It’s important, when listening to the official shapers of opinion in the media, to ask ourselves what they really mean by the words they use. As Orwell pointed out in “Politics and the English Language,” those in power use language to obscure meaning more often than to convey it.
A good example is the recurrence of phrases like “endangered our national security” and “aided the enemy,” from people like Eric Holder, Peter King and Lindsey Graham, in reference to leaks by people like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Now, they certainly intend to evoke certain associations in the minds of listeners with their word choices. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself responding in just the way the users intend — allowing their words to conjure up in your mind homes, families, neighbors, churches, a whole way of life, threatened with invasion and destruction by a nameless, faceless enemy — in the words of Orwell’s Two-Minute Hate, “the dark armies … barbarians whose only honour is atrocity.” ...
Every structured society will have these interests to defend. Unless we do not seek a structured society, it seems to me that the most important question is one of legitimacy and accountability. Is the structure built around the interests of its participants, and does the structure respond to the will of its participants? I do believe that in the US, we have reason to question whether the system is popularly legitimate, and whether the system is significantly responsive. There is a narrative that US citizens have long been characteristically comfortable without a wide social safety net. I do believe that this is partially a grassroots narrative. However, it also serves to defend the interests of those with power in the current system. You can see this in particular in the Tea Party movement. This kind of narrative appropriation happens on the left as well, but the messaging isn't so clear, or so plainly oxymoronic. IMO OWS successfully resisted appropriation of a narrative, yet took it so far that they couldn't establish one of their own.