Stop name calling, help strengthen our nation

Dear editor,

“It is a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

In the book “1984,” George Orwell’s character, Syme, makes this comment when describing his employers, the misnomered Ministry of Truth, justification for the debasement of the English language. For the Ministry of Truth, English is far too complex. The ambiguities and subtleties of language are cumbersome obstacles to the Ministry’s primary objective of propping up a totalitarian government.

While perhaps not attributable to any distinct authoritarian entity or force, contemporary American English seems to be suffering from a similar trend of degradation that doomed the “Oldspeak” of Orwell’s fictional setting. Across the political spectrum, terms with complex meanings are hurled about as insults without any appreciation of the historical context in which they emerged.

Individuals who find themselves on the right wing of the modern political spectrum are frequently decried as “Nazis.” Those who tend toward the left are often denounced as “Communists.”

The use of these terms in childish naming-calling disregards the nuanced and often contradictory history of the ideologies they describe, as political movements arise from large and diverse groups of people.

To describe an American conservative as a Nazi disregards the leftist elements of the early National Socialist party. The Strasserite faction, which was ultimately purged, drew considerable support from militant ex-communists who sought the destruction of free markets.

When envisioning a contemporary Republican, does a street brawling urban revolutionary come to mind?

Similarly, labeling Democrats as communists ignores the rural and anti-intellectual tendencies of some of Karl Marx’s disciples. Pol Pot emptied cities, forcing urban populations to return to the land in a monstrous effort to reclaim an idealized vision of Cambodia’s rural past.

His Khmer Rouge executed teachers and office workers, people deemed incompatible with a more traditional and agrarian country. During the Maoist Cultural Revolution, Red Guard militants murdered college professors and praised the Chinese farmer as the ideal subject of a communist regime.

Are distrust of universities and a desire to return the United States to its rural past traits commonly associated with urban liberals?

I raise these points to illustrate how the haphazard use of these labels as insults does us all a disservice. When we unthinkingly call someone we disagree with a Nazi, we turn them into a caricature.

Just as misusing that word ignores its history, it also disregards the individuality of the person it is meant to describe. Our fellow citizens are complex and contradictory human beings, people who cannot be reduced to simple cartoon characters.

Our Constitution was drafted with the knowledge that people are complicated and that we often disagree with one another. Our system of government was also constructed to allow people who disagree to come to some sort of consensus about how we should address our collective problems.

As a new political era dawns, I ask that we all make an effort to not view each other through a cartoonish lens and strive to improve our great republic together.

– H.J. Hartman, Mountain Home