Have Republicans, Trump Created The ‘Nightmarish’ George Orwellian Foreshadowed Party?
Is it true that the Republicans and the GOP establishment have morphed into a party of avoidance when confronted with political correctness? According to a Washington Post opinion piece, the [Republican] Party of Lincoln, with Donald Trump as its face, has become the thing George Orwell foreshadowed decades ago.
Political pundits say Republicans, led by Trump, have resorted to using demagoguery, cut-and-run campaign tactics, and double standards when attacking one another or Democratic rivals. When confronted with questions about responses to a litany of topics (Putin, refugees, the economy, Syria, sexism, taxes, etc.) or after fact-checking, the writer says GOP candidates often pull the “political correct” card as a deflection strategy.
A quarter century ago, the term emerged on university settings during social protests and debates about a plethora of topics involving sectors of society across political, economic, and racial divides. Allegedly, the Republican Party candidates used it as weapon against liberals, who were accused of using it to bolster arguments and set the tones of debates and party agendas.
Trump evoked the term when Fox News‘ Megyn Kelly probed him about his offensive comments towards women. The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said.
Check out our new #opinion section! // #DonaldTrump: it’s not about #PoliticalCorrectness https://t.co/PCE9aKxLEc pic.twitter.com/RM6yAf1K6c
— InternationalPostMag (@intern_post_mag) December 22, 2015
Dr. Ben Carson cautioned over what he believes is a conspiracy “to give away American values and principles for the sake of political correctness” when he was confronted about statements he had made about his past.
Rick Santorum sat down recently with CNN‘s John Berman, who queried him about Trump’s controversial proposal to ban Muslims from the United States. Instead, he bunted and offered a cursory response. “Republicans are sick and tired of the political correctness that we can’t talk about this. You can’t say the word ‘Muslim.'”
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie responded in kind with a dodgy maneuver. “Some people believe that borders have become outdated. They don’t believe in nation-states. They believe in a post-American world…. We have to speak out against it even when it becomes politically incorrect to do so.”
Ironically, the GOP candidates for the 2016 elections are using it to attack the media’s indictment of its collective ideology, perhaps in favor, directly or indirectly, of the Democratic Party establishment. Slate calls members of today’s GOP “machines.”
The writer pointed out how Republicans have adopted a stance that either attacks the establishment for being political correct, employs the use of euphemisms, or lobs accusations of conspiracy to tip debates in their favor. He cites Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” to show how the current field of GOP candidates, whether deliberately done or not, use “bad” language that suits their situation, while not making fundamental sense.
George Orwell’s Why I Write… “Political language is designed to… #Trump #fox and the list goes on… pic.twitter.com/Z7w10mDWq0
— 5th Biz (@5thBiz) December 11, 2015
“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has the curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine.”
The writer touches on points that, to a degree, are rooted in sound judgment. On the contrary, the wholesale indictment of Trump and Republicans in general assumes that Democratic counterparts are free of such missteps or innate self-indulgence. In many ways, the inherent characteristics of a two-party system compel members to inflate reality, shape truisms, and use political correctness as a weapon to ally against a person who employs same.
[Image via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com]
