Good Friday! This week brought us some of the most astonishing acts of public derangement I have seen in my time on the planet. It is very refreshing, but difficult to know where to start and stop. It seems we no longer have a lingua franca, a language we could use between cultures and multi-lingual groups. There is the so-far unchallenged derangement of public education. I saw a note about an English Teacher at UCB who announced that correcting the papers submitted to him was an example of Whiteness, and hence reprehensible and incorrect. A CNN Breaking News guy announced that birth gender for babies could not be assigned at birth. Rep. Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez then told us not to term the tide of illegals at the border a “surge,” since they are not “insurgents.”
Now bear with me for a moment. In a rational academic environment, all of them can be discussed without rancor. The is a branch of thought that supports this sort of stuff. I appreciate the enjoyment at following the intellectual shortcuts that get them to profoundly irrational concepts. It is so arbitrary that we have to accept definitions of things that do not seem to mean what they are used for as common currency. Popular irrationalities include:
The Whole Whiteness Thing. If you accept the fall of the West, that one is easy. In fact, if you just reverse a couple things, it is language that used to be common and stomped out.
Sex and Gender. This is a language thing, not a sex thing. The two words in common speech meant about the same thing. Now, the immutable nature of chromosomes reflected in biological sex has become controversial, since ‘gender’ is a word that can reflect social context. In common English, there are two meanings. In woke-speak, neither has precise meaning but unwavering reliance on the idea that one can change “sex” by “waking” to innate reality regardless of silly cell bits.
Language Itself. Two words were abolished formally this week are “crisis” and “surge.” Since the Cause is advancing, there are no events that constitute the first. The second is clearly tinged with inverted meaning. The word itself, in common English, is derived from the Latin word “surgere,” which the Romans used to describe the act of “springing up, or rising.” Terms and meanings change over time. This time it is fast. The definition of a word meaning “rising” is transformed by its modifying syllables. Which is to say, the meaning of the root is ad hoc, inverted and determined to connote connectivity with White Colonial Patriarchal Oppression of Legitimate Indigenous Persons.
The question in all this is whether there is still a common language. There is so much uncommon these days it is best to be prepared. And alert to the fact that we no longer share a common tongue.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com