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Fantasyland, U.S.A.
Mr. President, honest, I did not write 1984 as a how-to guide.
PJMEDIA
Victor Davis Hanson
One way of reinventing reality is to warp the meaning of words. No president in memory has waged such a war on the English language as has Barack Obama — changing the meaning of vocabulary to hide what he fears might otherwise be unpopular.
Take executive orders. He brags that he does not issue them as commonly as his predecessors, but that is only true because Obama has now renamed some of his executive orders presidential“memoranda.” Add up both categories, and no president in the last half-century has so frequently bypassed Congress to unilaterally make new or ignore existing laws.
If Obama suddenly does not get his legislative way after losing the Congress, and boasts in defiance about his plans to act unilaterally(“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone”), then why the need to hide that brag with linguistic gymnastics?
When Obama faced reelections, he pointed to increased deportations. But that claim hinged on changing the meaning of deportee. All of a sudden, illegal aliens who were stopped and turned away right at the border count as deportees. By changing the meaning of words, Obama believed that he could reinvent the reality of open borders into tough border enforcement.
But then again, when he found it useful to brag of open borders, suddenly he pointed to lower deportations, as the vocabulary once again readjusted its meaning.
Reposted with permission
