Trump Administration Initiates Official Government Censorship
The question we must ask ourselves now is this: how do we recover from this accelerating assault on freedom?
The Washington Post has reported that the Trump Administration has forbid the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to use certain words in its budget documents:
Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
If this is true -- I use that caveat only because I try to maintain objectivity in the face of so much "fake news" originating with this Republican-enabled Administration -- my thoughts again turn to one of my favorite authors, George Orwell.
Back in February of this year I published WWOD - What Would Orwell Do? which was later republished as What Would George Orwell Say About Donald Trump? Here is a quote from the original article:
My guess is that, were Orwell writing today about current U.S. politics he would be acutely sensitive to hypocrisy and language manipulation from both sides of the aisle. An easy target for him would be how often politicians lie and how often their followers swallow or overlook their lies. Most likely he would be merciless in his pillorying an easy target like Trump. I’d like to think he would also target the complicity of the “mainstream media” and its misguided attempts at "balance."
What Orwell would be crystal clear about is that, at the end of the day, politicians are all about power and how that power is wielded. Had he attended Trump outdoor rallies during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and witnessed how Trump whipped up crowds into a frenzy of seething hatred of Hillary and the media, he may have been reminded of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies and 1984’s "two minute hates."
I think that Orwell would see what is being done at the CDC as emblematic of what all totalitarian regimes do in order to build and maintain power: they must control how language is used.
Without clear and accurate language there, simply speaking, can be no democracy as citizens will eventually only have one version of events to communicate with. Reducing the number of words that can be used in official and historic documents, so imaginatively illustrated in Orwell's novel 1984, is a direct and potentially effective path to government control.
My guess is that the governments of countries like Russia and China will shrug at this news; that's how they have always operated. Now, though, they can truthfully point to the U.S. as being completely hypocritical if it again attempts to spread its "values" around the globe.
I am at a loss to know what to do about this given Republican control of the US House and Senate and will be watching very carefully to see which US officials make a statement about this policy.
I am sure that some will explicitly oppose such government censorship and believe that my own Senators and my own Congressman here in Virginia will oppose this move.
Those that remain silent? I shall do whatever I can to see they are removed from office.
The most insidious group, though, will be the "everyone does it" crowd, starting with those who try to excuse this Trumpian policy by equating it to something Obama or some other Administration did. I can safely predict right now that there will be references to Lincoln's relationship to the press during the US Civil War as an excuse for this censorship. That such references will emanate from what is commonly labelled the "conservative" press will be a signal of how low traditional concepts of democracy have sunk.
The reality now is that the language obfuscation initiated by Trump will not only reduce personal freedom but will also harm the health and welfare of the American people. No amount of excuses like "everyone does it" or "but what about X" will change this. People will die because of their actions.
The question we must ask ourselves now is this: how do we recover from this accelerating assault on freedom?
Copyright (c) 2017 by Dennis D. McDonald
