Where “Seinfeld” meets Orwell: How conservatives abuse language
James Kelly
He/Him
Opinions Editor
1/23/24
This week, my Greyhound bus from New York to Boston was delayed by a few hours. I asked the Greyhound information booth if there were any other buses to Massachusetts. “Look it up yourself,” the guy at the booth said. “This is the information booth,” I said. “I’m asking you to inform me. Isn’t that why you’re here?” He said no.
The incident reminded me of an episode of “Seinfeld.” Jerry tries to pick up a rental car he’d reserved but finds out the rental company has given it away.
“The reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the reservation,” Jerry says. The woman at the counter shoots back. “I know why we have reservations,” she says. “I don’t think you do,” Jerry says. “If you did, I’d have a car.”
Flushable wipes clog your pipes. Gratuities are automatic. Lowes sells four different sizes of “universal fit” grill covers. Little abuses of language are everywhere, and most seem like trivial inspiration for Larry David’s next screenplay. They become more ominous when adopted by people in power to deceive and deflect.
“Right-to-work” is anti-worker. “Pro-life” politicians support the death penalty. “Pro-education” conservatives ban books and defund public schools. “Small government” conservatives gave the state the right to control women’s bodies.
Conservatives embrace linguistic absurdity. They do not mean what they say. They do not say what they mean.
The frontrunner for “the party of law and order” is a sexual abuser with 91 felony indictments. “The party of Lincoln” promotes a war on drugs designed to enslave Black Americans for cheap labor. If you have a car registered in New Hampshire, your license plate was made with slave labor.
Conservative language is so absurd it feels ironic, sometimes even funny. And that makes sense; a lot of humor is based on misdirection. Puns are funny because they use words in ways words aren’t meant to be used. Swears are funny because you’re not supposed to say them. “Seinfeld” is funny because its characters act in faux pas. And conservative language is often funny because it is the opposite of the truth.
This irony in conservative language is where Jerry Seinfeld meets George Orwell.
“[Political words] are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different,” Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language.”
The problem lies in conservatives’ desire to say something popular rather than something true or specific. The Republican Party is not “the party of law and order” because they believe in law or in order, but because the phrase projects strength and is a dog whistle for the mass incarceration of Black people.
“Right-to-work” is a meaningless phrase. What its proponents mean is “union busting.” But if conservatives advertised union busting, they would alienate their working-class base. “Pro-life” means anti-choice, but that’s not very popular either. “Small government” means big government. “Pro-education” means anti-education.
“This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of… any kind of political writing,” Orwell said.
I sent Greyhound an angry email and suggested they rename their information booth if they refuse to provide information. Greyhound responded the next day and said they could not help me because I was not a passenger. The response’s absurdity perfectly represented conservative language. It was meaningless and it was false. Language is “an instrument which we shape for our own purposes,” Orwell wrote.
The conservative purpose? Lie.
The Crime Bill that you speak of was a Democrat Bill. Author Joe Biden. This Bill was also Supported By the NAACP and Black Mayors Association.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPTFLHQt9Ts
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, commonly referred to as the 1994 Crime Bill,[1] or the Clinton Crime Bill,[2] is an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement; it became law in 1994. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the United States and consisted of 356 pages that provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers.
Senator Joe Biden drafted the Senate version of the legislation in cooperation with National Association of Police Officers president Tom Scotto. According to The Washington Post, Biden later described their involvement: “You guys sat at that conference table of mine for a six-month period, and you wrote the bill.”[6]
A majority of The Congressional Black Caucus voted for the bill.[12] A Gallup survey in 1994 found that “58% of African Americans supported the crime bill,
compared to 49% of white Americans.”[13] However, a 1993 poll from USA Today, CNN, and Gallup found that “an overwhelming number of Blacks believed that the criminal justice system treated Blacks more harshly than whites.”[14] Historian Michael Javen Fortner cites high crime rates as a likely cause of Black support of the bill as well as the bill’s funding of crime prevention and rehabilitation programs.[15] In August of 1994, President Clinton worked to increase Democratic support of the bill and met with three Caucus members who had previously opposed the bill, convincing them that the bill was the best it could be.[16]
One of the more controversial provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act overturned a section of the Higher Education Act of 1965 permitting prison inmates to receive a Pell Grant for higher education while they were incarcerated. The amendment is as follows:
(a) IN GENERAL- Section 401(b)(8) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1070a(b)(8)) is amended to read as follows: (8) No basic grant shall be awarded under this subpart to any individual who is incarcerated in any Federal or State penal institution.[20]
VCCLEA effectively eliminated the ability of lower-income prison inmates to receive college educations during their term of imprisonment, thus ensuring the education level of most inmates remains unimproved over the period of their incarceration.[21]
https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/