejad.
Obama has inverted the normal meaning of every-day language - and to make it worse, he denies that he inverted anything. To call the practice of his Administration Orwellian is giving it far too much credit.
Hopenchange, any one?
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