Logocide
1st December 2021
ZMan does some analysis.
One of the distinguishing features of authoritarian societies is the language becomes lifeless and dull. At the same time, the public space is filled with the language of the authoritarian ruling system. The people at the top give long arid speeches and their propaganda organs fill the spaces in between with official noise. Fidel Castro would give speeches that lasted half a day. Stalin would deliver long harangues to the Party Congress for no other reason than to fill the room with words.
In America, this started to creep in after the Cold War. Bill Clinton would give long speeches that were cognitively meaningless. The word “emote” came into common usage at this time as his speeches were like the “feelies” in the Huxley novel Brave New World. They were not intended to stimulate your mind, but rather to anesthetize it so you could experience the raw emotion being conveyed. His most memorable words are those from his rare confessions of guilt.
Obama took it further by delivering nonsense speeches that were not just devoid of meaning, but an assault on the concept of meaning. His language was an assault on the mind, an effort to destroy reason. Instead, the listener was supposed to abandon his senses and float along on the warm thermals of passive happiness. His fans swore he was a great speaker, but they never quoted him. To quote the great man would invite questioning the great man and that was not permitted.