Doublespeak at Doublespeed. Don't Believe What You Know.

What we are being told is far-flung from the truth, but can we change it?

If you haven’t read George Orwell’s prescient novel, 1984, now is the time. It may be long past the time. But as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, and the second-best time is now. So if you haven’t read this book, count this as the second-best time, and start reading.

I first read this Orwellian masterpiece when I was in junior high, coincidentally right around 1984 in reality. At the time, we all laughed off the notions Orwell put forward, especially that of government-controlled thinking and speaking. The 1980s were built on Reagan ideology, and led toward George Bush, Sr. Although we were certainly learning that all politicians lie, we were not smacked in the face daily with rewritings of history the likes of what we have now. No democratic leader was saying blatantly that what we saw with our eyes and what we heard with our ears was just not true. No leader was altering our real perceptions of world events by merely dismissing them as fake.

None of us as teenagers could envision that any of these things in Orwell’s dystopian fiction could ever really take place.

But here we are.

Just yesterday, Donald Trump seriously claimed that Ukraine never should have gotten themselves into a war with Russia. He completely rewrote reality, since surely Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy had no intention of starting the scrapping with the much larger neighbor. Quite the contrary. Russia invaded Ukraine with the intent of annexing the small country. Putin claimed his regime was just taking back what was already theirs.

On 24 February 2022, President Putin mounted a massive offensive against Ukraine. It has led to the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

For those unfamiliar, here’s a primer on why Putin feels justified:

On 8 December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus agreed to and signed the Belavezha (sometimes written as Belovzah) Accords, declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. With no more USSR, Ukraine and Belarus were no longer part of the larger union. As a result, the 12 remaining Soviet republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, thus creating the Confederation of Independent States. On Christmas Day 1991, Soviet President Gorbachev resigned. The Kremlin raised the flag of Russia, taking down the flag of the USSR, and a new era began.

In 2008, Ukraine applied to join NATO. But at the Bucharest Summit that April, NATO froze Ukraine’s application. Because Russia has since been a taunting force, showing their clear recolonization plans, Finland, which had remained neutral since World War II, and Sweden which had been neutral for more than 200 years, joined NATO in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

It’s important to remember that NATO was formed in part to thwart Russian expansion in the first place. Ukraine’s application to join prodded long-held animus from Putin. Tensions rose when Ukraine ousted a president with allegiances to Russia. In response, and revenge, Russia annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine, a move soundly condemned by the international community. Over time, Russia amassed nearly 200,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, and upon invading launched the claims that they (Russia) were merely recovering their lost land. In truth, Russia invaded in large part to ensure that Ukraine does not join NATO, thus gaining the protection and alliance of neighbors with whom Russia strongly disagrees. Zelensky himself has repeatedly argued that Ukraine stands as Europe’s first line of defense against Russian encroachment.

The history all along has been that, 30 years ago, all parties agreed that Ukraine was their own independent country.

Until now.

Donald Trump lied to revise the real actions of Russia and Ukraine three years ago. Referring to Ukrainian leaders, primarily Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump said, “You should have never started it,” and “You could have made a deal.” Such an obvious Trump approach to diplomacy, let alone an invasion. Because the war has been waging for so long (3 years now), elections in Ukraine have been suspended to allow military focus and security. Holding elections amid falling missiles would be a logistical nightmare. But Trump used this to call Zelenskiy an unelected dictator. In his typical garbled word salad, Trump said, “I would say that when they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to — wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it’s been a long time since we had an election?”

Trump also said that Ukraine’s president has only a 4% approval rating, which is patently false as well. Zelenskiy’s approval has fallen from quite high to around 50%, which is actually super close to Trump’s own approval ratings just a few weeks into his second term.

Absurdly false language around Ukraine is just one major, disastrous statement in the long list of Doublespeak uttered by the Trump regime. “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” is an executive order that actually empowers the federal government to become a weapon against itself. Trump’s proposed abolition of the Department of Education and his other executive order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” requires “patriotic education” become the new curriculum. In his order, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” Trump erased diversity language, claiming there is “no more woke” in America.

By focusing on removing important clarifying language, by reinventing the order and magnitude of events, and by his plethora of lies, Trump is indeed invoking all that Orwell predicted.

I have no more to add, except - read that book.

Be kind, friends.