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esrauch a day ago

They do a lot more war than defense don't they?

abustamam a day ago | parent [-]

That may be true but changing the department's name can only be done with an act of congress, which has not been done yet. Thus, the name is still officially and legally Dept of Defense.

Just because a name is more accurate doesn't mean that it's its new name. Otherwise we wouldn't be the United States of America (we are literally not united bc Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, and we are figuratively not united because... Well, you know)

fluidcruft a day ago | parent [-]

All of that's irrelevant for what "newspeak" means.

abustamam 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Maybe, but the comment I was replying to wasn't talking about newspeak.

furyofantares 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's in a reply chain that's talking about newspeak. You compacted your context way too early.

abustamam 12 hours ago | parent [-]

The reply chain is talking about newspeak but the parent of the comment I was replying to was

> DoW is newspeak. Thats not it's name.

I understood that comment I was replying to was responding to was replying to the latter part of the comment.

Discussions and threads can evolve. They are not static.

fluidcruft 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm confused... now you were talking about newspeak? How odd.

abustamam 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure how you got that from my comment.

fluidcruft 9 hours ago | parent [-]

As a recap, my reply to your reply was that DoD is the actual newspeak, and your reply to that evolution of the discussion is that you were not discussing newspeak.

abustamam 7 hours ago | parent [-]

In trying to understand if I'm missing something, I looked up what newspeak means. I (as well as probably a few other commenters based on the contents of their comments) was under the assumption it meant "new speak" meaning it's something new.

In case anyone else reading this was not aware of this, this is what I discovered.

It's a term from George Orwell's 1984, describing a language used to make thoughts unthinkable by removing words from the language. It has nothing to do with "age of the term."

Hence, Dept of Defense is indeed newspeak. Dept of War, while being a new name for the dept, is too literal to be newspeak.

Thanks for the opportunity for me to learn something!

furyofantares 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Department of Defense has historically been a prime example of newspeak.

I think Department of War is also newspeak. Or at least, they didn't change the name just to get the name in line with the amount of war the department does.

They changed it because they wanted to do more even more war. The amount of war the department does under the name "Defense" has been status quo for a long time, and my take is they wanted us to think of them differently so they could do even more war, which they have since been doing.

fluidcruft 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh apologies, I interpreted your comment as intended to be part of the discussion rather than as a non-sequitur.

abustamam 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Discussions and conversations can evolve. Read the thread again.