GEORGE ORWELL, NORMAN MAILER, DEATH OF THE NOVEL, DECAY OF OUR MOTHER TONGUE, NEW LANGUAGE FOR MENDACITY AND FINANCIAL LOOTING

George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 and said "Most people would admit that the English language is in a bad way." "Our civilization is decadent, and our language must inevitably share in the general collapse.  The decline of a language must have political and economic causes."  The glossary of financial double-talk, the words like "derivatives", "commodity futures contracts", "swaps" have become the jargon of financial thieves, disguised as real English language, with no threads of probity, amid incompetence and lies.  In his last book, an interview with his son, called "The Big Empty", Norman Mailer lamented the possibility of the novel vanishing, corporate America completely taking over the culture to become "The Big Empty".  Mailer believed that life's mysteries, moral codes, insights into the Universe, and answers to many of life's dilemmas, were not found in corporate America, and not found in churches or synagogues.  The American novel and great writers through history have been the repository of massive insights, and huge epiphanies that show youth and adults a way forward.  Great novelists from the past have woven into life's narrative, many answers to the Big Questions.  If the language is corrupted by Wall Street, and the unintelligible speech of incompetent political figures, what is left?  Birdman was recently in a discussion with a large group of youth in their 20's where the dominant theme was the abuse and corruption of the mother tongue.  Half of the group used the F word at least four times a minute, the other half had never heard of James Michener, nor Norman Mailer, and when a mention of Shakespeare came up, the F word crowd could not deal with the level of language.  They were creating their own slang, because they didn't read anything above a 6th grade level, and couldn't speak well.  "In heaven and earth Horatio, there is more than is in your philosophy." William Shakespeare. There is more than the F word, even in this rough culture.  One young lady used the word ghetto to describe almost everything, interspersed with the F word.  The sad news is she had allegedly graduated from an American college.  The slang, misuse of the word ghetto, is not in the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang.  It has been corrupted like the word icon, by small elements of the young to describe something that is substandard, like the wrong color on the hood of a car.  This is an example of the acceptance of ignorance, to be part of the "In" crowd.  God help us if these guys ever get elected to anything.  They could end up on Wall Street as language experts on how to hoodwink investors into buying "credit default obligations."  Even President Obama, who is the master of rhetoric, at a recent speech in Toledo at a Chrysler plant, said, "Our task is to rebuild the future".  You cannot rebuild the future.  You can work on hiring people in your administration who have business experience in private enterprise, and create an atmosphere for job creation and legitimate growth.  Teddy Roosevelt referred to this in 1904.  Only 6% of President Obama's staff has previous private enterprise experience.  Harry Truman had a staff with 50% and Ronald Reagan had a staff which contained 88%, people who had private business experience.  In the TV series, "Boardwalk Empire", the head boss (Nuky)  of the entire operation was confronted by a young man who complained that he wasn't getting anywhere, moving up in the quasi criminal enterprise.  The boss looked at him and said, "If you would learn how to speak well, in good English, someone would take you seriously."  Never have so many, who know nothing, taken over the public dialogue.  Never have so many crimes been committed , by so many looters of banks, with none guarding the walls of prison in striped suits.  Hundreds of cases were prosecuted, and white collar jerks, were sent to jail during the savings and loan crisis.  Now the justice department, with the President of the US as head policeman, have done nothing. Is it because they have no grasp of the language of white collar crime, or is there something else at work here? Freedom of speech in the US has become people talking constant nonsense.  There are a few exceptions like Harrison's novel, "The Legends of the Fall".  He is 72 years of age, is very well read, and knows the language of  Americans, how to tell a dramatic tale in the west.  He knows how to create a narrative and speaks well.  Mark Twain, the master of American vernacular, should send us some letters from the Elysian Fields, describing the criminal cabal between Wall Street thugs in the banking system who looted 20 trillion $ from the American people, and Washington DC incompetents, who stand by and watch, and make sure the culprits get their yearly bonuses.  Mark Twain predicted these bank robbers 100 years ago, as well as Teddy Roosevelt.  James Michener on his 89th birthday in Austin Texas, was celebrated at a bookstore.  Two thousand people were standing in line when he arrived to honor his lifetime of writing and just to see the man.  Michener wept, he had not been moved so deeply since his wife Mari died two years before.  He gave 60 million dollars to universities, writing schools, cancer research centers, scholarship programs, and various other causes his last decade, and lived on a small pittance left by his wife.  Thomas Wolfe in "Of Time And The River"; "October had come again, and that year it was sharp and soon: frost was early, burning the thick green on the mountain sides to massed brilliant hues of blazing colors, painting the air with sharpness, sorrow and delight...over all the earth there was the premonitory breath of frost, and exultancy for all the men who were returning, a haunting sorrow for the buried men, and for all those who were gone and would not come again." Who can write like that now? Now we get the raucous cry of a young girl at the Denver airport: "The whole nation is full of shit-head, one- and- a- half -times rednecks, and they are stupid." Congressmen and Wall Street bankers should have in gold letters on their doors, this young girls cries for a lost hope, and add to it, "And they are us, and we are stupid, but we know how to steal."