You only have to know a little about Orwell to know that of course his essay is not a dogma or even a style guide. The criticisms so far talk only about the Eng

You only have to know a little about Orwell to know that of course his essay is not a dogma or even a style guide. The criticisms so far talk only about the English Language part and not the Politics part. That misses the point spectacularly. It was the Politics part that Orwell cared about. Here is the heart of it (and note the passive in there): Political language [...] is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Was Orwell right that "political chaos is connected with the decay of language"? Of course he was, so profoundly and depicting it so vividly in 1984 that the English language itself conferred the highest possible honor and adopted his name as the word for it. That's his negative point. His positive is that "one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end". Hardly the voice of a style nanny. What Orwell is trying to teach us is this: Cultivate simple language to get yourself out of the habits of obfuscation and evasion. Then you will have a better chance of seeing monstrosities like "mistakes were made" and "enhanced interrogation techniques" for what they are. The heuristics he suggests are obviously just rules of thumb. That he breaks them in the very essay that proposes them is perfectly consistent with his purpose.