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I think the real problem is the potential for abuse... Beyond
politics...
I think what will happen is that it will cause politics to enter EVERY
aspect of our lives....
Given time and human nature, I can picture a scenario where a politician
felt that the fairness doctrine could be extrapolated to all aspects of
life, advertising, businesses, churches, everything...
We are all pretty much aware of what has happened in other countries. It
starts with a little law "to protect people" and suddenly, it becomes a
dictatorship.
I guess it is politics in a way - but its deeper than that. For example,
how does this impact communication at the professional level?
I'll give you an example. I worked in China for 6 weeks as an "English
Consulant" (typo deliberate - that is what they printed on my
cards...)... A woman gave me a document to review for English. The
problem was that it made no sense to me. So I went to ask her what
certain terminology meant, like the Red Flower Policy, etc. What I came
away with was terms translated into English that ALL Chinese knew what
they meant, but no native English speaker did. So I asked her to
translate what the terms meant. I was told that she was forbidden by the
government to do so.
And so communication and politics entered into professional technical
communication, and I ended up with a very nicely written document in
English that read well, but was absolutely meaningless!
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