The Googlewashing Of Our Language

KIondike writes "The Register talks about how a term ("Second Superpower") coined by the anti-war culture suddenly got radically neutered and altered by a weblog that a lot of people link to. Searching for the term on Google now brings up his blog and other people talking about his blog for the first several entries. Can Google's power to give information to the people be misused and perverted? This only took 42 days." First the widespread usage of "googling" to mean web searching, and now this.

Comments

Re:public opinion?

[bcboy]

Uh, no. There are exactly two countries in the entire world where a majority support the war: the US and Israel. In every other country -- including those whose governments are supporting the war -- it is wildly unpopular.

What a crock

[Grieveq]

"By contrast, it is the strength of the second superpower that it could mobilize hundreds of small groups of activists to shut down city centers across the United States on that same first day of the war."

What a crock of shit. This guy's definition of a "Second Superpower" is to have cival disobedience everytime you don't agree with the government? It's comforting to know that instead of supporting our troops, liberals are more interested in being economically destructive.

Re:Am I the only one...

[horza]

As witness the way support for the anti-war movement just melted away in the last days leading up to the war - right about the time it became really clear that Bush didn't give a flying fuck about public opinion. The vast majority of people just gave up. I don't wish to be hypocritical; I count myself among them.

The vast majority of anti-war protesters didn't have a clue as to what they were really protesting about. It was more "well... it's well... WAR man. War's not... uh cool". I didn't come across any that could coherently argue as to why the negative effects would outweigh the positive. Without a real belief and conviction it's only natural enthusiasm will wane.

That's why every government likes to create and maintain a large and comfortable middle class even if there are some people without a job or a roof over their heads.

A government that tries to get as many people as well of as possible, decently fed and housed with good jobs? Sounds like a pretty reasonable government to me. Better than one that prefers a small ruling elite and a majority poor and working class (eg China, France and Russia).

Phillip.