Page Two: Welcome to the Funhouse

When I was in my early teens, my mother took a group of us to Freedomland, a New York amusement park. One of the attractions was a house where everything inside was slanted at the sharpest angle, almost but not quite 90 degrees. Even though everything was on a startling downward angle, objects seemed to defy gravity. On the pool table, the balls rolled upward, as did the cans placed on the kitchen counter. Our guide pointed out every incident of this seeming defiance of scientific law. Very mystifying.

Eventually, it was explained that the foundation of the house was even more dramatically angled in the opposite direction. Placing the sharp angle on a diametrically opposite sharper angle accounted for the seeming anomaly. Witnessing things that seem to be contradictions of known rules of science, we discovered, was deceptive. Scientific laws and the power of gravity prevailed, no matter how it looked.

This situation seems an ideal visual metaphor for many issues – political, religious, and social. What something or someone appears to be in actuality often turns out to be nearly the opposite. The Republicans' brilliant manipulation of language lends itself to this construct. It's not that the Democrats or other politicos are above this, but none has concentrated on separating language from meaning with the Republicans' brilliance. Certainly government has long had such tendencies, draping the difficult-to-stomach in sterilizing language – using terms like "collateral damage," "acceptable casualty rate," and "friendly fire."

Still, over the last decade, the Republicans have taken this to heights only George Orwell previously imagined. Not only do they drape activities in reassuring language; they've managed to recast much of the long-established language of the progressive agenda to mean its almost exact opposite.

Given Bush's relationship with language, it might be considered odd that the most sustained semantic study, other than that of Noam Chomsky and colleagues at MIT, has been going on among Republican strategists. Unlike the Cambridge academics, they are not just into study but its implementation as well, actively engaging in linguistic reorientation, corruption, and manipulation.

The Republican right has not only reimagined but reconstructed the basic language of civil rights, labor, social justice, constitutional mandates, human rights, and societal fairness. Let's accept that Reagan's administration was transformative – although, quite clearly, this is meant in historical terms without implying any approval. By the same standards, the Bush administration must be considered the most transformative of at least a century, even more so than FDR's or Reagan's. It took the fall of the Roman and Greek civilizations, famine, the bubonic plague, endless civil wars, oppression, and all manner of persecution for a few centuries of European history to be labeled the Dark Ages. In this country, the struggle toward human rights and universal suffrage, as well as social and economic justice as described in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, has been slow (except when it was nonexistent), hard-fought, and painful. Opposition to any and all progressive change not only came from traditionalists, reactionaries, racists, religious bigots, and those who benefited from these many forms of oppression but just as often from the federal and state governments. Over the last 150 years, this country has moved gradually, jerkingly, and, at best, sporadically toward these goals. This has been achieved through the efforts of a vast number of individuals and organizations, including those that are conservative, religious, philanthropic, and charitable as well as progressive, all of them involved in the struggles for such issues as religious freedom, universal suffrage, unionizing, quality public education, civil rights, the environment, feminism, and justice.

In six years, this administration has successfully reintroduced the social attitudes of this country from at least a half-century back; moreover, they haven't even stuck to merely archaic, mainstream values but rather included more extreme and sometimes even dishonored ones. Once again (though the behaviors never really went away), disparaging, stereotyping, and demonizing large segments of the American public is acceptable in public discourse. Semantic dishonesty, derogatory labeling, and persuasive contempt, as well as an all-encompassing assault on "political correctness," have led this country to an open embrace of the values of the "good old days" – including racism, sexism, religious bias, and bigotry accompanied by a new, finer blend of jingoism, national chauvinism, and discrimination.

Just look at civil rights. Those who don't trust the government at all, in any way, to do anything are usually especially militantly opposed to anything that hints of idealistic social-engineering projects. The sole exception is the civil rights legislation of the mid-Sixties. Whereas many conservatives oppose it specifically, they glowingly declare it an immediate universal success. Despite more than 200 years of slavery and more than 100 of segregation (institutionalized, government-approved racism), they now declare all races are equal. These militant defenders of colorblindness and loving, absolute human equality don't limit this to race but find it applicable to every citizen. History be damned; the playing field is level for all. Hallelujah!

Forget the centuries of the dominance of white, Protestant, middle- and upper-class, landowning men. Forget institutionalized prejudice, bigotry, and racism. Forget any reasonable study of the impact of social and family history on the individual. Now, those who have enjoyed centuries of privilege are the same as illiterate ghetto orphans. Isn't this a great country?!

The Republicans have chosen their candidates with no unseemly consideration of human differences but simply by human merit (older, white men with conservative values who privilege their religious beliefs and honor the existing economic, social, and political class system). Meanwhile, those miserable Democrats, in the most overt display of prejudicial bigotry since slavery, are running a black man and a woman to play the race card and pander to the women.

One has to admire not only the blinders-on focus of this disdainful stupidity but the absolutely arrogant insistence that this view represents a pure, holy vision of human equality rather than a pasteurized, sterilized, and shrunken take on pre-Civil War ideology. Bless them; they know not what they do. Still, even loving them, we should clarify their real positions. Just read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, then imagine documents of diametrically opposed values, beliefs, and politics. It's almost just that simple.