Winston’s job was obliterating facts. Another character obliterated language.
On a previous post — the one about the “thumb-up” emoji — a reader gently mocked the apparent silliness of the topic. I chose not to be offended, but to enjoy it by riffing on his point.
After all, I sort of did write that because I was looking for a quick-and-easy thing to post about, to assuage my guilt about not posting more often. And, I told myself, not everything has to be as long and complicated as the post that preceded that “silly” one (1,736 words, yikes!).
But… ultimately, I don’t consider the subject trivial. To explain…
Years ago, when Umberto Eco (the Italian semiotician and author of The Name of the Rose) was still alive, I saw something he wrote (or perhaps he was just being quoted) in a magazine. He predicted that our species was moving back toward nonverbal (or perhaps you would say post-literate) modes of communication. And this was years before emojis, in the ’90s or maybe the ’80s.
Anyway, I think of his prediction frequently these days (as I’ve mentioned before in a related rant). My question about the thumb-up emoji arises in that context.
My concern is that I see our ability to communicate flattening, becoming one-dimensional. The English language (the only one in which I am sufficiently literate to be able to perceive subtle distinctions) is amazingly versatile, flexible and able to communicate an apparent a galaxy of things with a single word, depending upon its context.
But I’ve seen a marked tendency to reduce in recent years. Sixteen year ago, I wrote about the absurdity of having my wife ask me why I was not her “friend” on Facebook. But I didn’t consider my wife absurd for wanting to include me in something she was enjoying. My problem was Facebook’s reduction of human relationships to one word. On that medium, you were either a “friend” or you were not, (which makes sense only if you haven’t advanced past the kindergarten level of social interaction). Obviously, my wife was and is much more than that to me. And yet in the years since then Facebook, in its hyperbureaucratic, ones-and-zeroes-obsessed manner, has dutifully labelled her, my parents, my children, grandchildren, cousins, acquaintances, and people I didn’t even know but approved to be polite (and no, I don’t do that any more) have all become my “friends,” without any elaboration or explanation or qualification or enhancement — without any of the things that make life rich and full.
I am reminded of the Newspeak Dictionary from Orwell’s 1984. Each edition is smaller, thinner, containing fewer words. The idea is to reduce the number of concepts a human is capable of generating or communicating, so that ideas that are troublesome to Big Brother’s state simply don’t arise or spread. As the dialectic of Oceania proceeds, language gets flatter and flatter. A thing that is in some way very, very bad is “doubleplusungood,” rather than horrible, evil, shocking, abominable, mortifying, putrid, appalling, disgusting, or … well, you get the idea, comrade.
When I first read that as a kid, being a word guy, I found the idea of such a dictionary, steadily shrinking, more terrifying than what Winston found in Room 101. Although what he encountered there was pretty doubleplusungood as well.
Combined with the communication breakdowns to which I refer, this flattening of the language — Facebook calling everyone you know your “friend,” and the apps that tell us the many-sided “thumbs-up” simply means “like,” is ominous. Creepy. Threatening.
As these modes become common, even universal, we become less intelligent. And humanity sinks into the mire. It’s one of the reasons that “Idiocracy” arrived centuries earlier than the silly film predicted…
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Turning the Corner (Again) — Orwell, Hemingway, and the Long Goodbye
August 1, 1:26 a.m.
Dear Brad — and Admiral Warthen,
I know your father was a Captain—an O-6 in the U.S. Navy—and since his passing, I have no doubt he’s been promoted in full honors to Admiral Warthen in heaven. The kind of steady leadership this country so desperately lacks right now, we can still feel from those who’ve gone before us. His legacy lives on in your clarity, Brad—and that means something.
I’m wide awake, having just made a significant amount of money for the day. For that, I give thanks.
Give us this day our daily bread means a lot more to me than it used to. It’s no longer just about food. It’s about provision—being sustained emotionally, financially, and spiritually for just one more day. And that’s enough. Amen.
Brad, your reflections on Orwell have stayed with me. Newspeak. Doublespeak. The slow erosion of meaning until people forget what it even feels like to speak plainly. Orwell didn’t miss the mark—he was just off by about 40 years. The surveillance, the propaganda, the memory holes are all here. Just digitized.
When I finally read Homage to Catalonia—long after Animal Farm and 1984—I saw the man behind the myth. Orwell wasn’t speculating. He was reporting from the fire. Betrayed by those he fought beside, he still told the truth. That’s what made him different.
And that’s where I draw a line between Orwell and Hemingway. I know Hemingway is revered, but I never could stomach him. His work felt performative—more about showcasing pain than confronting it. Where Orwell went to war against tyranny with a pen sharp enough to draw blood, Hemingway turned inward and let his wounds define him.
Now here I am, saying goodbye to my family for the fifth time. I leave the Philippines on August 5—not by choice, but because America still can’t get it right. The dysfunction of two Trump administrations broke the machine, and the Biden administration—held back by political timidity and entrenchment—still hasn’t fixed it.
Joe Biden -Yes, I’ll name names. Jamie Harrison. Steve Benjamin. South Carolina insiders who could have done more. Who knew better. Who watched families like mine get caught in the gears of delay and dysfunction.
I know the stakes. Because I’m still an officer and a gentleman. I’ve served this country and never stopped—not with weapons, but with soft diplomacy, with presence, with honor. I’m not volunteering to be cannon fodder again. I’m winning a different kind of war now—the war for my family, my future, and the children we’re supposed to protect.
And for those who understand the sea and sky: you don’t leave your naval aviators circling endlessly above the carrier. You recover them. You guide them home. You make the deck ready. You land your people.
Admiral Warthen would have understood that. It takes time to turn an aircraft carrier. But you still have to turn it. And when your aviators are low on fuel, you don’t wait for perfect conditions. You do what must be done. Because there are lives on the line.
One of them is mine. And more importantly, the lives of my wife and my daughter—Hope Abby Grace, just eight years old. She loves her daddy. She believes in goodness. And she reminds me: there’s always hope.
That’s why I still believe we’re turning the corner. Not quickly, not cleanly—but inevitably. Because truth isn’t dead. It’s just bruised. And Hope is growing.
I’ll board the plane. I’ll say goodbye again. But I will return. And I will not be silent.
—Robert Amundson
Officer. Gentleman. Husband. Father. Patriot.
May you return soon — much sooner than Macarthur did!
You know, I’ve been meaning to read Homage to Catalonia, too. I hope I get to it sometime… I have so many unread books in front of it, and what do I do? I keep reading the same ones over and over.
Some people engage in “comfort eating.” I do comfort reading…
“The dysfunction of two Trump administrations broke the machine, and the Biden administration—held back by political timidity and entrenchment—still hasn’t fixed it.”
My wife recently asked me an out of the blue question about Joe Biden. She doesn’t follow politics closely, but I suspect her approach is the most common one. She didn’t support- doesn’t support Donald Trump. She, like me, hates him. She just won’t use the word like I proudly do. She laughs at him every time she hears him talk.
She mentioned she thought Joe Biden was a poor decision maker, too slow, and too reluctant. I had to ask her what made her think that and she mentioned a few things.
I told her she had nailed Joe Biden’s main problem, and it had been his problem for almost his entire career. While you don’t want to shoot from the hip, you also don’t want to study an issue to death that people feel as if you can’t sure of yourself. That was Joe Biden. He was too timid despite what his few worshippers might say. How can I prove it? Because that’s what most Democrats say about him and you are what your own side thinks you are whether you like it or not.
It’s also why he’s sitting around eating ice cream these days instead of actually working.
Um… he deserves to sit around eating ice cream at his age — more than you or I ever will.
That’s the one good thing about the country turning against Joe and forcing him to leave the race. He can finally retire, and rest a bit in what remains of his life — a life that has been a blessing to his country.
It’s not much, but it IS one small silver lining…
The country didn’t turn against Joe. He demonstrated he was not fit to serve. All of the reporting since then has confirmed his final year in office was spent protecting him from being exposed. Special Counsel Robert Hur was the canary in the coal mine months before Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
“The report says that to a jury, Biden would likely “present himself … as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.””
Yes, we know that’s the way you see it. It’s the way a huge number of your fellow citizens see it, a fact from which I hope you may derive satisfaction. And of course, everyone who keeps saying that completely ignores the fact that there was not, anywhere in sight, a viable alternative willing to run in his place. A lot of people thought Kamala Harris was a viable alternative — I refer them to the election results.
Which is why I long ago quit approving your monotonous repetition of your point. Neither you, nor anyone else who wanted to dump Joe, addressed the larger question, which was, “And then what happens?”
I’m approving this one — just this ONE — for two reasons:
1. It’s civil — much less hostile than your usual ways of putting it.
2. I post it to respond with a question: Are you ready to move on from that subject? If not, you are unlikely to see future comments approved.
And before you start harrumphing, I remind you that this is my blog, which will contain what I want it to contain. It’s not a job, or what anyone would seriously call a business. It’s something I do for my own enjoyment. If you want something else, go somewhere else. There are thousands, if not millions, of sites that you might find more amenable. And of course, there are no barriers to starting your own…
After the attempted assassination of Trump, I mentioned to my wife, “2016 created a monster.” She agreed.
Both political parties effed up in 2016.
Well, yeah. The parties, the advocacy groups, the media, and most of all, the electorate. Lord knows I’m not one to defend the parties (although I admit I’m getting a bit nostalgic for what they once were — as in, before my career started), but they are FAR from our only problem.