 | Dysviz is a 61 year old guy from Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada. |
- Jul 2, 4:15pm
- The far-right's patriotism problem...
Obama's Patriotism Problem atlargely.com/2008/07/the-far-rights.html [atlargely.com/2008/07/the-far-rights.html]
Jonah Goldberg continues to demonstrate how the right-wing is manipulating public discourse in order to confuse and conflate patriotism with rabid nationalism. Make no mistake, this is a coordinated effort to deliberately replace substance with its symbol, meaning with an emblem, and essentially strip language down to nothing but trinkets.
This is not a new phenomenon of course. We have seen such careful linguistic choreography before, when past authoritarian ideologues have distorted language in order to stifle individualism and dissenting views.
For a people to be controlled, they must first be robbed of honest discourse and open debate. Distorting language and stripping it of real and honest meaning is the first tool and the best mechanism for transforming a democracy into an authoritarian state. An informed populace is a dangerous populace.
Symbols, however, and false-definitions can provide the appearance of information without the truth of it. Ideas, substance and meaning - all things for which a symbol is simply a representation and a word simply a type of symbol - are far more difficult to control. There is nuance in individual ideas. There are shades of agreement and disagreement and a whole spectrum of understanding and believing. Such a complex system cannot be controlled, and therefore, must be reduced to only its symbol and then distorted.
Symbols and words-as-slogans can be mass produced, mass delivered, and altered from their original meaning, until the symbol becomes its own thing and the substance on which it is based is entirely lost.
A word's usage too can be tweaked through false definitions and repetition, until it too becomes entirely the opposite of its actual meaning.
Patriotism is the word that authoritarians most like to distort and Goldberg demonstrates - once again - just how this distortion is created.
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