Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Trying to Take the Power from Words

 

I keep thinking about the cute little morel mushroom that even kind of looked like a house, and the slug living inside of it, and the wonder of nature just moves me so much. Then I think about all the people who seem immune to that wonder. For example, the other day I was talking to someone who said that because I'm opposed to abortion, the leftists would call me a racist. At first I was puzzled by this, because I have never known any leftists who associate abortion with racism - they all associate it with sexism. Then I started to get angry, not at the person who said this, who is sadly deluded by talking heads on TV, but by the talking heads themselves. I see the game they're trying to play - if they accuse anyone who disagrees with them of calling them a racist, they take away the power of the accusation. After all, the right winger must have been called a racist simply because he disagreed with a leftist, not because he's actually racist, right? Which is infuriating, because racism is a terrible sin, and these people are trying to whitewash it to turn it into something it's not: in their minds, it's just a political smear, not an accusation of actually seeing your fellow human as less than you. Then, in this 1984 scenario they are trying to concoct, the word "racism" will have no meaning because it's just an insult leftists throw around willy-nilly. I don't personally know any leftists who abuse the word that way, because it is such an awful concept that they wouldn't use it for any other reason. They don't want to taint the word - the Far Right does, because they want to continue to be racist without getting called out for it. Well, good luck with that. If they really do make the word "racist" meaningless, another word will be created in its stead to describe their heinous world view.

Another beef I have with the Far Right is the way they keep trying to twist the gun debate around. I actually heard someone pray that "people will see guns aren't the problem, the mentally ill are." I am here to tell you that in fact guns ARE the problem, because they certainly have mentally ill people in other countries, but they don't have these mass shootings all the time. (And who prays for guns?? Do they need "thoughts and prayers" now?) I am not the sort of person who thinks nobody can ever own a gun, since I have no problem with people hunting FOR FOOD - I thoroughly loathe big game hunters. As a soul who was separated from my previous body by a gun for sport, how could I feel otherwise? The problem is these assault rifles, and don't bother writing comments about how "this wasn't an assault rifle, blah blah blah," because it sure wasn't a little pistol like a person might have for self-defense - it was a weapon created to inflict maximum damage. Those poor children were shot into such pieces that the authorities had to use DNA to identify them, because there wasn't enough of them left for their own parents to identify them by sight. I see no reason why a civilian should ever own a weapon like that. And this is all just so that the gun industry can continue to earn tons of cash, and so the thousand people who control 94% of the world's wealth can feel safe that they don't have to share their ill-gotten lucre. It's really just all about greed, and the children who get shot up are just collateral damage in the quest of the rich to get ever richer.


Famous Hat


No comments: