On leftist language

Thread by @GPIngersoll on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

 "The assault on language in the name of “inclusivity” or sensitivity is really just about making language so imprecise that regular people can no longer speak truth.

Not a mistress, but a companion. Not a riot if it’s a mostly peaceful protest. Not illegal, just undocumented.

 

And if you want to get really down into the guts of the matter, please take notice that every mandated change in language is not only more muddled, but it takes LONGER to even say.

If the base outcome of the change is to obfuscate and belabor language, then it seems clear that the people enforcing the change find the subject to be either one of much personal discomfort or just plain inconvenient to their goals, usually the latter under the shrill guise of the former.

Don’t call them illegal aliens, you bigot, these words literally hurt me! 

 

The result, if you’re honest enough, is that not only does it take you longer to even be a part of the discourse, but you must use blunted words that quite often (dare I say almost always) carry a connotation that is more conducive to the goals of the people mandating the words!

 

It takes more energy to convey an idea and even if it’s dissenting, the implications are exactly what the acolytes desire anyhow!

 

How can we abhor adultery when to do so would be to be anti-companionship?

How can we possibly be concerned about something as benign “undocumented non-citizens”?

Why in the world would we condemn something that is MOSTLY PEACEFUL?

 

 

If Jake Tapper wakes up at 2 am and I’m sitting in his living room eating a rueben, am I there illegally? Or am I merely an undocumented building occupant?

The (absurd) argument is that people cannot be illegal. If you are trespassing, your state of being itself IS illegal.

 

Now some would argue that there’s a difference between privately owned property and public property. 

 

Except sovereignty is a thing, and in a democratic, free society, it is a thing in which all citizens share a stake. 

 

The worst part of all this linguistic bullshit is that there is heavy social cost to opting out. Back in Carlin’s time, if you didn’t adopt “differently abled,” it just went over like a fart at a dinner party.

 

Now, if you do not play by their rules, they attempt to destroy you. 

 

No longer are you briefly poo pooed. CNN traipses across your lawn to demand why your facebook page hosted Russian memes. Reporters bang on your door to ask why you gave $10 to Kyle Rittenhouse. They come to your homes and businesses, they shut you down and drive you out.

 

How can you be against adults administering “sex changes” to children when they’ve been repackaged as “gender affirmation medical care”?!

ARE YOU AGAINST GIVING TRANS KIDS MEDICAL CARE?!

The function is to toxify any form of dissent for issues that deserve serious scrutiny. 

And, let’s be honest, if we kept calling these things “sex changes” as we’ve literally always called them, there would be zero political will to make them legal for children. The goal of rendering language inert is to transfer control of outcomes to a small minority of people.

 

And, make no goddamn mistake, that small group of people — call it a politburo or a vanguard or whatever — does not share YOUR best interests. Their chief interest is power followed closely by how to hold on to it. Destroying language is a key element of that.
 

Finally, sadly, this movement has in large part become a kind of religion. That was a deliberate choice. As a secular preference, your dissent is just off putting. As a religious edict, your dissent is heresy.

The distinction allows for, encourages even, wholesale ruination.
 

The difference explains the righteous fervor and sense of duty and obligation that underwrites the pursuit and destruction of heretics.

We've seen this before in history.

The most dangerous humans have almost always been the ones who felt a false sense righteousness.
 

The sense of righteousness, in this case, springs not from something eternal, universally recognized in the human condition, like virtue.

It is almost entirely a manipulation, a ruse, a calculated concoction that doesn’t stand even the most minor inspection.
 

Which brings us back to square one, our primary means to inspect ideas: Open discourse, free thought, unfettered language.

These are enemies of the new religion and must be hemmed, blunted or destroyed. There is no other way to maintain an unpopular and brittle world view."

 

 

“By 2050, earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness”

--- 1984 / George Orwell