Dishonest Language, Truth, and Failed Policies

It’s deeply disconcerting to read the news each morning and find oneself thinking that the true prophet of our current condition is Lewis Carroll, the creator of Alice in Wonderland. Each day brings the feeling that we’ve truly passed down the rabbit hole. Here we are, in a “Mad Hatter” universe, where the voices all around us insist, with Humpty Dumpty, that words only mean what they want them to mean. We are then expected, indeed required, to accept even the most blatant falsehoods and the most ludicrous fantasies as simple truth. And, this done, we are told we must order our political, economic, and cultural priorities accordingly.

If we hope to solve the problems that confront us today, we must put an end to the magical thinking that dominates our public discourse. Hard reality looms on every front, and the first step to confronting it — before it is too late — is to aggressively challenge these fantasies. We need to start insisting on “truth,” not “my truth,” or “your truth,” or “Humpty Dumpty’s truth,” but rather an honest and objective representation of things as they are, that is, “the truth,” as once upon a time we understood it. At present, “the” truth isn’t simply ignored, but rather inverted, turned upside down, divested of all legitimate meaning.

Let’s start with “genocide,” perhaps the single most misused word in current political discourse. The recent — and profoundly ridiculous — South African petition to the International Court of “Justice” and the even more ridiculous ruling by this absurdly misnamed institution represents a perfect illustration of the problem. The suggestion that Israel’s war on Hamas is genocidal represents an almost perfect inversion of the truth. This petition, the court’s ruling, and the daily drumbeat of left-wing pontification about Israel’s responsibility to “calibrate’ its use of force “proportionally” are inherently dishonest. The only genocidal agenda at play is the one so brutally prefigured on October 7, an agenda that would be played out on a massively horrific scale were Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Iranian backers to actually realize their “from the river to the sea” fever dreams. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: Chinese Threat Looms at the Open Border)

And even as street thugs and Harvard faculty (perhaps not always distinguishable) throw the term “genocide” about, those of us concerned about the plight of Nigeria’s Christians find it surpassingly difficult to gain a hearing. Yet by any reasonable definition of the term, this is one place in the world where genocide is occurring today. But the Biden State Department still insists that this is a resource conflict driven by “climate change,” even when the perpetrators are always Muslim.

“Genocide,” however, is but one among many inversions of the truth that drip so readily from the lips of leftists. “Fascist,” sometimes “Nazi,” is another favorite. Once upon a time I wrote a doctoral dissertation chronicling a key element in the emergence of the Nazi system of oppression. I spent a decade professionally engaged with the subject of Nazism. I’m one of only a relative handful of American scholars who’ve actually held and studied Adolf Eichmann’s SS personnel file, complete with all his handwritten entries. (And, as an aside, even when trying to put his best foot forward, he came across as a profoundly dull human being, a near perfect embodiment of what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.”)

I’ve interviewed real Nazis, that is, people who once held actual membership in the NSDAP, the Nationalsozialististische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. I was schooled at Munich’s “Institute for Contemporary History” by some of the leading German scholars of the history of Nazism. I don’t need to be schooled by the likes of Dean Obeidallah or Joy Reid or Rachel Maddow, and I can say, with the greatest of confidence, that every time they use the epithet “Nazi,” their usage lacks any meaningful connection to historical reality. 

Usage of terms like “Nazi” and “Hitler,” even “Hitler adjacent” or “fascist” has become both commonplace and intellectually flaccid. They should be returned to their historical context and retired from contemporary political discourse. Heinrich Himmler was “Hitler adjacent,” so too the spiritual godfather of Hamas, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Locating Hamas within the ideological world of Nazism retains some genuine meaning, because it is clearly reflected in their own self-conception). Applying “Nazi” to the actions of the state of Israel , or using “Nazi” to describe a current Republican politician, any current Republican politician, empties the word of every ounce of meaning. And the suggestion that the likes of “Antifa” are somehow “anti-Fascist” represents yet another inversion of the truth. (READ MORE: ‘Someone’s Been Shot’: A Message of Hope in America’s Strength) 

“Genocide” and “Nazi” may be the worst current examples of truth inversion in the service of a leftist political agenda, but they are far from the only ones. “Refugee” is yet another, a word that once had clear meaning, a usage that described an offer of refuge to those fleeing a murderous regime — think the Hungarian refugees fleeing west after the failed anti-Soviet uprising in 1956. But whether in Europe (burdened by an immigration flood similar to our own) or here at home, the current waves of “refugees” are mostly seeking economic opportunity, not fleeing political persecution. If we dispensed with the notion of “refugee” except in readily documented cases of political persecution, we might then begin to have an honest discussion about immigration policy, and we might make a beginning to gaining full control of our border once again. Pretending that no crisis exists, or pretending that the current administration’s wrongheaded policies haven’t created the current crisis, is yet another example of magical thinking.

Perhaps the most persistent arena for magical thinking comes with the term “environmentalism” and the morass of associated terms. The real inconvenient truth is that the case for climate change has not yet been convincingly made. The various measures proposed to “de-carbonize” our economy rest on the shakiest of economic foundations, ranging from the absurd — ban gas stoves while China and India spew industrial volumes of carbon into the atmosphere — to the monstrous. The very notion of depriving people of warm homes, reliable mobility, and a reasonable livelihood in order to meet some fantasy-driven and utterly arbitrary policy target reveals something dark and deadly at the heart of the environmental movement. Does reducing the impact of cow farts upon the atmosphere warrant destroying the livelihoods of Dutch and Irish farmers? Is there a better solution than imposing some radical and destructive deadline? Does it make any kind of sense to cripple our ability to export natural gas, as the Biden administration seems determined to do, with no evidence that this will make a difference to the environment? As the old saying goes, “inquiring minds want to know.” (READ MORE: The Lie Behind the ‘Hearts and Minds’ Plea)

Perhaps the real agenda is something more narrow-minded and brutal, perhaps it’s just yet another chapter in the culture war waged by urban intellectuals against those who toil with their hands. We saw this during the great Covid fiasco, where “health and safety” became the rubric under which “know-nothing” health bureaucrats enabled the worst kind of totalitarian lockdowns, encouraging in the process a hateful “spite your neighbor” mentality. “Health and safety,” of course, rank with “environmental responsibility” and “social justice” as cloaks for a rampant “busybodiness.” We once made fun of the Miss Grundy’s of the world; now they are lionized by the social justice warriors.

I’ve addressed the magical thinking associated with our current foreign policy in a number of my recent Spectator essays. Suffice it for now to say that the further removed from the everyday lives of ordinary Americans, the more unhinged the thinking typically becomes. There’s a ready corrective, in the form of public outrage, when Federal regulators suggest a ban on gas stoves, but understanding the outrages associated with, say, the “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees” requires a higher level of public engagement. One must follow the news every day, and rely on reliable news sources such as The American Spectator to understand how these UN criminals have literally been getting away with murder. Only the brazenness of their actions on October 7 has finally force things into light, and even now, there is little indication that our State Department or their counterparts elsewhere in the West will support the right thing by totally defunding this monstrosity. 

The pretense that the murder of three U.S. Army reservists by Iranian-backed terrorists is not an act of war represents a similar species of magical thinking. In addition to those killed, many others were wounded, and this is far from the first such attack on U.S. military personnel deployed in the region. Nor will it be the last. One can question the need for our troops being there, but the mullahs of Iran don’t deserve a vote. Attacking U.S. troops on the ground, or U.S. ships in the Red Sea — these are acts of war, perpetrated by a regime that our current leadership seems determined to appease.

In “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell observed that “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Orwell, undoubtedly, would have a field day with what passes for political discourse in this year of our Lord, 2024. But as I suggested at the beginning of this essay, even Orwell might have been overwhelmed by the ramblings of Joe Biden or the fantasies that pass for news coverage in the Washington Post or the New York Times. We truly seem to have fallen down the rabbit hole, or passed through the looking glass. Mr. Lewis Carroll, your office is calling. We need you to help us make sense of things.

James H. McGee’s 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. 

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