War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
The terms of political discourse typically have two meanings. One is the dictionary meaning, and the other is a meaning that is useful for serving power-the doctrinal meaning.
Take democracy. According to the commonsense meaning, a society is democratic to the extent that people can participate in a meaningful way in managing their affairs. But the doctrinal meaning of democracy is different-it refers to a system in which decisions are made by sectors of the business community and related elites. The public are to be only “spectators of actions,” not “participants,” as leading democratic theorists (in this case, Walter Lippmann) have explained. They are permitted to ratify the decisions of their betters and to lend their support to one or another of them, but not to interfere with matters-like public policy-that are none of their business.
-Noam Chomsky.
