Am I the only one who’s noticed a softening of our language over the years? There’s been an effort to add padding to the word selections we’re supposed to use in different scenarios, and the more heinous the action, the stronger the effort to soften its impact on the American viewpoint.
For years, the most powerful people in our society have been attempting to wrestle away the severity of acts committed against the rest of us, gradually putting us into submission with their metaphorical leglock on our language.
They tell you that your instinct to denounce the most unrighteous people and behavior with harsh terminology is “dehumanizing,” and instead, we should mind our tongues to recognize their humanity. Yet the people who violate us don’t seem to have that same forethought for our humanity when they disregard our sovereignty and liberty.
One of these vernacular wrestlers is Chicago’s newly elected mayor, Brandon Johnson.
The Chicago Police Department had charged 40 people with misdemeanors for allegedly fighting, smashing a window, looting a retail store, and damaging vehicles in the area, and several guns were found on the scene.
Despite the carnage that was created, the only offense that Mr. Johnson seemed to take was with a reporter who dared to use an accurate and appropriate term to describe what they witnessed: mob activity.
Mr. Johnson instead called them “large gatherings.”
“It’s important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way,” he continued. “This is not to obfuscate what has actually taken place. We have to be very careful when we use language to describe certain behavior. There’s history in this city. I mean, to refer to children as, like, baby Al Capones is not appropriate.”
Mr. Johnson is intelligent enough to know that there are many words that hold multiple meanings. Regular people understand that the basic definition of a mob is a large gathering of unruly people.
Leftists understand that if they can alter how we speak, the definitions of words, and the terminology we choose to describe situations, it allows them to shift the culture to reflect the world they’re envisioning.
But when we soften language to describe criminality, we minimize its effect on real victims in our society, and we begin rationalizing granting leniency to the worst who roam among us.
It becomes the first step toward downgrading the punishment for the people who terrorize the innocent as we transform criminal acts into the products of poverty, desperation, or innocent mistakes deserving of an immediate second chance rather than choices that deserve actionable consequences to serve as justice for their victims.
The year 2020 was when I saw the mainstream media stretch as much as they could to make anything attached to the leftist Black Lives Matter movement appear as harmless as possible, including replacing the accurate word “riot” with “protest.” They understand that the word “riot” is attached to criminal behavior, and they couldn’t risk their social justice symbol being tainted with negativity.
Similarly, when they talk about the plight of homeless people, they believe the greatest benefit is to redefine them as being “unhoused,” which is leftist framing to claim that their home was taken from them rather than being the aftermath of a series of events they may have had control over.
When I was homeless, the last thing I cared to worry about was the terminology that someone used to describe me and my situation, because I had real problems to consider. The redefining of homelessness isn’t for the benefit of the homeless but for the wrestlers of language to feel better about themselves and receive applause for applying soft language to a difficult circumstance.
They can sleep well at night renaming poor people as being “financially insecure,” because they have no idea what it’s like to go without. When I was poor, I wasn’t insecure; I was pretty certain I was broke.
But these are luxury beliefs held by people who live in luxury and who never have to deal with the ramifications of their farcical concepts: the poor, working, and middle class do, however.
