Stop Using their Language

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."

One of the benefits of being a natural contrarian with heightened pattern recognition is my knee-jerk refusal to give into mutilations of language to cover up nefariousness. (That, good teeth, and a wicked sense of humor are my best traits really.) This has come in real handy in the Era of Trump. The constant barrage of attempted coined phrases thrown at us by The Machine is terrifyingly impressive. It’s genuinely hard to do anything than just buy into the language in order to continue a conversation.

I’m here with a plea, though. Don’t.

The problem with buying into the language is that it gives the project credibility and obfuscates responsibility. To wit:

One Big Beautiful Bill

Make America Great Again

Make America Healthy Again

Department of Government Efficiency

Perhaps the latest and most offensive of these turns of phrases is the recklessly conceived and constructed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Note: that will be the last time I use this phrase in my writing here. I find it not only offensive but completely unrepresentative of what is actually going on.

And that’s the problem isn’t it?

The tent prison camp in the Everglades isn’t Alcatraz at all. It’s much closer to Auschwitz. But we’re being given a name—a grand and mischievous misnomer—to cover up the worst of it. The expectation that we continue to use the name they give us goes without saying. In fact, the merchandise has already been printed.

But unlike the completely obtuse “Make America Great Again,” Alligator Auschwitz is a real place that can be identified with purposes that are quite clear and methods that are vile, inhumane, and torturous. People will be cooked alive in Florida heat in overcrowded tents in the middle of the swamp. If alligators can, indeed, access the building, inhabitants will be powerless to do anything to defend themselves. Even if they cannot, insect-borne illness and water-borne illness will infect the population there. People will die.

And he wants to call it that because he recently watched Escape from Alcatraz and thought it was cool. (I prefer The Rock, frankly.)

And we should not call it that because it obfuscates the truth: it’s a death camp.

Every time the media and the public buy into one of these phrases of his, we are tacitly agreeing to the playing field he is setting. This is why he wins so many fights. This is how bullies win so many arguments. They control the rules and the language, thereby decimating the truth. Pretty soon we’re arguing not about the truth of their proposition but the degree to which they’re adhering to their own agenda. Just think about it, how many times have you heard reporters start a question with something like, “You said last week that your goals for MAHA were to get at chronic illness in the nation, do you think your latest moves are achieving that?” The argument has changed from whether MAHA or MAGA or One Big Bastard of a Bill (thanks, Kevin) is or was ever a sound proposition to whether he and his cronies achieved their own agenda. It’s much easier for them to not only win that game, but bend the rules and change the goal posts along the way.

In high school, I was assigned 1984 at the same time as I was assigned Brave New World. I always found Aldous Huxley’s interpretation of a dystopian future far more prophetic. While there are certainly Orwellian themes that we should learn from, his the differentiation in how each protagonist took on the mainstream viewpoint (lies) and challenged it seemed very different to me.

I always thought Huxley nailed it but couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I still grapple with this. But I think it has to do with the fact that we have more people that challenge the government’s attachment to these words than we have those who adhere to them.

For now.

They will keep pressing on, and on, and on. It is crucial that we keep pushing back. Using their language cedes the first move to the playground bully who is the best at what he does: manipulating a situation and causing chaos. The trouble is that in order to challenge him from reality, we need at least a shared version that represents the common good in a way that a majority of people can buy into. Given that everything being done seems to be already unpopular should be a solid start. There’s more that is needed to build coalitions. Relationships built on negative feelings of another party are never sustainable in the long run.

Until and beyond then, language matters. We shouldn’t be using our words loosely. Don’t start the argument by conceding the initial point. And don’t let the bully tell you that your lunch money is his.