Masking Deaths And People
Gyrations and manipulation of language have escalated dramatically since CV1984 was rolled out in all its gory glory in March, 2020.
While obituaries shouldn't become grisly crime scene displays, the wordings of post-CV1984 ones often jump out at me. For example:
“___________ died... of ___________ after a short illness.”
That person had a long-term pre-existing condition which is mentioned in their obituary. But the reader is left wondering if it had anything to do with the cause of death. Did it weaken the person to such an extent that they scummed to a malady otherwise easily beatable? Or, on the other hand, did the person Pass from vaccine-induced Myocarditis, or systemic organ failure from Remdesivir, and/or Liver damage from Paxlovid?
Here's another example:
"___________ passed away peacefully from natural causes...".
Sometimes we are given an indication of the actual cause of death in the part where people are encouraged to give donations to a non-profit that ostensibly works to "find a cure" for some condition. Not in this one, and everything in the obituary suggests the person was vibrant and exuberant until they Died Suddenly. Of "natural causes". Well, people in their 40's don't just drop dead due to "natural causes".
George Orwell observed in his essay, Politics and the English Language, 1946:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."
Substack Permalink:
https://terrylclark.substack.com/p/masking-deaths-and-people
While obituaries shouldn't become grisly crime scene displays, the wordings of post-CV1984 ones often jump out at me. For example:
“___________ died... of ___________ after a short illness.”
That person had a long-term pre-existing condition which is mentioned in their obituary. But the reader is left wondering if it had anything to do with the cause of death. Did it weaken the person to such an extent that they scummed to a malady otherwise easily beatable? Or, on the other hand, did the person Pass from vaccine-induced Myocarditis, or systemic organ failure from Remdesivir, and/or Liver damage from Paxlovid?
Here's another example:
"___________ passed away peacefully from natural causes...".
Sometimes we are given an indication of the actual cause of death in the part where people are encouraged to give donations to a non-profit that ostensibly works to "find a cure" for some condition. Not in this one, and everything in the obituary suggests the person was vibrant and exuberant until they Died Suddenly. Of "natural causes". Well, people in their 40's don't just drop dead due to "natural causes".
George Orwell observed in his essay, Politics and the English Language, 1946:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."
Substack Permalink:
https://terrylclark.substack.com/p/masking-deaths-and-people
posted by TLC's Place at 2:02 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home