'The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.
Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
For those that are not aware of the
title reference here is a brief synopsis of Orwell's famous novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four (written in 1949) which parallels events taking
place or about to take place in The US of Eh. This novel along with
another novel by Orwell, Animal Farm, should be required reading for
all who value democracy for the thought police are active or becoming
active in many parts of the world and must be resisted!
The novel is set in Airstrip
One, formerly Great Britain, a province of the
superstate Oceania.
Oceania is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent
government surveillance and public
manipulation. Oceania's residents are dictated by a political regime
euphemistically named English
Socialism (shortened to "Ingsoc"
in Newspeak,
the government's invented language). The superstate is under the
control of the privileged, elite Inner
Party. The Inner Party persecutes individualism
and independent thinking known as "thoughtcrimes"
and is enforced by the "Thought
Police".
The tyranny is ostensibly overseen by Big
Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense
cult
of personality. The Party "seeks power
entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of
others; it is interested solely in power." The protagonist of
the novel, Winston
Smith, is a member of the Outer
Party, who works for the Ministry
of Truth, or Minitrue in Newspeak. Minitrue is
responsible for propaganda and historical
revisionism. Winston's job is to rewrite past
newspaper articles, so the historical record always supports the
Party's agenda. The workers are told they are correcting
misquotations, when they are actually writing false information in
the place of fact.
There will of course always be those
who do believe that its all “fake news” but the very repetition
of that phrase time and time again is part of the ongoing attack on
the media and the facts by Trump.
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