Hold the fireworks until the matter of Obama’s snooping is resolved

The 4^th of July is a good time for Americans to consider the Obama Administration’s snooping practices. Anyone who has read Orwell’s 1984 has to be queasy abou the surveillance of our phone calls and emails by our Big Brother, the NSA, and the recently breaking news of America’s spying on European friends.

Scott Lehigh at the Boston Globe refers to Obama’s “ham-handling of snooping,” but as Lehigh’s op-ed immediately reveals, the matter is much more serious than our president’s inadequate communication skills:

If ever there were a matter where the Obama administration needs to get its act together, it’s the National Security Agency’s extensive surveillance activities.

Friendly European capitals are up in arms over allegations that the United Stated bugged European Union offices in New York and Washington and employed an assortment of electronic eavesdropping techniques to spy on — um, monitor the communications of — the embassies of France, Italy, Greece, and other allies.

The American public, meanwhile, remains sharply divided about the NSA’s domestic snooping. Or what they know of it, anyway; we still haven’t had a clear, credible explanation of exactly what the agency is doing. 

Meanwhile, the administration has sent a number of contradictory and counterproductive signals about NSA-contractor-turned-leaker-extraordinaire Edward Snowden.

As former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden observed on Sunday on “Face the Nation,” the NSA controversy raises a crucial question: How does a free society conduct a necessary dialogue about its government’s secret activities?

Read more:

Echoes of Orwell in 2008 Campaign

I’m done scanning the online media this morning, both the mainstream and the blogosphere. Completing this daily ritual required deciphering several recurring words and phrases in the 2008 campaign coverage. Below are two that I find most offensive:

Triangulation: currently used as a pejorative in attacking an opponent. According to Wikipedia it means “being above and between the left and the right sides of the political spectrum.”

In other words, this made-up word describes the process of seeking common (sometimes higher) ground with the opposition party in order to actually solve a problem – the only way Congress ever accomplishes anything.

Playing the victim: a pseudo-psychological term used in family systems therapy, which was developed in the treatment of alcoholics and other addicts and their families.

The phrase has often been used in politics by the extreme Right to dismiss complaints of victims of discrimination, physical abuse, and hate crimes. Lately, the extreme Left has latched onto it to join the Right in bashing Hillary Clinton.

The above tedious exercise prompted me to re-read George Orwell’s 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language in which Orwell wrote, “It {language} becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts…to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”

Orwell listed a few rules that today’s bloggers, reporters, and pundits should revisit at least once a week, especially during a political campaign:

i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech, which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Rule (vi) reminds me that just this morning I came across some pretty barbaric statements offered as political commentary by respected blogs and MSM Web sites.

Maybe in a future post, I’ll use Orwell’s tips on language to analyze some of the Bush Administration’s more blatant verbal distortions, e.g., the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, and “interrogation enhancement.”