There’s been a great deal of talk about words, and their power, and a great deal of disagreement about that power. But while I’ve heard a great deal of rhetoric, from what I’ve seen and heard, far too much outrage, energy and effort has been placed on attacking verbal minimization and micro-aggressions, which – although painful, discriminatory, and symptomatic of racism, sexism, and just plain rudeness and bad manners – are not where the real damage is caused by words.
The real damage caused by words is the ever-growing web of untruths, knowing misstatements, and blatant lies harnessed in service of oppression and discrimination. Restrictive voting rules that benefit those in power do far more damage than the micro-aggressions and verbal “sins” that seem to consume the “woke” community. So do the words in laws that establish and maintain income inequality through massive tax breaks for corporations and the affluent. Or the words that pit lower income whites against minorities, when both are victims of preferential treatment of the affluent.
We now have the greatest dichotomy between the wealthy and the poor in our history. We have an education system rigged against minorities and the poor. We have a crumbling infrastructure in every state in the union. I live the state with supposedly the best infrastructure, and Utah gets a C minus – and we’re the best?
Yet the Republicans are consumed with the big lie of a stolen election, one that election officials in both parties have called the fairest ever with absolutely no actual evidence of any fraud that could have changed the outcome anywhere. And the use of that lie has resulted new discriminatory laws and legislation across the nation.
At the same time, the left, perhaps in frustration, is spending far too much time and effort on attacking individuals for how they address people, rather than addressing the real problem with words and attacking the misuse of words in matters that affect the structure of society and its power base.
Most of the micro-aggressions and verbal assaults will diminish markedly if the poor and minorities gain political power… and that’s where the battles need to be fought.
Or, put more crudely, in the words of Lyndon Johnson, “If you got ‘em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
Language follows power, not the other way around.