Democracy. Power and entitlement. Rights and responsibilities. Think you understand them? Think again, for the language of political rhetoric stretches, bends and compresses these familiar terms out of all recognition and meaning.
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It's been a long time since I read 1984. It may be high time I dusted off my copy and re-read it. My memory of Orwell's doublethink is gentler than the current political doublespeak practice in which politicians contradict themselves within the same sentence.
Could it be that today's crop of voters' darlings are so busy multitasking, they have neither the time nor the inclination to give us the courtesy of waiting until the next paragraph to repudiate the heartfelt beliefs3 they so recently held? Or could it be simply that millionaires don't care. Say it aloud -- there's a nice ring to it.
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You'd think foul mouthed bully Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), star the BBC's riotously funny political comedy, The Thick of It was back to his old tricks, ranting and screaming into their Ministerial earpieces. Give it to this Chief Whip, he's certainly never boring, but then not every actor who has his own swearing consultant.
A true monster, Malcolm personifies the nightmare boss. Utterly controlling, he's loyal to the firm. Get in his way, and you'll wish you were never born. A great guy3 to watch when you think those in government have it too easy. Anywhere else, and they'd pull out the straight jacket, lock him up, and throw away the key.
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It's unfortunate that many of us on this side of the Atlantic were only introduced to In the Loop's Malcolm. By then, the vicissitudes of political life had reduced him to attack puppy from rottweiler status. He would have been better off leaving Washington and visiting Chicago, had he truly wished to be in the loop. I've been.
Outside the political arena, English has difficulty handling the verbal volte-face. But in that rarefied air, the threat/opportunity of an upcoming election is always on the agenda. Government rhetoric has morphed into one incessant, neverending poll, twisting and turning in the statistical wind like a scarecrow in a hurricane. With elected officials' and their wannabes' spin doctors in lockstep, verbal gymnastics is the perennial prescription.
The adage "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time" now has a new twist. Tellingly, the phrase is attributed to PT Barnum (circus attribution) and Abraham Lincoln (government).
Today's politicians focus on placating a statistically3 significant portion of the population all of the time. It doesn't need a blamestorming session to skewer the guilty party. The problem is, we plebs can't make up our collective minds. Or so goes the blame-the-victim, ever-ready scapegoat, line of thinking3. Hence the voting process in many countries, including Canada, is more a revolving door spin, than a four-year entrenched position.
More often than not, it's Animal Farm all over again1, and we end up as Turkeys Voting for Christmas2.
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Notes
1 According to the pigs, some are more equal than others. Apologies to Babe Ruth.
2 A multitasker of a phrase, this is the title of a BBC Radio two-parter showing how voters are being tricked into voting in their own worst interests. The pitch? Sincerity.
3 T-shirt link make be broken. Don't fret, it's just a ph(r)ase. It's out of order, too.
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