Sunshine, Daydreams, and the Soft New Doublespeak
An essay by Chad Schomber
It didn’t start with politics. It started with flavors.
Lemon wasn’t lemon anymore. It was "Sunshine."
Mango became "Tropical Daydream." What you used to peel and bite into turned into a mood you were supposed to sip.
At first, it felt harmless. Even clever. Selling a feeling instead of a fruit. No sharp edges. No room for disappointment. If it didn’t taste right, maybe you just weren’t in the right frame of mind.
But it wasn’t just food.
Politics, parenting, healthcare, work, friendship… they all drifted the same way.
Language stopped anchoring us to facts. It started floating.
Orwell warned about language as a weapon. His doublespeak smashed meaning to force loyalty. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. It was blunt-force dishonesty.
You knew it was wrong. That was part of the terror.
Today's version is quieter. It doesn’t contradict. It erodes.
It doesn’t force you to believe something false. It hands you a handful of fog and tells you to enjoy the atmosphere.
Policies aren't about building roads or balancing budgets anymore. They're about "values."
Healthcare isn’t about medicine. It’s about "wellness journeys."
Parenting isn't about raising people. It's about "nurturing spaces."
Friendship isn’t loyalty. It’s "community engagement."
Words used to point at real things. Now they gesture vaguely into the mist.
It works because nobody can be wrong about a feeling. If a candidate promises "hope" and nothing improves, that’s not a failure. That’s just your personal journey with hope. If your drink tastes like soap instead of sunshine, that's not false advertising. That’s your interpretation of sunshine.
This new doublespeak doesn't crush dissent. It makes dissent impossible. You can’t argue with a mood. You can’t protest a vibe.
You can't even complain when you’ve been sold nothing. Because technically, they never promised you anything real in the first place.
It’s easier, sure. Nobody has to feel disappointed when the future doesn’t show up the way they imagined. Nobody has to admit failure when a friendship, a job, a government falls apart. It wasn’t the product. It was your "expectations."
But something is lost.
Real flavor.
Real promises.
Real accountability.
A lemon tastes like lemon whether you’re in a good mood or a bad one. A job either pays or it doesn’t. A friend either shows up or they don't. A leader either builds something or they don’t.
When words had teeth, you could hold people to them. You could measure failure. You could demand better.
Now we drift through sunshine and daydreams, wellness and hope, meaning whatever we need them to mean in the moment.
It’s a softer world.
It’s a safer world.
It’s also a lonelier, slipperier one.
We didn't lose truth the way Orwell imagined.
We let it evaporate.
Flavor by flavor. Word by word. Promise by promise.
Until everything started tasting like nothing at all.