Community organizer and left-wing social activist Saul Alinsky wrote, in his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals,” that “he who controls the language controls the masses.” Alinsky, whose work profoundly influenced at least one notable fellow Chicagoan, Barack Obama, was in that quip channeling George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel, “1984.” “Newspeak,” the language of Orwell’s fictional single-political party superstate, was a tool devised for monitoring the people’s communications, prosecuting “thoughtcrimes,” and ultimately controlling and dictating the people’s very beliefs.
Conservatives have taken pleasure in poking fun at the modern Left’s “Orwellian” tendencies — perhaps too much, actually, as overuse of the accusation has had the effect of limiting its potency. But as the woke ideology metastasizes within the American Left like the cancer it is, and as censors increasingly clamp down on anything sniffing of dissent to the regime’s orthodoxy, it is now clear that we are in a new age of Orwellianism. In this new age, the regime and its enforcers pursue the suffusion of its orthodoxy at any cost, gaslighting dissenters into not believing their own lying eyes.
This week, new governmental data revealed that the American economy, measured by gross domestic product, contracted for the second straight quarter. That was, up until perhaps a week ago, the universally accepted definition of what constitutes a “recession.” This was not a partisan issue; indeed, well-known liberal, Democratic Party economists have frequently defined recession in precisely these terms. Back in 2008, President Joe Biden’s current National Economic Council director, Brian Deese, stated: “Of course economists have a technical definition of recession, which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.” And in 2019, top Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein said that a “recession” is “defined as two consecutive quarters of declining growth.”
Democrats are now singing a different tune. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has stubbornly refused to concede that America is now in an economic recession. Deese apparently also disagrees with his old self of 2008: Following the release of the data evincing the second straight quarter of economic contraction, Deese stipulated that we are “certainly in a transition,” but also added that “virtually nothing signals that this period … is recessionary.” The ruse is transparent and obvious to the point of comedy. As famed investor David Sacks tweeted: “A lot of people are wondering about the definition of recession. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth if a Republican is president. The definition is far more complicated and unknowable if a Democrat is president.”
Democrats similarly seem interested in changing the definition of “inflation,” which currently sits at four-decade highs and is disproportionately responsible for Biden’s dismal job approval ratings and Democrats’ unfavorable political outlook this fall. The widely accepted economic definition of inflation is when there is too much money chasing too few goods. The way to tamp down inflation is thus to limit the money supply and/or increase the production of goods.
Just this week, around the same time as when the U.S. formally entered a recession, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) finally reached an agreement on a version of the White House’s long-sought after Build Back Better domestic initiative. But Democrats renamed the bill: It is now not called Build Back Better but the Inflation Reduction Act. And the revised bill includes new government expenditures to the tune of nearly $400 billion in energy- and climate-related spending. Authorizing such a fiscal boondoggle is the precise opposite of limiting the money supply. It is the logical equivalent of trying to put out a fire with a blowtorch.
Remarkably, it is the same ideologues who are eager to change the well-accepted definitions of “recession” and “inflation” who remain perplexed as to what exactly a “woman” is. In March, then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, pointedly refused to define what a “woman” is. Her excuse was that she is “not a biologist.” Related, in Matt Walsh’s excellent new documentary, “What Is a Woman?,” the myriad “gender studies” professors and gender ideology-bewitched “doctors” interviewed by Walsh invariably define a “woman,” in circular fashion, as being “someone who identifies as a woman.”
Whether it is a Supreme Court justice herself or the vogue flatulence that now constitutes “gender studies” in the American academy, then, the Left is incapable of defining what a “woman” is. That confusion appears to be ubiquitous: Lia Thomas, the biological man who has been wreaking havoc in women’s collegiate swimming, was even nominated for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year award. Alinsky would be proud of such an imperious enforcement of regime-approved orthodoxy; “he who controls the language controls the masses,” after all.
The Left’s fundamental problem is that its haughtiness, fervor and zeal for gaslighting us sane Americans is belied by its unpopularity. It is curious that the Left can talk and act this way when its most notable avatar, Biden, is as severely unpopular as he currently is. Perhaps the Left will be chastened by its impending November defeats at the ballot box. But don’t bet on it.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
“What Is a Woman?,” the myriad “gender studies” professors and gender ideology-bewitched “doctors” interviewed by Walsh invariably define a “woman,” in circular fashion, as being “someone who identifies as a woman.”
I am a White male. Can I identify as being a Black woman with 12 children and collect welfare, food stamps, free housing, free medical, dental, free phone, free internet, free cable TV, free designer clothing and join the NAACP??
Saul Alinsky wrote, in his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals,” that “he who controls the language controls the masses.”,,,,,,,you mean the book he dedicated;
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.
— SAUL ALINSKY
It’s been hell to pay ever since his two Presidential aspiring Chicago students, Barack Obama who won his own kingdom, and Hillary Clinton who In 1969, wrote a 92-page senior thesis for Wellesley College about the views advocated by community organizer Saul Alinsky, titled “There Is Only the Fight . . . An Analysis of the Alinsky Mode”,,,tried to steal her kingdom, both who succeeded in turning America into an Orwellian Socialist Animal Farm of Alinsky political doublespeak where the useful idiots all bow to their new secular masters, where “In God we Trust” is replaced and changed into “The Devil is in our details”
Nice one Illum..
Response To inluminatuo Post.
” Saul Alinsky wrote, in his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals,”
” SAUL ALINSKY ”
” It’s been hell to pay ever since his two Presidential aspiring Chicago students, Barack Obama who won his own kingdom, and Hillary Clinton who In 1969, wrote a 92-page senior thesis for Wellesley College …”
Two Sycophants, Democrats, Barack H. Obama, And Former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, Followed Their Natural Hero, Saul Alinsky.
I was handed a copy of Alinsky’s book while a junior in college and laughed that anybody would be stupid enough to buy this ****…. I re-read it during the “Pandemic” and realized the Alinskyites have won the battle for now. btw: Obama wasn’t the only disciple of Alinsky; one myopic, ambitious law student named Hillary Rodham was an acquaintance of Saul and was rumored to be offered a job by him.
It has taken 50 years or more of gradual infection; it is imperative we find a way to kill this disease before it kills free society.
It’s not a disease. ITS A RABID CANCER..
Without having to resort to an internal civil war, which is always a possibility, we need to purge all left wing liberal democrats from our government , starting with this November and again in November of 2024. Unless we can accomplish this they will destroy what we now call the United States of America.
There’s days i unfortunately feel/think, even if we DO some how win back office, we won’t be able to get rid of all rot without some civil war like event…
Comment to Gus Richards Response
I’m Afraid That Your Right in What You Posted, The Leftist democrat Socialists Of America Have Taken Control of our Educational System and Our Youth and Thus Control of The Government over Time. Albert Einstein Said This, ” Blind Belief in Authority Is the Greatest Enemy of Truth.”
As was said in the 40s.. Give me control over the youth, and the seeds i sow will grow into such roots, as you won’t ever be able to get rid of..
THAT IS LIterally what the commies have done with our indoctrination system..
Saul Alinsky, the Democrats, the criminal Biden crime family and the Obama’s are all communists, they are all racists and they are all George Orwell’s 1984. The problem is, the RINOS are complicit with the communist Democrats in making our Country into Venezuela / communist North Korea.
How do you change— change the U.S. from a capitalist system’,
Into a Socialistic Democrat Party government controlled system. ??
1. Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people.
2. Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).
3. Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children and young people learn in schools and colleges.
4. Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.
5. Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take from the wealthy and give to poor. Until there are only the poor.
6. Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level.
7. Gun Control — Remove the ability for the people to defend themselves from the Government. (“Socialist Democrat Party State”)
8. Poverty — Increase the poverty level as high as possible. Poor people are easier to control and will keep socialists in power if they are providing everything for them to live. Encourage, protect and support multi-millions of illegal immigrants who are poor, uneducated and disease ridden.
9. Allow illegal immigrants to vote and hold government positions.
Do these look like the tactics of the Democrat Party??
This traitorous, dishonorable, dishonest, immoral, socialist Democrat Party has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!
Adolf Hitler realized the omportance of educating a child through public education when he said, ” When an opponent declairs, i will not come over to your side: i clamly say, your child belongs to us already….what are you? You will pass on. Your descendents ,however, now stand in the new camp, in a short time they will know nothing else but this new community. Leftist socialiist democrat teachers have indocrinated our youth with their leftist ideology until they know no other camp, this is what they have instilled in America’s youth.
EFF the commie ********!
A nice Judeo-Bolshevik American. Strange that he lives in American and again the premise of social justice comes in play. Rules of radicals are supposed to help the masses? Radicals spend their life thinking on the way life isn’t for them and put it on the masses with words of control. How many have struggled through and are still in “poverty”?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
-Hannah Arendt-
Democrats see everything as subjective, how they feel things should be
(not as they are) their whole world is subjective. Not Objective.
To Democrats, Gender, Truth, Facts, Reality and History are all irrelevant, If the Democrats do not WANT to believe them or they disagree with them. Democrats will just make up their own, Gender, Truth, Facts, Reality and History to fit what they WANT to believe or fits into the Con or Deception that they are running at the time.
You sure Hannah Arendt said that? I’d swear it was ********** senile Joe.