Spinning our hearts and minds

We think in language. Language significantly affects the content of our thoughts. Thus, reshaping popular language provides a powerful tool to "win the hearts and minds" of the public. Political conservatives figured this out decades ago, but no one has employed language to influence public opinion more intentionally or cleverly than the Bush administration.

The largely successful practice of naming things what they are not in order to garner public support remains generally unquestioned by major media. The newsrooms pick up the new terms as fast as The Heritage Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Bush administration can spin them out -- as if black has always been white, as if fish have always been able to fly. Surveys show, incidentally, that the Heritage and American Enterprise institutes are the most-often-cited think tanks in the American media.

This lexicon includes old and new examples of this political mind-bending art. The newer the terms are, the more clever they are -- and the more Orwellian. That's a credit to the creativeness of current conservative strategists and wordsmiths.

Journalists and editors -- particularly those in the broadcast media -- need to notice how they are being used to create new language. The general public should be mindful that these terms are being created with our minds in mind, and to think about how and why the new language is being used. Democratic Party leaders need to wake up and pay attention. They need not mimic the canniness, but they certainly need to speak out and call it what it is: sinister. Here is a sampling:

Anti-American describes someone who suggests perhaps the United States is losing popularity, trust and allies around the world as a consequence of its own words and deeds.

Big government describes any public program intended to benefit the poor and disenfranchised or to protect consumers, workers or the environment. This term does not apply to government snooping into your private affairs ("Patriot Act") or to war spending regardless of the amount. It does, however, apply to public-interest regulation; hence, "deregulation."

Celebrity, a derogatory term, describes an entertainer who speaks out on behalf of a progressive cause. This term is not applied to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston or to Playboy Playmates(TM) who promote the Iraq war on Fox News.

Civil service reform means "flexibility" to replace civil service protection with cronyism and patronage.

Class warfare lets you know what Democrats are up to when they call attention to the social and economic consequences of administration policies.

Clear Skies Act, perhaps the most Orwellian of all these ingenious terms, describes the administration's intention to increase pollution discharges from older power and industrial plants.

Coalition of the willing describes the United States, Britain and a handful of their client states -- not to be confused with the rest of the world.

Conservative describes what was once regarded as right-wing extremist. See also "moderate."

Death tax describes what has been called the estate or inheritance tax since 1916.

Deregulation describes the results of corporate commandeering of public-interest regulatory agencies, such as Federal Communications Commission measures to allow increasing concentration of broadcast media ownership by fewer and larger corporations. It stems from the notion that what's good for big business is good for you and that faceless profiteers have your concerns at heart more than public servants.

Double taxation of dividends justifies a scheme to exempt the wealthiest from paying taxes on their income from investments in corporations that pay minimal, if any, taxes because of myriad revenue-code loopholes.

Edit describes what the White House does to reports from the Environmental Protection Agency (deleting a scientific summary of global warming research) and from intelligence agencies (exaggerating claims regarding weapons of mass destruction).

Family Time Flexibility, the name given to House Resolution 1119, which will authorize employers to require compulsory overtime for hourly employees regardless of the employee's family situation, with payment in compensation time (not wages), regardless of the employee's economic situation.

Freedom of the press rationalizes deregulation of major media use of publicly owned airwaves. This is about as brilliant as wordsmithery can get, don't you think?

Freedom fighter is an obsolete term. For 70 years, Chechnyans were freedom fighters. Now they are terrorists -- an example of the alignment (and language) shifts in the New World Order.

Free trade has come to mean "Let's gut labor laws and environmental protection in order to maximize profits of international corporations." It accompanies the notion that having more and cheaper stuff to buy will enhance your quality of life, presuming you still have a job. Most "free trade" schemes promote the transfer of sovereignty from states and nations to unelected arbiters in organizations such as the World Trade Organization and North American Free Trade Agreement. Obviously, these are not your grandfather's conservatives!

Liberal media bias promotes a fiction created to mask the fact that the news media are being acquired by increasingly larger conglomerates that have either rightist agendas or no taste for news (instead preferring marketing-driven news departments). This concept also engenders the absurd notion that CNN is a liberal alternative to MSNBC and Fox.

Moderate is used to describe what once was called conservative.

No Child Left Behind names a scheme established to justify transferring public money to private (including "faith-based") schools.

Partial-birth abortion -- a political concept, not a medical one -- describes late-term abortion.

Patriot, as cynically used by the president and attorney general, describes someone who does not employ critical-thinking skills learned in school. The No Child Left Behind program -- incidentally or not -- will transfer increased school resources from curricula that inculcate thinking to testing-preparation curricula, thereby educating more patriots.

Peacekeeping force describes what would be called "occupation force" by any other nation or at any other time in world history.

Political correctness ridicules the idea that people ought to treat one another with decency and respect. The cleverness of this sarcastic phrase is that it does not apply to this politically correct conservative lexicon. If one watches the national dialogue closely, unilateral international aggression is more "politically correct" than programs for the poor.

Privatization justifies the notion that corporations are more likely to serve the public interest than publicly owned utilities, schools and prisons.

Right to life means prohibition of abortion for any reason, including saving the life of the mother.

States' rights apply only when there is a Democratic majority in Congress. Today, the phrase is conveniently dropped from conservative lexicon as the Bush administration exerts increasing control over local libraries, local school boards, medical marijuana and holocaust survivors' insurance in California and assisted suicide in Oregon.

Support the troops, a brilliant concept, suggests that if you question foreign policy or war policy, you have the deaths of our finest young men and women in uniform on your hands. Objective: to stifle public dissent.

Tax and spend, ignoring the successful deficit reduction of the previous administration, describes what Democrats do. Borrow and spend, a Republican strategy currently being exercised at unparalleled heights, is politically correct and unworthy of critique. As we said before, these are not your grandfather's conservatives.

Tax rebate facilitates the largest vote-buying scheme in history, whereby all taxpayers and their children and their children's children, regardless of political persuasion, pay for an increased federal deficit in order to fund checks from the Bush administration to taxpayers.

Un-American describes people critical of administration policy. This collected lexicon, for instance, is un-American. So are the Dixie Chicks.

Vouchers, expected to be issued as a result of No Child Left Behind testing, will authorize the transfer of your tax dollars to private (often "faith-based") schools.

War on terrorism justifies pretty much anything, such as opening the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploitation. Opposing any such measure means you are "un-American." If you have reasons, you're "anti-American."

Please keep these terms in mind as you turn on the evening news. Keep a notepad handy. Collect your own. It's fun.

Tito Titus is a Seattle artist and retired environmental hearings officer. Georgie Bright Kunkel and Daniel S. Perry assisted him in preparing this lexicon.

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