The Deep State’s war on truth is being waged with doubletalk, delusion and propaganda.
Through deliberate manipulation of language—what George Orwell called “doublespeak”—Donald Trump has provided cover for the Deep State’s continued grip on power.
While promising to drain the swamp, his administration has instead relied on contradictory policies, misinformation, and propaganda to further entrench the very system he claims to oppose. Although the Trump administration is merely the latest frontman for the Deep State’s efforts to maintain its stranglehold on power, we are approaching a tipping point beyond which there may be no turning back to freedom as we have known it.
This is how “we the people” remain on the losing end of this devil’s bargain that is life in the American police state.
What we desperately need is a reality check, and that starts by disconnecting from the Deep State’s propaganda-riddled, manipulated alternative reality about the state of our nation.
While President Trump, well versed in the “art of the deal,” appears to be saying all the right things about peace, corruption, graft, wasteful spending, free speech, equality, bloated bureaucracy, national security, etc., his administration’s actions tell a far different story about his priorities and his loyalties, which remain self-serving, imperial, flagrantly unconstitutional and intended to keep the Deep State in power.
As always, actions speak louder than words.
When the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are still missing from the White House’s website, that oversight—or deliberate omission—speaks volumes.
Any government that can’t be bothered to include the Constitution among its priorities, or include it anywhere on its administration’s website, is not a government that can be trusted to abide by the Constitution.
Then again, trust has little to do with it.
The Constitution is a contract between the people and the government. What we have been experiencing over the course of both Republican and Democratic presidencies, is a breach of contract. Where the Trump administration differs from those that have come before it is in its willingness to go rogue in defiance of Congress, the courts and the rule of law.
You don’t wage a “common sense” revolution by discarding the Constitution. That way lies dictatorship.
Remember, how you do something is just as important as why you do it.
So, what’s really going on?
As a populace, we have become so desensitized to political lies, especially Trump’s barrage of lies, that we shrug them off and move on. But in doing so, we act as enablers for what hides beneath those lies.
Make no mistake: the Deep State—the real Deep State, not the decoy version of it that Trump trots out to justify dismantling our constitutional republic—hides behind that rhetoric.
As journalist Shawn McCreesh explains, “In order to remake the government, President Trump and his administration are remaking the language used to describe the government... It is a vocabulary containing many curious uses of doublespeak.”
Doublespeak, as media scholar Edward S. Herman defines it, is characterized by “the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.”
The term is derived from George Orwell’s 1984, in which “doublethink” and “Newspeak” are used to manipulate the masses into going along with the government’s agenda.
In true Orwellian fashion, Trump has mastered the art of doublespeak.
Consider some of Trump’s uses of alternative facts, misdirection and misnomers to advance the Deep State’s agenda.
In true doublespeak fashion, Trump’s path to peace leads to more war.
Trump’s path to nationalism by way of isolationism is in fact empire building.
Trump’s path to saving money is spending money.
Trump’s path to law and order is allowing the police to act lawlessly.
Trump’s path to efficiency is giving rise to even greater inefficiency.
Trump’s path to economic triumph is spelling economic disaster.
Trump’s path to draining the swamp is letting the swamp run the show.
Trump’s path to free speech is censorship.
Trump’s path to transparency is replacing watchdogs with yes-men and loyalists.
Trump’s path to ending cancel culture is more cancel culture.
When you set aside the mountain of contradictory policies and propaganda that have become hallmarks of Trump’s time in office, a grim picture emerges: Trump’s efforts to make America great again are really just a variation on one theme, which is keeping the Deep State in power at the expense of our freedoms.
Indeed, George Orwell’s fictional 1984 could increasingly be mistaken for the Trump Administration’s instruction manual on how to remake the government in the dystopian image of Oceania, the authoritarian regime run by Big Brother.
The key to maintaining the Deep State’s chokehold on power is what Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels referred to as the “big lie.”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” stated Goebbels.
This is how that slippery slope to authoritarianism begins, with lies that masquerade as truths and a populace disinclined to think for themselves.
Which brings us back to the tactics being deployed by the Trump administration.
Conformity, compliance and group think are necessary ingredients for tyrants to succeed.
Yet as historian Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic, “We are not a theocracy or a monarchy that accepts the word of the leader or the priesthood as law. We are a democracy that debates facts, seeks to understand problems, and then legislates solutions, all in accordance with a set of rules.”
The answer, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, is that we must re-learn what it means to think for ourselves.
Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, don’t allow yourselves to become so desensitized to Trump’s brand of politics that you tolerate behavior in government officials that you would never tolerate from your own children (lying, bullying, name-calling, greed, etc.).
When all is said and done, Trump’s path to putting America First is really about putting Trump first and leaving Americans in bondage to the Deep State.
In Orwell’s world, the state maintained power through deception.
In Trump’s America, doublespeak remains the Deep State’s most powerful weapon—one that thrives as long as the public fails to recognize it for what it is—and Trump is proving to be its most effective mouthpiece.