I suspect that this is but the first of many posts that will need to be written about the "Orwellian Nature of the Obama Administration." VDH writes:
We use Orwell, Orwellian, and Orwellianism loosely
a lot these days, but what is going on in the Obama administration is
beginning to get a little creepy and resembles a lot of things Orwell
wrote about in 1984.
When in, Soviet fashion, a critical overseer is dismissed as being
"confused" and suffering mental problems in carrying out the law, as Gerald Walpin probably
did in uncovering waste and possible fraud in connection with the mayor
of Sacramento; or when the government begins to create new words like
"overseas contingency operations" and "man-made catastrophes"; or when
Justice Sotomayor says that a Latina is inherently a better judge than
a white man — and then says
she does not mean what she says — or that a
female-only club that has no males does so because no males apparently
applied (using the argument of pre-Civil Rights Southern country
clubs); or when the president begins nationalizing companies because he
has no interest in the federal government interfering with private
enterprise or swears that he is going to uncover waste and insist on
financial sobriety as he runs up a nearly $2 trillion deficit, we see a
creeping Orwellianism everywhere. Bush (and "Bush did it") has become
the proverbial enemy at large, sort of playing the role of Trotsky in
the Soviet 1930s, or the face on the big screen we are supposed to hate
— alternately demonized and airbrushed (when Obama adopts his policies
like military tribunals, Iraq, or renditions). Newspeak has even
proclaimed our president a "god," and a journalist has adopted
proskynesis in his presence.
All this dissimulation is based on two general principles — one,
the cause of egalitarianism and equality of result is so critical that
the tawdry means of distorting reality is not only worth it, but not
tawdry; and two, 30 years of postmodern teaching in our law and
graduate schools have insidiously convinced many of our elites that
there is no absolute truth, only competing narratives that take on
credence depending on the race, class, gender, and access to power of
those who speak.
As a rule of thumb, when key administration officials say they do
not wish to do something, the odds are they have already done it, and
when they imply "Bush did it" it means that they will adopt it (e.g.,
anti-terrorism protocols) or exceed it (Bush deficits).