Before politics, before debate, before discussion, even before thought, there is language.

Language defines how humans think, how they can think, in fact.  If there is no conceivable way to express something, it cannot exist.  Language is song, movement, touch, gaze, hear, feel, love, hate, and words.

And if the words are not allowed to be used or are changed in meaning or are allowed to be purposefully twisted for personal benefit then the very foundation of how humans communicate -- which is the very essence of man as a social animal -- is eroded and weakened. 

That corrosive instability of the foundation -- made even more maddening by its seeming randomness -- plays a large part in the creation of the current constant state of societal unease, a feeling that something is off in a way it has not been for generations.  One imagines that the dread, the foreboding, the uncertainty parallels the run-up to World War II in Europe -- except now there is not even a single and obvious malignant force to point to be able to better grasp the evil reality of the situation. 

Now the force permeates the air, creating a fog of non-specific horror that enters the body with every breath.

It is if every adult in the world is terrified of being “wished into the cornfield” by the possessed predatory children who now roam the halls of academia, the media, the corporate world, and the government.  Now, instead of pointing they just turn social media upon the targets of their ire and -- poof! -- the offender is turned into a jack-in-the-box and disappeared, his head eventually swaying along with the corn stalks away in a field where he will exist alone until he finally rots into nothingness.

The parallel to today’s society is made complete by the timid, cowardly other grown-ups, so beaten and whipped and lost, that they do nothing to end the terror when they can, when the child’s attention is focused on the brave man willing to sacrifice himself for the others.  They watch, they cry, they recoil but still they let it happen, even knowing they could be next.

Politics is downstream from culture and regulation is downstream (with a stop in the civil courts) from academia -- but most importantly everything is downstream from language.

Even the CDC is getting in on the act

To lift that fog it is crucial that the language that allows it to occur be fought at every opportunity -- and we can start with refusing to allow a few undeniably false and manipulative terms that have entered the societal conversation to be used as cudgels for the progressive/woke/equitarian power and manipulation complex.

Misinformation, denialism, disinformation, malinformation, trigger, safe space, equity, systemic, existential, intersectionality, zero anything, toxic, cis, they, zir, anything-ist, anything-ism, and on and on and on -- all these words and terms are used to distort meaning, undermine objective facts, and purposefully use a devious combination of familiarity and confusion to lead society down a path it would never even consider if it could truly and immediately decipher their impact.

We are all being wished into the cornfield without even knowing it.

Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. and a former newspaper reporter.  He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy and can be reached directly at planbuckley@gmail.com. You can read more of his work at:  https://thomas699.substack.com/

Image: Pixabay DG-RA