who is them ? the governments ? the media ? or both ?

from Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch , Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:37 UTC

"You are, I assure you, 'living in' an extreme world at an extreme moment. Don't leave it solely to them to describe it for you. Don't just let yourself be used by the language that our world makes so readily available to you.

Back in 1946, in his stirring essay, "Politics and the English Language," which he would later vividly illustrate in his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote of the problems, but also the satisfactions, of letting them define the limits of what can be spoken. You can, he pointed out, certainly save yourself some trouble "by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself."

But he also wrote: "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." "