Trump 2.0 is the Orwellian world that was predicted, in suprising detail. In the novel 1984, the Ministry of Truth was busy refining the dictionary. Language refects culture and so special words were cobbled together like Newspeak and Doublethink to describe the totalitarian future world. And then there was Oldspeak, a label that was applied to older words which were deemed out of touch. “Science” was one of those words. The dictionary of 1984 was shrinking, rather than expanding, as humans and their ideas were also encouraged to shrink and toe a totalitarian line.
Once you’ve read the handbook for totalitarianism that 1984 is, nothing in Trump world will surprise you that much. Frankly, I’m waiting for the Youth Corps to appear, to report their MAGA parents to the Thought Police. Although people like you and me, who write and read these blogs, will long be gone before that gets going.
The Trump administration has a list of 199 woke words and phrases. You might want to check it out. These include Gulf Of Mexico (he’s really attached to that one) and LGBT and LGBTQ. I guess you could try to refer to that group as LG and see if you could get away with it. But what caught my eye is “equal” and “equality.” “Equal” is paired with the word “opportunity” so does that mean that equal alone can stand? Gee, I hope so. Because otherwise we’re going to have to shred the Declaration Of Independence and the Gettysburg address, both of which state the thought that all men are created equal. By the way, “Men” made the cut but not “women.” Women is a taboo word. So is female. So what will we call ourselves in Trumpspeak, Un-men? Or we just vanish altogether in this brave new world and become Unpersons, like in the novel?
The Times’ list of Trump’s banned words, the paper said, is necessarily incomplete. It does not, for instance, include “Enola Gay,” banned as part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s DEI purge for the hilarious reason that it included the offending word “gay.” (The dropping of the first atom bomb has long been controversial, but never for being woke.)
The Trump ban isn’t absolute. Some words and phrases, the Times reported, are barred outright from the federal government’s websites and government-funded school curricula, but others may be used with extreme discretion. Where encountered, this latter group is automatically flagged for review not only on government websites and in school curricula but also in grant proposals and contracts. As I understand it, when applying for a government grant it’s OK to say, “Give me some fuckin’ money” but not OK to say, “Give me some money to study trauma suffered by at-risk minorities,” because “trauma,” “at-risk,” and “minorities” are on the forbidden list.
Liberals are of course no strangers to playing Word Cop, and indeed in February 2021 the Times reported that the Biden administration nixed “illegal alien” and required that the word “tribal,” as applied to Native Americans, be spelled with a capital T. But these were mostly reversals of Trump policies that exiled phrases like “undocumented immigrant” and “climate change.” The phrase “climate change” is now back on Trump’s taboo list. With “undocumented immigrant,” it’s a bit more complicated. Both that phrase and “illegal immigrant” can no longer be used because the word “immigrant” is forbidden. Is that to encourage usage of the nasty pejorative “illegals”? Also, Trumpies, despite their own manifest tribalism, may not say “Tribal,” even with an unassuming lower-case t. […]
“Men” is not on the taboo list, in deference to the political ascendency of the Manosphere. “Men who have sex with men” is on the taboo list, even though we have persuasive evidence that at least some within this homophobic subculture are gay. “Men who have sex with men” is a circumlocution for “male homosexual,” which, happily, is not on the taboo list; neither is “gay.” The Trumpies, pete Hegseth, appear to tolerate gay culture somewhat, so long as it excludes transexuals.
The terms “equality” and “inequality” are banned. May I remind our president that the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address both state that all men are created equal? Will Trump functionaries yank these foundational documents from the National Archives and Library of Congress? Variations on the word “equal” appear seven times in the Constitution. To be on the safe side, perhaps Trump will remove all three to that john at Mar-a-Lago.
Definitely, let’s put the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg address in the same bathroom at Mar-a-Lago where all the Top Secret files were. The idea certainly doesn’t have the shock value today that it had a couple of years ago.
Some of the words on the Times list are just baffling. The Trump administration won’t let anybody say “prostitute”? That sounds like a Biden holdover; the left is the only precinct I know where the word “prostitute” is taboo. You’re supposed to say “sex worker,” but that’s out because the Trump Word Cops put “sex” on their taboo list. I guess they’ll have to go back to “courtesan” or “tart.” Returning to the question of how a woke taboo became a Trump taboo: Perhaps what Trump intends to prevent is usage of the word “prostitute” as a verb to describe the groveling behavior of Lindsey Graham, JD Vance, Mike Johnson, and so many other Republican politicians who once scorned Trump.
Or maybe Donald didn’t like all the times that the word was used in the same sentence with Melania, when speaking of her nude modeling career or pre-Trump life. Just a guess. For the life of me, I cannot conceive why this administration would object to the word “prostitute” other than that it describes the entire administration. And maybe it is as simple as that.
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Well, if the Drumpfsters plan on banning “female” and “women,” then how can Drumpf and his evil cabal get up and “defend women’s sports?” How can they defend “traditional marriage” as their preferred form since, as Drumpf himself has DECLARED, there are ONLY “male AND female, men AND women?” Do these morons plan on going through the Bible itself and deleting all uses of either “women” or “female” in their rush to rework the language? And, weren’t they just out there ranting about gender markers on passports and other OFFICIAL documents–that they can ONLY use “M” and “F” (“f” standing for “female”)?
It really seems like they’re being very selective in their application of when and where they’re choosing to ban things
If I were Melania, I would be making my own plans to return to Slovenia (or some other destination willing to host her) because she has to know that #DrowsyDonnie NEVER keeps his promises–not even those in writing (such as the contract we all believe she signed, and renews on a periodic basis, that keeps her married to the overstuffed blowhard). And with all these changes to language that the Drumpf cabal keeps making, how long do you suppose it’ll be before women lose other rights, like charging spousal rape or having their own banking accounts or owning property in their own right or divorcing pigs?
Felon’s court trial included prostitute several times? Must have hurt his fee fees. Is rapist or orange on the list?
Considering that men and women react to diseases and medications very differently, this is goddamn dangerous. Are we still allowed to.mention PMS, menstruation and menopause? How about pregnancy, RH factors,.Csections,labor, delivery?
Ma! Get my gun, the revenuers are coming. They got the thought police with ’em too!