“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” So wrote George Orwell seventy years ago in his still-timely essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

“When the general atmosphere is bad,” he went on, “language must suffer.” And so it has.

We discussed the essay in the recent All-School Seminar here at Wyoming Catholic College and so it was fresh in my mind as I watched Monday’s presidential debate.

In the essay, Orwell addressed two problems. The first is the downward spiral of sloppy writing and sloppy thinking reinforcing each other. The English language, he said, “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

His evidence for this includes:

• Metaphors that have lost any evocative power. (Remember Al Gore’s eminently forgettable “Bridge to the future”?)
• Hackneyed phrases snapped together like Legos to save the writer the trouble of thinking clearly and choosing appropriate nouns and verbs as in Hillary Clinton opening statement Monday night: “The central question in this election is really what kind of country we want to be and what kind of future we’ll build together.” No doubt.
• Pretentious diction: words that “dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.” As relentlessly partisan Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne commented on the debate, “Trump has campaigned as a populist paladin of the working class. But the Trump that Clinton described was a plutocrat who walked away from debts and obligations to his own employees.”
• Meaningless words. To those who can’t resist comparing Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler, Orwell wrote the year after World War II ended, “Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’”
• “The attraction of this way of writing,” Orwell commented, “is that it’s easy.” And that is a perfect match for sloppy thinking, which is also easy.

Orwell didn’t stop with criticizing inept writing. His concern included those who use sloppy language to express sloppy ideas in order to deceive. “Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Again, refer to Monday’s “Debate of the Century.”

As Cherie Harder, president of The Trinity Forum recently commented on the essay, confusion in our language and thinking “in turn provides fertile ground for the growth of would-be strong men, who offer glib answers, easy scapegoats, and tough talk to reassure and make sense of the world for those muddled in their thinking. Orwell offers simple, straightforward suggestions for sharpening and refining one’s thinking and writing — and holds out hope that doing so makes possible a more free and flourishing society.”

That last part is critical we are not facing a lost cause. Orwell insisted that we can revive clear language and with it clear thinking if we set our minds to do it.

Don’t expect the politicians and talking heads to help. The change, if it comes at all, will come from us. To that end he included six questions and six rules for good, clear, thoughtful writing. Put off writing, he wrote, until you think the issue through. “Afterwards one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best convey the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person.”

To put it another way, Orwell urged his readers to think and write deliberately while cutting through the weeds that obscure the meaning — or lack of meaning — in our political discourse.

As Cherie Harder notes, “In the midst of a presidential campaign characterized by hackneyed insults, obvious falsehoods, and invective, and against a popular entertainment culture that grabs eyeballs with violence and spectacle, a movement to cultivate precision, clarity, truth and beauty in our use of language would be truly counter-cultural — and wonderfully appealing.”

She and I both recommend Orwell’s essay as a good beginning and, while you can grab an online copy, if you order The Trinity Forum’s edition you get the added benefit of an introduction by columnist and scholar Peter Wehner.

Words and thoughts fell on hard times years ago. Those seeking to improve the state of our literary and intellectual life are, for the most part, Christians — the people devoted to both the Incarnate Word and the written Word. We can succeed, but it will take each of us doing our part.