There’s a lot of talk in the air… but then, isn’t there always? It’s not new that everyone and his halfwit Uncle Herman are jabbering to beat the band. But what are they saying? Does it mean anything? Does it even make sense?
I’ve been on a decades-long crusade against verbal offal – what I like to call semantic noise. If you’re going to talk, say something that’s worth the breath. More: say something that doesn’t just fill the air. Say something that actually means something!
Now, one must expect idiocies from idiots. Sadly, there are more such roaming the landscape than ever before in history. A great many of them are in politics. Who was it who called politics “Hollywood for ugly people” — ? God knows, the idiots have flocked to those pastures in even greater numbers. And how they prattle on!
Under the innocuous-looking sub-heading titled “Strengthening media diversity — safeguarding freedom of opinion,” the new German coalition contract conceals what George Orwell would recognize as classic doublespeak. The section “Dealing with disinformation” reads:
“Targeted influence on elections and by now commonplace disinformation and fake news are serious threats to our democracy, its institutions and social cohesion. The deliberate dissemination of false factual claims is not covered by freedom of expression. That is why the media supervisory authority, which is independent of the state, must be able to take action against the manipulation of information, hate-mongering and agitation while safeguarding freedom of expression—on the basis of clear legal requirements … We will ensure that online platforms fulfil their obligations with regard to transparency and cooperation with the supervisory authority.”
Once the contradictions and circumlocutions are canceled out, the meaning of that passage comes to this: we will suppress disapproved views. Yet it tries to claim that the intent is “safeguarding freedom of expression.” The verbiage in which it’s dressed is an attempt to deflect attention from the contradiction between freedom of expression and the prohibition of disapproved views. Can’t have disapproved views in the new, free Germany! And note this phrase:
…the media supervisory authority, which is independent of the state…
How can an “authority” with actual authority be “independent of the state” — ? Enforcement power is what makes the State what it is! No one but the State and its agents possesses it.
I’m sure a regiment of bureaucrats labored over that passage. It bears the mark of something carefully crafted to mean nothing.
But there’s worse. Here on the Western side of the pond, politicians blather in typeset phrases that are content-free – when they’re not openly self-contradictory – meant to convey one thing: I’m a good guy. One I’d hoped never to hear from again was at it just yesterday evening:
Biden also started screaming out of nowhere as he accused Republicans of targeting Social Security.
“It’s about dignity. Simple dignity! Everyone! Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity… regardless of who they are!” Biden said.
Let’s leave aside the cruelty of trotting out this demented old man for political fodder. Consider only the statement above:
“Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity”
Define deserves. Then define dignity. Then tell me how anyone could emit such nonsense and receive a respectful hearing. Yet it’s everywhere. It’s maddening and deafening.
We all know the kneejerk phrases popular on the Left: “pay their fair share;” “if it saves just one life;” “gun violence;” and that perennial favorite, “social justice.” Utterly meaningless, all of them – yet leftists repeat them endlessly, using them as bludgeons with which to silence disagreement. Ann Coulter was penetrating about this tactic in her book Slander:
[A]lmost all liberal behavioral tropes track the impotent rage of small children. Thus for example, there is also the popular tactic of repeating some stupid, meaningless phrase a billion times: Arms for hostages, arms for hostages, arms for hostages, it’s just about sex, just about sex, just about sex, dumb, dumb, dumb, money in politics, money in politics, money in politics, Enron, Enron, Enron. Nothing repeated with mind-numbing frequency by all major news outlets will not be believed by some members of the populace. It is the permanence of evil; you can’t stop it.
It’s wearying to have to deal with it so often.
Why is this on my mind, you ask? Just yesterday, I’d been chatting pleasantly with a narrow-gauge celebrity for about twenty minutes when she proudly proclaimed herself an “activist” for “social justice.” Now, there’s only one reason anyone ever makes such a statement: to elicit approval from the hearer. I think I shocked her with my response:
Look, “social justice” is a contradiction in terms! Maybe you never thought about that before, but if you’re an “activist,” you SHOULD have. So go do some actual thinking before you bother me again.
That shut her up… for a couple of minutes. She was right back at me, pleading for a “private chat.” Why, I can’t imagine.
Let’s have some intolerance, please! Let’s put some of Arthur Herzog’s “sharp questions” to people who assail us with such noise:
“Why?” “What for?” “When?” “What do you mean?” “Who?” These are terrifying questions, in a way, considering how seldom they are answered. And when answers are given, they don’t appear to be the right answers….
The point is that such questions are designed to illuminate what is happening and they tend to take little for granted by way of conventional answers. The aim of the radical skeptic is to lower the confusion and eliminate the nonsense, hedges, and non sequiturs which make the American political dialogue something that approaches real torture.
Were I God-Emperor of the Universe, I would have a special medal struck, to be awarded to persons who had befuddled a nonsense-speaker sufficiently to shut him up. Call it the Squelch Medal; it would commemorate the defense of silence against the pollution of semantic noise. It would come with free airline travel to some notably quiet place, perhaps a Trappist monastery.
Would President Trump be interested in inaugurating such an award?
