New Connotation, Same Denotation – Don’t be Fooled

Recently I was writing something in Russian in which I referred to snow as “bleak and isolating.”  I also wrote a translation for someone who does not read Russian.  That’s when I realized that the same Russian word (изолировать) means both “to isolate” and “to insulate.”

Now, while both words can denote the same sort of circumstance – someone or something separated from others –, to me the two words have very different connotations.  I think of something akin to loneliness when I hear, read, or think of isolation, but to me insulate connotes something more positive and warming.

I wondered how someone who did not know what was in my mind when I wrote it would have translated my use of the Russian word.  And if they had used insulate instead of isolate while it might have made the surrounding description seem more pleasant, it really wouldn’t have changed the factual reality of the scene being described; both words have the same underlying literal meaning (as opposed to the connotative emotions or feelings that each word individually suggests).

This is a long way of suggesting that the Left’s current practice of changing words for things is not really changing the underlying substance of the thing.  There are so many examples of the Left using words with different connotations but which, upon inspection, are denoting exactly the same thing, situation, or activity.  Here are just a few:

• Immediately upon President Biden’s inauguration the migrant “cages” of the Trump years became “overflow facilities.”  Yet the actual facility and its detention purpose were the same and looked very similar though far more crowded under Biden.
• Placing individuals in “affinity groups” = separating individuals by skin color = segregation.  The Left (like all of America) opposes or at least claims to oppose segregation, yet the Left is perfectly fine with separating things like college dorms or school classrooms or group activities or reporters by race.  Perhaps they’d just like to put signs up on the doors to the various affinity areas saying things like Whites only or Colored only.
• “Undocumented worker” = in the country without having followed the procedures of our immigration laws = “Illegal alien” (which is the legal term used in those statutes).  But the Left thinks the connotation of undocumented (implying simply not having the right papers) is less offensive than illegal which more directly states the status of the individual’s presence in the country which is in violation of our laws.
• A woman’s “choice” or “right to reproductive health” = a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy = “abortion”.  People know that abortion ends a living being, but choice or reproductive rights have a much softer and kinder connotation. 
• “Riots” become “peaceful protests” or “exercise of First Amendment rights” when acted out in support of Leftist causes but become “insurrections” when voicing Right or anti-Left causes.
• “Marriage equality” = marriages between members of the same sex = “non-traditional marriage.”  Perhaps the Left thinks it is easier to raise support for a phrase that includes the word “equality” (though actually doesn’t equality clash with their current favorite word “equity”?).  Yet, I don’t think the term “marriage equality” fools those whose religious convictions do not support non-traditional marriages.
• And speaking of “equity”, it is used (along with “social justice” and “fairness”) to replace a number of words and concepts that sound less pleasant:  Hiring based on race; removing of AP classes or other challenging curricula; allowing biological males to compete in and thus eviscerate women’s sports; redistribution of wealth so as to take hard earned rewards or property from one and give it to another who has done nothing to help in the achievement of those rewards and has no entitlement to the other’s property; the refusal to treat everyone equally.   

The Left hopes that you will be fooled into thinking that, because of their similar sound and perhaps a similar connotation, that equity and equality are one and the same.  They are not.  Do not think that they are and do not turn a blind eye to all that you give up when you replace your right to equality with some sort of state-sponsored equity.

The examples listed above are just a few of many possibilities that illustrate how the Left thinks it can cleverly change a word, replace it with a different word with a better connotation, and no one will notice that the denotation is the same.  (Interestingly, even “dementia” was replaced by “cognitive decline” in conversations about candidate Biden’s mental abilities.)

Not only does the Left select words that it finds favorable and useful for its causes, it works overtime to make sure that we use them and not words that might point out the truth behind the new language of "wokespeak".  Thus, those that use “unfavorable” language are regularly accused of racism, mistruth, or any number of other sins in order to silence those who do not readily fall in line. This clever use of words based on connotation rather than factual meaning aligns nicely with the Left’s favorite persuasive techniques that rely on emotional rather than logical responses from the audience.

I can’t help but think of this quotation from George Orwell’s 1984: “The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”  

Getting us to use the Left’s selected verbiage is only the beginning.  Because at the same time the Left is narrowing our range of thought.  Again from 1984, “Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”

I wonder if the Left thinks that we can all be fooled by their Newspeak (Wokespeak) connotative replacements.  Perhaps they believe that once we are blinded by their pleasant replacements for unfair, unconstitutional, and downright ugly concepts and polices that they will be fully in control of us and free to alter our country and our very existence to meet their power needs.  I hope that they are wrong.

Presiding over the Annihilation of Democracy

Apparently, Joe Biden doesn’t just want to annihilate America as we know it, but the Middle East as well.  Perhaps it’s all part of his new world order. 

  Destroying America

By now it must be obvious to anyone who is paying attention that President Biden’s domestic agenda is incredibly destructive to every core American principle and value.  He is not merely enlarging but is totally bloating the powers of the federal government, far beyond what even the broadest reading of our Constitution would allow.  The effect of that agenda is the loss of personal freedoms and of what were until now Constitutionally protected rights.  And, if HR-1, which Biden fully supports, is passed, the voice of the people via free, fair, and integrous elections will be seriously impaired if not lost.

Beyond the seemingly dictatorial government power grab, Biden’s agenda is destroying the American spirit.  He pays people to not work.  His policies destroy any reward or incentive for hard work, whether it is removal of AP classes to satisfy “equity” (while at the same time destroying any motivation for a student to excel), or the fact that one can now earn more on unemployment than being employed (encouraging dependence on the State for one’s survival while removing any suggestion of personal responsibility), or that companies that spent time and effort during the previous administration’s Warp Speed to develop Covid vaccines can now not patent those vaccines and thus earn the financial reward to which they, until now, would be entitled for their efforts (and let’s hope we don’t have another pandemic because the drive to innovate has essentially been quashed when the innovators must share the rewards of their efforts with those who sat back and did nothing). 

A core premise of our nation, at least prior to this administration, is equality.   We don’t always manage to get it right, but we have always strived for equal treatment of all.   As has been explained by myself and many others, equality is not equity.  Equality does not guarantee equal results, but it does give (or at least strives to give) all individuals the ability to go after that which they themselves want their life to be.  And, in an America that values tolerance, we respect goals that differ from our own.

There is a fairness to equality that is not present in equity.  Equity simply strives to have the same result for everyone.  There is no guarantee that result is arrived at fairly or that it is what the individual is seeking.  Equity actually requires significant inequality and discrimination as it provides extra benefits and rewards to some while denying benefits and rewards to others so that all will have the same result; a result determined not by the individual but by those in power.

What equity does is give us mediocrity and no incentive for an individual to strive to be the best that he or she can be.

Biden’s policies are also creating a suffocating weight around the neck of our country far greater than the weight of the Albatross on the Ancient Mariner.  The country’s debt was not good, but Biden makes it far worse with his stimulus and other giveaways, all of which he and the Left seek to make permanent and all of which must be paid for by taxpayers.  His policies are causing inflation.  His energy policies not only cause gas prices to rise, but also create rising costs for any product that is transported, whether by truck, train, or plane.  While Biden says he won’t raise taxes on the middle class, the burden of all his programs will be a far more serious strain on the middle class. 

President Biden also seems to have no respect for the rule of law.  Not only did he speak out in favor of one result prior to the jurors’ decision in the Chauvin case, he regularly inserts his opinion into legal issues without actual knowledge of the facts (for instance his erroneous statements about the Georgia voting law which continued even after Washington Post fact checkers had given him “4 Pinocchios”.)   

The Biden Administration is also breaking immigration law in any number of ways.  These include not enforcing border controls, keeping children locked up for days or even weeks in horrific and crowded conditions, releasing migrants into the interior of our country without a return court date, encouraging sanctuary cities (whose very purpose is to violate and disregard federal immigration law).

The upshot of the above, and actually of just about every action that the President takes, is to tear America apart and down.  If he is allowed to keep this up for 4 years (or even 2) he will have, in effect, annihilated the America that we know, the America that was a shining star to the world.

   Destroying Middle East Peace and/or Israel

Biden’s acts of destruction go beyond our borders.  Look at the Middle East, the place where the previous administration was able to do the impossible and negotiate 4 peace accords that were a major step in achieving a new understanding between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Since his inauguration, President Biden has essentially ignored Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu while pandering to Israel’s enemies.  He provided money as well as tacit support to Iran which emboldened Iran to provide missiles and other weapons of war to Hamas. 

Hamas is an admitted terrorist organization whose goal, stated in its own charter, is to “obliterate” Israel.  Styling themselves as some sort of victim class, Hamas has begun firing rockets against Israel.

We all know that our current administration loves any victim class and will bend over backwards to support the alleged victims against their perceived oppressors.  So, rather than condemn the terrorist aggression, Biden calls upon Israel to stop defending itself and cease fire.  There is absolutely no condemnation of Hamas, no acknowledgement of its mission to destroy Israel along with all Jews, not even a nod to Israel’s right to protect its own people.  

Israel’s army is superior to Hamas, and that seems to be a reason to condemn Israel.  Perhaps Biden would like to see equity between the armies of Israel and Hamas, but such equity would probably destroy Israel.  Israel is the most humane of any armed force:  it always provides a warning of upcoming strikes when planning to strike an area where civilians may be present.  Hamas on the other hand uses civilians and especially children to shield their rocket launchers and other weapons. 

But the Left is anti-Israel, and as with everything else, Biden is either strongly Leftist or caves to the Left.  So, today, he demanded a "significant de-escalation" by Israel.  No call for Hamas to disarm.  No acknowledgement that Hamas is the aggressor.  No recognition of Israel’s need to protect its own people.  No grief over the suffering or death of the Jews.

Thankfully, Prime Minister Netanyahu is a leader who cares about his country and its citizens whom he is bound to protect rather than one or another cause du jour.  He stated that “Israel will push ahead to return the calm and security to the citizens of Israel."  That is his job, and President Biden should acknowledge the right of our longtime ally and only democracy in that region to protect itself from terrorist attack.

But Biden does not.  In the interest of pleasing the Left he seems willing to see Israel destroyed along with America.  He seems to care nothing for the people of America or our longtime ally Israel.  He seems to care nothing for democracy or freedom. 

What’s next, the world? If Biden and his far-Left policies continue, democracy will be destroyed not only in America, but in the entire world.  And then, where will those seeking freedom and the right to exercise their inherent, inalienable, and God-given rights go?

Update

Here is a short update on the removal of my post.   

I will have a new post coming this week.  There is so much going on at the local, national, and international level that it is hard to focus on which craziness to write about!  Nonetheless, there will be at least one new post in the next few days.

Thanks for reading!

This blog is not dangerous

 Google has determined my site to be "dangerous".  It is not.  Just not Leftest.

It has removed the following blog that was posted on 3/12/2021.  I repost it below.

I will have more to say on this in the next week or so.

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

A Very Sanitary Future

 

The future.  It is often portrayed as so very perfect.  So clean.   Yet also so sterile and sanitized.

The sanitation has begun as cancel culture tells us what to think and how to behave.  Eventually we can become like the automatons that we see in futuristic portrayals.  All on the same bland even keel.  No ups, no downs, no extremes of emotion. People are calm.  They say only the right things.  They have only the correct behavior.  And they have no joy.  No humanity.

Today there are things you can’t say.  There is history that must not be taught.  There are books that cannot be read.  Our world, and especially the world of our minds, is being sanitized.  Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird are stories that if anything create an awareness and perhaps empathy for the Black experience in America.  Yet those books are cancelled because they use language of the times and are true to the times.  Dr. Seuss has now been cancelled.  I find it hard to believe that every child who was given a Dr. Seuss book to enjoy, to giggle at, and in the process to learn something of phonetics, I refuse to believe that those children because of that experience were turned into racists.

Soon our stories will be fully sanitized and will all read something like this: “They met.  They fell in love.  They died.”  No detail allowed - it might offend someone.  No joy, no sorrow, nothing to learn from.  Just a few words on a page, sanitized and approved.  (Those who are familiar with Russian history will of course think of the Soviet establishment of socialist realism as the only acceptable aesthetic for authors who were given basic mandatory plots to follow.  Any deviation was banned, sometimes along with the authors themselves.)

We learn from that which has not been sanitized.  Great literature teaches us about our humanity, about the human condition.  History teaches us about where we went right and where we went wrong, thus allowing us to not repeat the same mistakes.  Information, even information that might offend one or many, can spark thoughts, innovations, excitement in the human brain and the human soul. 

It is information and the spark of inspiration that it provides that allows humanity to progress.  Information feeds our natural curiosity.  It is as essential for our being as is food.

Human emotion is a part of us, both its positive and negative passions.  It cannot be banned; allowing us to be conscious of it means that we can learn about and from it and perhaps even control our own individual demons.

Once upon a time I wrote a poem about an Eagle and a Pigeon.  I don’t think I understood the significance of it then but let me use its spirit here.  The mighty Eagle soars and dives.  I don’t know how an eagle feels when it dives, but I do know that when it reaches the bottom it often gathers sustenance that allows it to soar again.  Our minds, indeed our whole being, when allowed to be open, are like the Eagle, soaring to great heights of joy, diving into sadness and depression, learning from both and indeed living as we humans are meant to live, full of spirit, emotion, reason, and passion. 

Yet with the onslaught of cancel culture we are becoming more like carrier pigeons.  Kept in cages, their route is always direct and level and predetermined by someone else.  Even the message they carry is not theirs but is instead written for them.  The pigeon does its job, but with how much joy or personality?

People are not perfect. Nor are they level and unthinking or unfeeling.  Their ugly parts cannot be banished and indeed it is the contrast with the ugly that allows us to experience our greatest joys.  Much as we might try, while we might be able to sanitize a city for a day, we simply cannot fully sanitize the imperfect being called human.  We can force the humanity onto the level and predetermined course of the pigeon, but sooner or later the individual human spirt needs to soar.

The sanitized future may look lovely.  A “perfect world.”  But it seems more and more like that perfect world, cold and devoid of emotion, requires us to sanitize our very selves so that we no longer exist.  We still have the ability to soar and to dive like the eagle, but every time a thought or a word or an action is banned from our access, we move a little closer to the pigeon.