Responding to a Naderite

Thanks, Clint. While the "right" may be the worst abusers in this category, methinks the left is often just as guilty. And I think the "langage as symbols" you are referring to is really more a matter as "language as a weapon"...however...

The dance partner, whom I have brought along to the masquerade brawl of human understanding, for quite some time now, is the one that leads me to "linguists" for answers, insight and authenticity. I no longer rely upon politicians or their spokespersons, ideological promoters, "advocates", commentators (who twist what is already twisted to make their own point: Fox Noise?), pundits (Buchanan?), moderators (who don't really moderate: think Presidential debates) , faux observers, "columnists", or orators and rhetoriticians to help me understand what I have just been smilingly "told". They are a uniformly unreliable group.

My chosen "linguists", our generation's "straight talkers", range from Bill Moyers, to Bill Maher and Noam Chomsky, to Robert Reich, John Stewart, Jane Hamsher,George Carlin and even Paul Krugman, UT Professor Galbraith and William Grieder... even though some are thought of more as economists or comedians. But they deliver understandable language and word constructs that reveal the real meaning and import behind the endless facade' of multi-syllabic stew delivered by wordy alchemists of confusion like Frank Luntz.

NOTE: Luntz, by the way, is no "word wizard", as Nader would have us believe. He is a malevolent manipulator of simple truths, the worst of a bad breed, who clouds and obfuscates for evil purposes, and does so with glee and gusto. (I cannot think of an exact Luntzian counterpart on the left, but if you listen to Harry Reid, Keith Olberman or Gov. Dean, any of the progressive bloggers or to any of the carefully crafted Obamaspeaks, the same admixture of obscure implications and insinuations exists in all those as well).

Mr. Nader is right,of course, as usual, but a little late to the party. The founding fathers knew, over 200 years ago, how bumblingly wrong this democracy could all go through psycho-babble (and it has: look at the complete non-separation of church and state?) and worked tirelessly against the possibilities. Even Dwight Eisenhower warned that "something evil" was afoot with the military industrial complex, and today we spend SEVEN times more on defense and weaponry than any other nation in the world. I think "Blackwater"is a pretty lame euphemism for "security". And of course, we cannot wait to "give" democacy to the Iraqis and the Afghans.

What Nader should be railing against the loudest is the resultant cultural-behavorial outgrowth of this vocabularistic nightmare: nobody trusts anything anybody says. And when this mistrust erupts into non-sensical shouting matches and causes people to behave irrationally enough to bring AR-15 assault weapons to public gatherings and town hall meetings, the cumulative effect is civic chaos and nearly irreparable polarity and division. The state of our communal mental health comes into question and we live on the edge of violence. Blind understanding, caused by such far reaching deception, leads to blind rage. Everybody thinks everybody else is full of shit. Plain enough?

The three authors that Nader lauds for their recent efforts are not so much practicing "semantic discipline" (What the hell THAT, exactly,anyway , Mr. Nader? How many times have we heard someone dismiss a remark, by saying, "Well,it's all just semantics, anyway"?), as they are demonstrating appropriate applicability and some much overdue linguistic precision and clarity. (Let's see: I think the word transparency comes to mind: whatever happened to that famous campiagn buzzword, Barack?) Moreover, these writers, along with many other capable linguists, are the communicators that we can count on to come through "in the pinch", and tell us what we need to know, when we are forced, finally, to ask our "leadership" to "Tell us, please, what you really mean?"

Mr. Nader could have just easily said that we need to stop being thoroughly "euphemized" before we become completely mentally "euthanized". I wonder if these language abusers that Mr. Nader bemoans are the "Death Panels" of our public awareness?

And I used as many $10.00 words in this response as I could manage, so that everyone could blame me for being just as guilty of obfscation as everyone else I am complaining about.

END.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Fwd: Words Matter - Nader
Great column, if you're interested in language as symbols, and how they have been manipulated by the right.............CR
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Ralph Nader <info@nader.org>Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 4:56 PMSubject: Words MatterTo: alerts@lists.nader.orgEver wonder what’s happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don’t wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t the media know that the correct word is “prisoners,” regardless of what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld disseminated?The raging debate and controversy over health insurance and the $2.5 trillion spent this year on health care involves consumers and “providers.” How touching to describe sellers or vendors, often gouging, denying benefits, manipulating fine print contracts, cheating Medicare and Medicaid in the tens of billions as “providers.”I always thought “providers” were persons taking care of their families or engaging in charitable service. Somehow, the dictionary definition does not fit the frequently avaricious profiles of Aetna, United Healthcare, Pfizer and Merck.“Privatization” and the “private sector” are widespread euphemisms that the press falls for daily. Moving government owned assets or functions into corporate hands, as with Blackwater, Halliburton, and the conglomerates now controlling public highways, prisons, and drinking water systems is “corporatization,” not the soft imagery of going “private” or into the “private sector.” It is the corporate sector!“Medical malpractice reform” is another misnomer. It used to mean restricting the legal rights of wrongfully injured people by hospitals and doctors, or limiting the liability of these corporate vendors when their negligence harms innocent patients. Well, to anybody interested in straight talk, “medical malpractice reform” or the “medical malpractice crisis” should apply to bad or negligent practices by medical professionals. After all, about 100,000 people die every year from physician/hospital malpractice, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report. Hundreds of thousands are rendered sick or injured, not to mention even larger tolls from hospital-induced infections. Proposed “reforms” are sticking it to the wrong people—the patients—not the sellers.“Free trade” is a widely used euphemism. It is corporate managed trade as evidenced in hundreds of pages of rules favoring corporations in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. “Free trade” lowers barriers between countries so that cartels, unjustified patent monopolies, counterfeiting, contraband, and other harmful practices and products can move around the world unhindered.What is remarkable about the constant use of these words is that they permeate the language even if those who stand against the policies of those who first coin these euphemisms. You’ll read about “detainees” and “providers” and “privatization” and “private sector” and “free trade” in the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines, at progressive conferences with progressive leaders, and during media interviews. After people point out these boomeranging words to them, still nothing changes. Their habit is chronic.A lot of who we are, of what we do and think is expressed through the language we choose. The word tends to become the thing in our mind as Stuart Chase pointed out seventy years ago in his classic work The Tyranny of Words. Let us stop disrespecting the dictionary! Let’s stop succumbing to the propagandists and the public relations tricksters!Frank Luntz—the word wizard for the Republicans who invented the term “death tax” to replace “estate tax” is so contemptuous of the Democratic Party’s verbal ineptitude (such as using “public option” instead of “public choice” and regularly using the above-noted misnomers) that he dares them by offering free advice to the Democrats. He suggests they could counteract his “death tax” with their own term “the billionaires’ tax.” There were no Democratic takers. Remember, words matter.Using words that are accurate and at face value is one of the characteristics of a good book. Three new books stand out for their straight talk. In Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, my former campaign manager, exposes the obstructions that deny voter choice by the two major parties for third party and independent candidates. Just out is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges. Lastly, the boisterous, mischievous short autobiography of that free spirit, Jerry Lee Wilson , The Soloflex Story: An American Parable.Not withstanding their different styles, these authors exercise semantic discipline.End.