An old saw says that the first casualty of war is the truth but reality might be a close second. It is not just that our governments lie to us it is how they tell us the truth. Outright lies are often easy to uncover, sending official sources into a frenzy of just straight out denial. After all an outright lie is a difficult thing to defend in the face of the truth so the simple denial is the sole strategy available unless you can literally kill the messenger which has been known to happen.
This particular IED image carries a 2 fold message in the reality wars.
Take for instance the glitzy NewSpeak for a bomb. That little word does not convey the correct message. Every word, every reference must expose a stark difference between us and our foes in a time of war. We use bombs and we are the good guys so the public must have a different term for a bomb when it is used by the bad guys, i. e. the enemy. Solution: Improvised Explosive Device or IED. Just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it. Now you know that anything improvised is not official and is just not the tool to use. The word improvise carries a subliminal message of inferiority. A legitimate military organization doesn’t improvise materials. Only some slipshod mom and pop terrorist cell would do that. I guess if these people want to be taken seriously they need to raise some money and go out and buy an SBED (Store Bought Explosive Device). That’s what we use and that’s the ticket to legitimacy.
If these criminals and scumbags, to use the military vernacular, would use legitimate weapons manufactured to precise specification to blow up our troops then we would be able to respect them. They too would become soldiers and cease being criminals and scumbags. Maybe we would then celebrate their deaths less and gain a perspective on our own casualties. As it stands now the subhuman Taliban is gleefully dispatched to Allah and each of our casualties is a fallen hero.
Language is used to persuade, to guide the listener subtly or sometimes not so subtly to the speakers position. It is the pigment on the canvas of understanding, the colour of reality. If anything should be painted in the words of reality it is war. How else will we ever break this sad cycle of carnage. Even bomb is too kind a word. And Improvised Explosive Device is so sanitized as to be laughable. How about we call it what it is, a life and limb shredding horror, whether we buy it from a manufacturer listed on the NYSE or cook it up in the basement.
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