Feeling Like an Ex-Pat in My Own Country

 The term “ex-pat” is short for ex-patriot, an individual living and/or working in a country other than his or her country of citizenship, often temporarily and often for work reasons.  Ex-pats, while usually having chosen and enjoying their life abroad, still very much consider themselves citizens of their homeland and generally experience some level of homesickness for it.  They often get together with other expats from the same country to celebrate traditions of their homeland or otherwise enjoy aspects of their homeland that are missing in their current country of residence.

In today’s world I often feel like an ex-pat in my own country.  While many of my fellow citizens feel similarly, I am sure that many others are not really aware of the depth of irreversible change that is taking place, and which will leave us with not an improved America but with a very different country entirely. 

The progressive Left agenda is more than just some typical political posturing and gamesmanship.  Today’s progressive and socialist Left would like to see America as we know it completely dismantled and re-established as some sort of socialist utopia.  America is already changing its character and essence into a truly different place, and that is why many are feeling like homesick expats – strangers in a strange land homesick for their homeland.

I am not talking about some nostalgia for an America of yesteryear.  This is not a desire for an America that never changes or does not work to cure its deficiencies or constantly evolve.  Rather, it means a desire for exactly that America – the America with the core values that has allowed it to ever evolve forward, closer to the ideals of its founding and its Constitution, the ideals that have allowed it to be the beacon of freedom to the rest of the world for the past 245 years.

So many of what one often cites as characteristics of America and as those things which make her unique and great are being cancelled and replaced by very different characteristics.  Those new characteristics or values are encouraged by the Left along with their handmaidens the mainstream media and big corporations.  These changes are all interrelated and while each alone affects some aspect of America, when all become intertwined they eat out America’s heart and soul.

What is being cancelled and how is it being replaced? I have created two charts which only begin to suggest the changes that are occurring.  These charts suggest some of the characteristics of America and its people that are being cancelled – the characteristics of the America that I and other expats here are homesick for. 

Of course some, especially the woke Left and their minions, are thrilled to see these many changes.  Others of us are terrified as we see these many interrelated elements creating a new America, one without our traditional freedoms and values, one that will require an authoritarian structure for whom most of us will be required to relinquish our individuality as we essentially become its slaves. 

While the below charts only scratch the surface of the upheaval that is taking place in America, they perhaps give a sense of its extent.  America is not evolving or growing but being destroyed in order to serve some sort of reimagining by the Left (reimagining being the appropriate word here because this has all been imagined before – by every failed or failing socialist or Marxist regime that has ever existed). 

As I look about me and see a very different America emerging, I realize that I am an ex-pat in my own country.  The problem is, I did not choose to move here, I don't like it, and I cannot go home.

Individual and Societal Characteristics in America Today

Part 1:  Aspects that emanate from something external to the individual (e.g. inherent/constitutional rights, the State, the mob)
Being Cancelled	Being Encouraged	Examples/Effect of Change
Inherent Rights (rights that belong to the individual and cannot be taken by the State)	State granted rights (The state owns the right and can choose to grant it or how to grant it and can take it away)	E.g.: Entitlement programs or amount of those programs: housing & rent assistance, social services,
Rules that apply equally to all	Rules apply depending on the situation and who is involved	E.g: Leaders not following own rules; favored victim classes excused from what are legal violations for others
Regulated borders	Open borders; immigration laws not enforced	Loss of identifiable and unified country; no control over who enters and why
Choice	No Choice (in goods or beliefs)	E.g.: Certain points of view cannot be posted on social media, are disinvited from college campuses, are fired because of beliefs
Equality (Equal opportunity for all, but results might not be equal)	Equity (Equal results for all)	Requires some form of discrimination to achieve the desired result; the State (as opposed to the individual) determines what the result will be; eliminates motivation & competition
Uniqueness of Individual	Group identity	Causes dissention as groups are defined as victims or oppressors; labels people based on external characteristics
Rights require responsibility	Rights without responsibility	Entitlement and little motivation to work or to contribute to country, society or the greater good
Meritocracy	Mediocrity	Socialism.  Destroys the Individual and fulfillment of one’s abilities
Acknowledge and learn from history (good & bad)	Cancel and deny history	Judgmental; repeat old mistakes; denies respect, pride, understanding for how the country overcame negatives and for those who came before
Freedom of speech and thought	Cancel or limit & attack opposing ideas/theories/suggestions	Stymies the ability to progress with new ideas and innovations; does not allow challenges and suggestions that can improve theories
Decisions based on fact and logic	Decisions based on emotion and self interest	Irrational and inconsistent outcomes; often not best for the country as a whole or for the greater good

 

Individual and Societal Characteristics in America Today

Part 2:  Aspects that are internal to the individual and contribute to the individual’s values and approach to life
Being Cancelled	Being Encouraged	Examples/Effect of Change
Selflessness	Selfishness	Loss of belief in something greater than self; little respect for human life; no concern for the greater good
Faith in something beyond self	Self-gratification is prime consideration and glorification	While superficial appetites are gratified (e.g. gender fluidity, sexualization of women and children, legalization of traditional vices), there is an emptiness in the soul; decline of religion
Respect for elders and experts	Everyone is an expert, believing they are as knowledgeable as anyone on a subject and so can and should be able to run it	Hampers ability to learn because no belief that the one from whom one is learning is any more knowledgeable than the self (or their ability to Google)
Individual responsibility	Victimhood	Blaming others for one’s pain and predicament does not allow for personal growth, does not allow one to move forward as an individual
Rewarded for one’s own labor	All share in rewards even if they did not contribute	Contrary to the moral of the children’s store of The Little Red Hen, this encourages laziness and mediocrity
Self-reliance	Reliance on State	Diminishes the ability to take pride in and feel rewarded by one’s own accomplishments; creates dependency on State and underclass of those who are dependent
Acceptance of reality of imperfection with goal of every improving towards (unattainable) perfection	Belief in possibility of utopia	Everyone’s utopia is different and all utopias require authoritarianism
Critical thinking	Superficial solutions to problems while questions, deep thought demeaned	Without critical thinking individual cannot realize own true and full potential

 

 

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.

The Silence of the Sheep: A Tragedy

I keep wondering why there is so much silence from the previously vocal and seemingly politically interested folks.  You know, the people who loved to quote the Left’s mistruths about Trump and his supporters.  The folks who voted for niceness and unity. 

I realize that they have in essence been instructed to go silent if they disagree with Biden or the Left agenda.  I realize they may believe such silence is a form of unity (which in the Biden-Left world means silence of all differing views).  But really, how could they be so vocal about even the slightest piece of nothing if it involved Donald Trump and yet remain so silent on even the most outrageous words or actions of Joe Biden?

Not a peep when Biden makes the most sexist and demeaning remarks or when he makes clearly erroneous statements about important issues about which the facts are undeniably clear.  Little more than a tut-tut when we learn that Cuomo is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of seniors.  No notice when Biden’s AG nominee will not condemn the idea of having a head of the civil rights division who has blatantly declared that one racial group is superior to another, or  that he will distinguish as less important/not domestic terrorism recent attacks on government courthouses and other buildings if they happened at night.  Nary a flutter at the volume of racially motivated actions and appointments coming out of this White House. 

OK, maybe those were not big enough to notice.  How about the full out attack on women’s sports?  How about a Coronavirus package that will add significantly to the national debt, but has very little to do with Coronavirus but instead seems to bankroll extreme Leftist policies?  How about the on-going and ever more aggressive acts of cancel-culture?  How about an immigration “policy” that simply opens the doors without really any significant criteria, no consideration of criminal history or purpose for entering this county, not to mention a total disregard of possible Covid transmission – a consideration that at the same time is denying our children a real education and destroying small businesses everyday due to safety precautions – precautions that apparently do not apply to immigrants, legal or illegal?  How about Biden’s “Equality Act” which the Catholic League has labeled the “most comprehensive assault on Christianity ever written into law”?  Or the indoctrination programs in schools and government offices that are not only filled with misinformation but that teach hatred towards specific identity groups and hence work to divide and destroy our country?

Indeed, every action coming out of this administration since January 20^th (and there are many more than those listed above) seems to be designed to turn America on its head if not destroy it altogether.  And yet there is silence.  Silence on the drastic effect on taxes and employment and simply on the American dream. 

Where are all those people who just last year had such loud voices?  Do they really approve of all that is going on?  Do they know what is going on?  Or are they just sheep, doing as told with no thought of their own?  When told to bleat loudly and angrily they did so.  Now have they been told to quietly and contently baa?  It would seem so.  And like silent sheep, they are being led to slaughter; the tragedy is that they are taking the entire country with them.