The Changing Meaning of Words, According to the Left

   Let's review some of the words that the progressive left has tried to alter the historic meaning of. We'll start with "Other." That's a simple enough word, which means "something different or distinct from one already mentioned." However, in the new liberal lexicon, it has taken on a new, sinister meaning. It means "other than white," because everything is racial, and it has also been adapted into a whole new group of words: Otherism, Otherize, and Othering among them, though I'm sure there are others. I liked the Oxford Languages definition of "othering":

view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself. "a critique of the ways in which the elderly are othered by society"

   The best part is that they used age, not race, in their example, so they get credit for that. Further searching says the term was coined in 1985 by a woman named Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. She is a scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic from India. I can't remember when I first heard the word used, but I believe it was Rush Limbaugh who introduced me to it, in one of his critiques of the ways that liberals were co-opting and corrupting the English language.

   The next word we'll examine is "Those," another simple word, which is the plural of "That." Sounds innocent enough, right? Well, like "Other," it can also be racist, if you use it to refer to people that are not white. "Those people" has a negative connotation that is totally undeserved. There is something about the word "those" that seems to trigger progressives, if a person uses it in the wrong way. I've never seen the progressive rule book about it, but I've heard many of those people criticize it's use.

   Okay, those were the warm-ups. When it comes to politics and government policy, we have some big problems with word definitions. Many politicians like to call government spending an "Investment." That is problematic, as well as inaccurate. First of all, an investment, by definition, is made to result in a material profit. Second, it always involves risk, which is always a factor in the amount of material return expected. In other words, investment is defined by the concept of a risk to benefit ratio.

   When politicians call spending an "investment," they are lying. They have no definition of what return their "investment" will pay back to the public, whose money they are spending. Often, the benefits end up accruing to some favored class of political donors, while average citizens gain nothing, sometimes even being harmed by bad projects. Examples abound, from public housing in NYC to the bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Tax dollars should not be spent on "investments," in the first place, which is why I always wondered why politicians started using that word to make government spending sound beneficial. It probably has to do with the private sector economy's record of successful investing, but that only happens because private investors are responsible for the results, and do risk/benefit analyses. Government bureaucrats have no incentive to do so, because they have no limits on their ability to fail.

   Getting even further into political, cultural, and now legal double speak, all terms referring to "gender" and "sex" are now in a state of flux. Apparently, even biologists aren't allowed to say that there are certain traits that define "male" and "female," biologically, and a tiny percentage of humans that have both male and female genitalia. The political progressives have made this a big political issue, but I don't think they will be able to redefine biological science that has been settled for thousands of years, even if the biological scientific community says so. This is not like when the astronomical scientific community told us that Pluto was no longer a planet. Barring future scientific augmentation, no man (male, he, him) will ever carry a baby or have an ovum, and no woman (female, she, her) will ever produce sperm to impregnate an ovum. We can look at the chromosomes, and they'll tell the same story.

   Now, in a free society such as ours, I don't mind addressing people by their preferred pronouns, in a personal interaction. I also respect the right of other people not to, because I the government doesn't have the power over that kind of speech. Also, when it comes to legal matters, there are myriad problems with people adopting a different sex than the one they were born as. It's a minefield, and the only answer I can come up with is to have a separate legal category, with different laws, rules, and regulations for transgendered people. We may need two categories, one for men who transitioned to women, and one for women who transitioned to men. Otherwise, I see the difference as semantic, and their biological sex at birth must be their legal status. Thanks, progressives, for asserting that men can be women, just by saying so, and vice versa!

    There are many words that progressives are trying to cancel, many of which are associated with "toxic masculinity." That's funny, considering the debate cited in the previous two paragraphs. "Strong," and "grip" are related to that, as well as gendered terms like "manpower." These are examples that the British government is teaching their intelligence agents, and that's not from a James Bond movie. They also remind their personnel about using proper pronouns (again, see the previous two paragraphs), as they go about their spying business, and to "check their white privilege at the door." This is another of my new favorites, which is supposed to help one relate to the BIPOC community.

   I'm white, and have enjoyed many privileges. Some may have been related to my race, but most I would attribute to my parents, who were also white. Here's where it gets tricky: Is my "white privilege" something that I can just "check" at the door, like a coat? Who works in the coatroom, and gives me a ticket, so I can reclaim it? Further, how is "white privilege" different than any other type of privilege? It's not economic, as I understand it. It's more of a cultural thing. White cops let off white suspects, and white school administrators give white students more leeway when it comes to both academics and discipline. That may be true, or not. It still doesn't explain why Asian kids have higher academic outcomes, and lower crime rates than either whites or blacks.

   My final word that progressives have corrupted is actually a phrase that I used an acronym for, two paragraphs ago. BIPOC stands for "Black or Indigenous People of Color." I don't have a big issue with "black" or "indigenous," but "person of color" is a phrase that I find objectively offensive. I never make an issue of it, in personal interactions, because it's too petty a thing to start an argument over. However, because I'm writing a column about how the progressives are changing the meaning of words to take offense, I think this is a good time to air my grievance.

   Am I not a person of color? Is "pink" not a color? Is my skin tone "invisible" to the people who call themselves "people of color?" I think that whoever came up with that description of people that aren't "white" was a genius, in subtly negating white people. I can only hope that by expressing my outrage about this, it may subtract something from my white privilege score... 

   On that sarcastic note, I hope that we can perhaps start agreeing on the meanings of words, and avoid hearing "dog whistles," or some other type of offensive inference from the plain words someone says. Sometimes a spade is just a spade, and a cigar is just a cigar, even if your talking about Bill Clinton.