USA Today perfects Winston Smith’s Newspeak

Altering words doesn’t change facts

Today is Bastille Day, traditionally a day of celebration in France. Last year irrevocably changed that, turning the day into one of grief. Memorial services are planned to honor the 86 victims of a rampaging nearly 20-truck whose driver purposely plowed into the crowd of revelers, including families with children eating ice cream, strolling the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France after the fireworks display ended. In addition to those killed, there were 435 who were wounded in the attack.

Gannett, the parent company of the failing, left-wing Arizona Republic newspaper, now inserts a copy of its USA Today newspaper in with the barely there daily in a vain attempt to give it heft.  Gannett’s stock has tumbled from $17.49  on Dec. 5, 2015 to  now struggling to stay afloat in the $8.00 range.  

This might be the reason:

The caption beneath a photo of two men who were seriously wounded in the attack names them and says, they “were injured in Nice when someone drove a truck through a crowd last year. “

“Someone?’

The 31-year-old killer’s name is Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. He was a Tunisian Muslim living in France, who had been previously arrested for theft and gun violations, had his sentences suspended and was not deported. He was killed by police at the scene of the massacre.

Gannett’s absurd politically correct contrivance is reminiscent of Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s best seller titled, “1984.” Smith was employed as a clerk in the government’s Ministry of Truth Records Department. His job was to rewrite historical documents to align with the constantly changing current political deception. Newspeak, a reduced language became the tool to limit free thought and concepts posing a threat to the totalitarian regime.  Any form of thought alternative to the party’s construct was classified as “thought crime,” “crime think,” or “doublethink.”

Smith’s work included manipulating facts, revising newspaper articles and doctoring photographs to remove “unpersons,” the term used to describe people who had fallen out of favor with the party.  We servatives are “unpersons” to the MSM liberals. But we still have a voice. We need to continue to use it.

When his book was published in 1949, Orwell wrote, “By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared.”  He turned out to be a reliable prophet.