In 1946, George Orwell said that political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Although he declared this decades ago, Orwell might still be on to something. To be sure, I will examine his thesis to see if it holds true today, using evidence straight from the mouths of today's most prominent politicians.
Exhibit A - President Barack Obama on Osama bin Laden: "The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida."
I wonder how Orwell himself would have perceived President Obama's late-night address and the crowds celebrating outside the White House that were gravely similar to the deranged foreigners cheering the 9/11 attacks.
Regardless, my own reasoning along with the government's - and specifically Obama's - words have led me to hold the killing of bin Laden in the highest regard. Right or wrong, this sole constituent deems this murder respectable.
Exhibit B - Mitt Romney on the economy: "Government under President Obama has grown to consume almost 40 percent of our economy. We are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy."
Romney's statement is doubly impressive, combining attempts to elicit fear in his supporters through the portrayal of a socialist Obama regime and to overwhelm them with deceptive statistics.
Government spending as a percentage of GDP is indeed close to Romney's figure, sitting just below 38 percent according to PolitiFact. But in the past fifteen years, also according to PolitiFact, government spending as a percentage of GDP has always been within 7.6 percent of the current level.
In addition, the recession has played a pivotal role in the slight increase of that figure in recent years.
Romney's caveat of our looming descent into a communist market is a bit off base. In reality, the U.S. ranked ninth on the economic freedom index of 179 countries according to the Heritage Foundation. His dishonest fear-mongering leads me to classify his quote as pure wind.
Exhibit C - Sarah Palin on Paul Revere: "He who warned the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."
Palin's yarn is intrinsically more challenging to assess due to its incoherence. It seems the former governor was describing Revere's legendary 1775 ride as a warning to the British against taking American arms, using those shots and bells as cautionary tools.
Although I appreciate Gov. Palin's storytelling ability and believe her when she says, "I know my American history," her story paints an inaccurate representation of Revere's ride. Due to this lack of sense and distortion of history, I will again accept Orwell's thesis and classify Palin's quote as a pure wind lie.
Conclusion - After careful examination of the evidence and thoughtful deliberation, one can reach the sobering conclusion that contemporary politicians are much like their predecessors: imperfect, mendacious and human.
Toward the end of his life, Socrates reflected that he "was really too honest a man to be a politician." So who is left to fill those shoes?
Abdul Zalikha is an microbiology junior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays.
