July, 2023 - Frog in the Pot

Almost 75 years after it was published, George Orwell’s novel 1984 has nothing on today’s Republican Party when it comes to language. The novel features such ideological practices as “newspeak” and “doublethink” that conform language to the needs of a society’s authoritarian leadership to maintain control of its population. Newspeak is a minimalist language designed to make the utterance of heretical thoughts–those that challenge central authority–impossible. Doublethink refers to the ability to believe and say that black is white, in contradiction of plain facts, in order to uphold the regime.

Does any of this sound familiar today? Since the rise of “Trumpism” in the Republican Party, we have seen the explosion not only of blatant lies, but also the creation of “alternative” facts to support law-free rule. We have seen “Don’t say gay” restrictions for the early grades of schools in Florida, and the deletion of critical race theory from curriculums ranging up to college level. Lately we’ve seen an apparently new development in the distortion of language in the service of ideological manipulation: the notion that one can speak of things without mentioning what they are about.

This rang a bell for me, one that rings back half a century in my work life and that I have always since associated with the most destructive elements of conservative politics in the U.S. Perhaps it is no small coincidence that Orwell’s book was published on my mother’s birthday in the year that I was born. Continue reading “GOP Speak: You can talk about it, just don’t mention it”

The priest and I sat for an hour in his well-appointed office of the Catholic Chaplain at Yale University. It was the Spring of 1981. I was an assistant professor of sociology at Yale, and I was preparing to get married in August of that year. I had asked for our meeting to see whether it would be possible for him to be the co-celebrant at the wedding.

**Kathy and me at her Yale doctoral graduation, Spring 1980**

I went into the meeting visualizing any number of barriers to his participation. But I was doing due diligence on the possibility because I knew it would please my mother, a devoted Catholic.

The problems were several. My fiancée was Jewish, as would be our co-celebrant. I told the priest that I was no longer a practicing Catholic, and that I could not commit to bringing up any future children in the Catholic faith. I kept waiting for him to draw the line against his participation at any one of these conditions, but he did not. To my surprise, he kept indicating that he could work with them. I was pleased because I knew my mother would be.

As I stood up, something off-script entered my mind, and, thinking it really irrelevant, I nonetheless thought I should double check. Just in case. I said, “Oh, Father, there’s one more thing–it’s probably unrelated. My fiancée was married earlier and is now divorced.” He was halfway out of his chair when my comment caused him to slump back into it. “That’s a problem.” Continue reading “How I Lost the Faith and Found the Spirit, Part III: Exit”