To Use Their Language Is to Endorse Their Lies
Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis, and the current one here in the US is also a language crisis. How we use the language and how we listen for lies that are in single words and phrases as well as in sentences or narratives is part of what we can and must do to resist the Trump Administration's authoritarian agenda. A single word can be a lie. For example, journalists are still calling what Musk and his child army have been doing an operation in pursuit of government efficiency. It is true that in a wink-wink jokey way DOGE is called the Department of Government Efficiency. It's also true that it's not a department, they demonstrably don't give a damn about efficiency, nor are they competent to produce it or pursuing it. It's about efficiency in the same way that the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four was about truth.
The language to describe DOGE should be the language of invasion and attack, on specific departments, on the stability and functionality of the US government, and on the Constitution and the rule of law, on the rights and needs and even survival of ordinary people. What Musk and Trump are engaged in is a coup attempt and an assault on the federal government, and while more and more people are using the word coup, in other stories journalists are still perpetrating the lie that efficiency is DOGE's goal. It is cheaper to build a car without brakes, though when the driver wants to stop, the results may be undesirable. Severing a limb is a quick weight loss method. We will quite possibly spend less money on a federal government that is no longer functional--but it's our money and we do get some things in return for it we cannot do without.
Departments that protect people, systems, and places are being destroyed, sabotaged, wrecked, their security trashed, their functions halted or impaired, their staff sidelined or shut out, and their websites taken down. Even in a piece of journalism reporting on the damage and destruction, talking about efficiency as the goal legitimizes the motives and muddles the impact. Many are doing the same now with Musk's attacks and agenda. If DOGE was really interested in improving thrift while preserving function, it would probably use accountants who are actually skilled at reviewing spending, but I have heard no reports of accountants involved. It's transparently ridiculous to pretend that a bunch of tech dudes can pop into a complex administrative department and somehow over a weekend or in a matter of days improve it. You can destroy things without understanding them. You can't redesign them without that understanding.
This is far from the first time that an administration deployed propagandistic language to hide unjustifiable or illegal activities. The G.W. Bush Administration termed the torture it carried out "enhanced interrogation" and its CIA kidnappings were delicately referred to as "extraordinary renditions." Many in the media obligingly covered up these atrocities by adopting these terms. And when journalism repeat lies, it undermines readers' understanding.
And the lies, distortions, and preposterousness abound. Former reality TV star and current head of the US Department of Transportation Sean Duffy tweeted last week on Elon Musk's social media site, "Big News - Talked to the DOGE team. They are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system." There is no evidence that anyone in DOGE has any competence in commercial aviation systems or air traffic control (but there's lots of evidence Musk was in disputes with the FAA over the safety, or lack thereof, of his rockets, and the fines his violations accrued, and that this too is both revenge tour and Dunning-Kruger delusionality).
Air traffic control and air transportation safety are precisely calibrated things built by experts over decades. Airplane crashes are very expensive, not only in loss of life and immediate loss to the airline, but in the way that they could undermine the willingness of the public to fly. Hackers running rampant in the FAA is a nightmare that has nothing to do with efficiency. Meanwhile Duffy tweeted Monday "In line with my commitment to restoring sanity to @USDOT, the FAA will resume using the term Notice to Airmen instead of Notice to Air Missions.” Planes may be crashing right and left, but male fragility is being protected even if passengers are not--by some petty denial that currently about ten percent of pilots are women.
The language belongs to all of us and to each of us, and under most situations short of torture and imprisonment most of us have some agency in how we use it. Authoritarians recognize that authority over language itself is vital to their power, and these ones want to use language to impose white supremacy, trans hate, the anti-indigenous politics of putting President McKinley's name back on Mount Denali. Going along with them is a surrender most of us don't have to engage in.
But a lot of major corporations have. Not only have Google and Apple both changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the preposterous but oh-so white nationalist Gulf of America, but the Associated Press reported it was coerced to do so, and to its credit it protested publicly: "Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing. It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment." The Gulf of Mexico has had that name since well before the United States existed, incidentally. Google has also stripped its calendars of Black History Month, Pride, and other commemorations that might offend white supremacists while offering an implausible excuse for doing so in this heated moment.
Meanwhile a novelist alerted me that the National Endowment for the Arts grant applications have added a requirement that applicants must comply with Trumpian ideology. Applicants must not "operate any programs promoting 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws." And 'The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government." I think this boils down to: you must avoid discussing race, racism, and racist history, and inequality in general, perhaps also avoid programs that are inclusive--should they be exclusive?--and you must also adhere to their gender ideology. It's classic fascist language to pretend that we have a gender ideology and they don't, and that their lies and distortions of biology are truth, while their attacks on women are protection. My novelist friend decided not to apply.
In this moment it's not hard for you and me and lots of everyday people to have more integrity, more respect for truth, and more courage than too many of our largest corporations, news organizations, and politicians. It's a small part of the work we need to do, but a vital one.
p.s. Please bear with me as I work out some glitches, correct typos, and figure out how to use this platform. And thank you to everyone who's joined me here, nine posts and ten days in. I don't expect to post so frequently going forward--maybe twice a week when things settle down--but there's a lot to say in this crisis moment of so much going on. And who knows what settling down means and when things will?
