McCarthyism In Word Games

This is a post that went up this morning at The Seminal, where I also post, and on a subject I have treated before, sometimes referring to George Orwell's "1984". Words are reversed or misused to describe wrongly, and sway, rather than to inform:

Politics has always been a game of language, but it seems that the Republicans have gotten very good at it. They have become the masters at making subtle changes in language that prey on the public's prejudice and ignorance - such as calling Iraqi insurgents "terrorists" in order to falsely link them to Al Qaeda.

But perhaps their most devious language shifts have to do with domestic policies. Their tactic is to make Democratic initiatives sound like Communist plots to take over America - one piece of social legislation at a time. Take health care reform, for example. Here's what Rudy Giuliani had to say about Democratic plans for universal health coverage:

The American way is not single-payer, government-controlled anything. That's a European way of doing something; that's frankly a socialist way of doing something. That's why when you hear Democrats in particular talk about single-mandated, universal health care, what they're talking about is socialized medicine.

In addition to having xenophobic overtones, comments like these are just plain wrong. Dr. Ron Chusid writes on the Liberal Values blog:

Whenever Democratic health care proposals are raised, conservatives start screaming “socialized medicine” - but none of the Democratic proposals fit this by any reasonable definition of the term. Many conservatives reflexively refer to any Democratic proposal as socialism, even when their proposals are more consistent with the free market than the corporate welfare policies of the GOP.

In reality, what the conservatives brand as "socialized medicine" are any proposals that threaten to curtail the profits of companies such as Pfizer and Aetna - and their protection of these corporations means that millions of low-income Americans do not receive the care they need. And health care is just the tip of the iceberg.

In 1965, LBJ initiated the "War on Poverty," which included a number of new programs such as Head Start, food stamps, work study, Medicare, and Medicaid. This initiative certainly had its problems, but it did succeed in cutting the poverty level in half - a fact which is seldom reported today. Instead, Republicans have stopped calling social programs such as these the "War on Poverty," now employing the more pejorative terms "class warfare" and "redistribution of wealth."

Again, these are largely innacurate words that carry strong Marxist overtones, designed specifically to deceive and alarm the voting public. SInce the Reagen administration, when "class warfare" came into popular usage, social programs have been consistently cut. We are now seeing poverty levels on the rise again as taxes are being cut for the wealthy elite. In an amazing turn of events, the conservatives have successfully manipulated the language to make the noble task of reducing poverty seem like the most foolish and un-American of pursuits.

The question, then, is how can we neutralize the deceptive manipulations? How can we make fighting poverty and economic injustice seem cool again? How can we make sure that the American public is aware of the greedy corporate agenda that lies behind the conservatives' subtle word games?