People on the right and the left have been warning of a “new Civil War” for some time now. There may or may not be something brewing in the future, where liberals and conservatives simply cannot live together, but we aren’t there yet. There is, however, a war raging right now, and it threatens our ability not only to avoid something horrible, but communicate at all.
Progressives are actively working to control what people say by controlling what words are acceptable to use. If you can control the language, you can control the people. And controlling people is the ultimate goal of the left.
Select words, particularly if they’ve been used by President Trump, are deemed to be “unacceptable” or see their meaning perverted, redefined by the left to mean something nefarious to put them out of public use, no matter how accurate they are.
“Infested” and “invasion” are the latest two.
As someone who lived in the city of Baltimore for 13 years (most people you see on TV attacking the president live in Baltimore County, which is very different), when the president tweeted about how the district represented by Congressman Elijah Cummings was “rat and rodent infested,” I knew firsthand he was right. I’ve seen it, I lived it. Walking home at night, it was common to see giant rats galloping across the street.
But the truth has very little place in modern political discourse, especially in election season.
Most commentators ignored the “rat and rodent” part of the quote, focusing exclusively on “infested.” Why? Because these talking heads want to paint the president as a racist.
By taking the word by itself, the people who decry Project Veritas as “heavily editing” their videos (which every news organization does) and taking things out of context, took the word out of context to imply Trump was talking about poor black people. This shifted the conversation from the very real plight of poor black people to race. Democrats want the focus on the latter, it allows them to emotionally manipulate people, the former only highlights the failings of generational Democratic Party loyalty and control.
So the word “infested,” which is the perfect and accurate word to describe the situation with rodents in Baltimore, is now portrayed as a “dog whistle” to racists, some sort of secret code.
Now it’s “invasion.” The president called more than 100,000 illegal aliens marching across the southern border an “invasion” because, well, is there a better word? With more than 1.3 million illegal aliens expected to enter the country this year, almost 10 times more than the number of soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy in 1944, what word or phrase would accurately capture that other than invasion?
But Trump having said it months ago is now being used by dishonest progressive cable news bile-spewers as the inspiration for the terror attack in El Paso. Conveniently, these arbiters of truth ignore the part of the monster’s manifesto that sounds like a direct rip-off of their “green new deal” talking points because “journalism,” or something.
They’ve also moved away from caring about the Dayton shooting because the killer there was one of their own. I know it’s fashionable for conservatives to point out that “we don’t blame them for the actions of someone who shares their politics,” like that will somehow cause leftists to act like decent human beings. To hell with that. These are their rules, we damn sure need to make them live by them.
Morning Joe and CNN’s prime time lineup share the politics of the guy who murdered 9 and injured dozens more in Dayton last Saturday. By their own rules, they not only have blood on their hands, their whole sets are covered in it. Why not? There’s as much evidence of that as there is for Trump’s complicity in El Paso.
We can’t keep playing by their rules while not holding them to the same. Taking the high road just gives you a nice view as you lose. Ceding the language and the use of words to these people is doing just that. No thanks. Unless and until leftists act in good faith, which is something they haven’t done in so long they’ll have to relearn it, we should hold their feet to the flames too. It’ll likely burn everyone, but it’s probably the only way to put out the fire.
Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.