Orwell on East Santa Clara Street

Two friends passed comments after reading our transcript of recent City Hall discussions that invoked Critical Race Theory.

Jordan Rosenquest sent us the following, a quote from George Orwell:
It is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes. It is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fall all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

And Lorena Sanchez offered this quote from Kevin Williamson in National Review:

We think in language. We signal in memes. Language is the instrument of discourse. Memes are the instrument of antidiscourse, i.e. communication designed and deployed to prevent the exchange of information and perspectives rather than to enable it, a weapon of mass intellectual destruction, the moron bomb.  The function of discourse  is to know other minds and to make yours known to them; the function of antidiscourse is to lower the status of rivals and enemies. Antidiscourse is not a conversation about politics--it *is* politics; it is no more discourse than a "Beta for Senate" yard sign is literature. It is a way of holding the conversation captive within politics itself rather than permitting it to get partly clear of the wall and examine the questions of the day from the outside and some degree of clarity and independence. Antidiscourse and discourse serve different functions; trying to understand what is going on in political life by relying on antidiscourse is like trying to fuel a Falcon Heavy rocket with Soarin' Strawberry Kool-Aid. Caravaggio didn't paint the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew with his dick. 

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity.