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.
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.
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