Actually came a few days ago.. Then ~4pm lights out, except for trusty UPS (and its 9-yr old gel-cel still hangin in there). Kudos APC - for a durable design, nary a moment's problem through a few dozen minor glitches, outages through:

prolly an errant UAV from The City hit another tree on a 2-lane that makes those amateur truckers cringe.

So with trusty candle (wax + canned) and nice Al-foil reflector - began Mr. Lutz's little Gem. Wish I had a scanner for (all the text about) the perfect confirmation of what we'd always suspected re the depravity of Gingrich the Newt, found on a quick skim to p.54: A 1990 GOPAC booklet published by the aptly-named newt, entitled, Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

The booklet, designed for use by Republican candidates for office, contained a list of 133 words that GOPAC urged candidates to use, to attack their opponents and praise themselves. [sample sentence]

"Using this list you could call your opponent a 'sick, pathetic incompetent,liberal traitor, whoseself-serving permissive attitude promotes a unionized bureaucracy and an anti-flag, anti-family, anti-child, anti-jobs ideology'".

And.. they did. And.. it took the longest time to run him and his, just slightly outta town - though he seems still to be in positions to corrupt the little cheeldrun. Despite the written evidence of premeditated Language Murder.

Anyway, as I guessed - I coulda writ this, if I just had more talent + editor :-\ufffd I see I'm gonna love the How's Business? chapter! except he spelled it wrong(ly). Sadly, I'd suppose that.. the main purchasers of this nicely compact reminder of the wisdom of George Orwell et al - are mostly those who appreciate the message already. Yet it's concise such that even a handicapped Murican attention span is no excuse for not reading it.. {sigh}

Thanks again! It earns a spot on bookshelf nearby Stuart Chase's The Tyranny of Words and my tattered copy of the Confucius quotation, Why Should Language Be Correct? (and what happens when it isn't).

But Damn.. we're in it So Deep - with the proliferation of BS across every scale, and for so long... that many folk imagine it was always just This bad: it wasn't. Not ever This bad IMhO. Certainly never before: has intentional misinformation been spewed so near-to 24/7 -- even in G\ufffdbbels's zenith (though he was limited by mere technical capability, not by intent). Now we are Teaching It! and calling it Marketing 101. THAT's how 'Deep' is the Doo Doo.

At very least - Language shall be able to recount in clear detail how it was that we blew it (despite the warnings). No?


Ashton

How nice he shares another POV of mine (which I'll have to incorporate with attribution, I just know..)

I examine also the language of economics, a field of study that has come to exert tremendous influence on every person on the planet, yet a field of study that is, as I hope to make clear, filled with a language of utter nonsense that passes itself off as wisdom.