NewSpeak Alert! (A Satire)
One of my facebook friends alerted me to a report in the Washington Post, that senior policy analysts of the US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) were advised Last Thursday, that they couldn't use the words "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based," in reports and budget applications for 2018.Original report https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/f503837a-e1cf-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.96654a9ae872
At the time of writing this article, the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC) has responded that it “will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.” Other News agencies were still awaiting responses to their queries about clarification of use or exclusion of the seven words from the HHS.
Benefits of excluding problematic words:
Exclusion of the words like "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," from the language of an organisation is important for policy. By removing the word, you can remove the recognition of these states from written existence, and in the future perhaps remove them from public consciousness. This is an early version of George Orwell's 'Goodspeak', language that only contains ideas that are ideologically sound for a particular politics.Benefit of excluding evidence and science
Removal of "evidence-based" and "science-based," is even more important. Concepts based on evidence and science allow arguments based on accepted common observation. So you can have ideas based on recorded information that are different to your preferred point of view. By removing the link to an observable and/or measurable reality, you are much freer to ensure that your policies are accepted.Examples
Good recent examples of inconvenient truths are:- The greenhouse effect and global warming
- Votes counted for particular candidates
- The existence of LGBT people
- The accumulated forensic evidence in criminal cases.
Downsides
Unless you already have total control, there are still very disruptive individuals and organisations, like opposing parties and the media, who insist on adhering to evidence-based and science-based interpretations of reality markedly different to yours.
Strategies
Previous regimes have simply silenced opponents and opposing views. This solution is still quite widespread globally. However it is less practical in a democratic political environment, where one might have to be elected or even re-elected. A three-pronged approach is currently proving popular:
- Denial of alternative views
- Labeling of evidence- or science-based arguments as fake news or irrelevant
- Ridiculing or denigrating opponents.
Future-proofing
No matter how good you are at removing evidence- and science-based ideas and replacing them with yours, they will unfortunately come back to bite you in the end as reality reasserts itself. The difficult part is deciding to go before the 's..t hits the fan'. The UK has good examples of both those who exited at the right time and those who did not after the Brexit Referendum.
...............................
Jane and I went into Cambridge for some urgent Christmas shopping. Travelling after 10 am, the bus was remarkably empty and to me, this was reflected in the crowds on the streets. It was not the heaving crush that I remembered from the past. You could generally move around in stores and the queues at the tills were not excessive. We actually came back after a successful shop still relatively sane.
The Norwich based Centre for Retail Research predicts that, despite Brexit uncertainty, retail overall is likely to be 1.4% higher this year. However, high street retail is likely to suffer a 2.5% decline this year, as more people go online shopping. One of the key features of recent years is the increase in discounting for almost the whole of the golden quarter up to Christmas. This has led to to "an unexpected dearth of shoppers in the main cities on many days, whilst the smaller retail centres looked like ghost towns". Shoppers see less urgency to buy when the prices are likely to be low not just for a day but in the coming weeks.
See Centre for Retail Research report 'Shopping for Christmas 2017': http://www.retailresearch.org/shoppingforxmas.php
No comments:
Post a Comment