BACKWARDS AND UPSIDE DOWN

We may have reached peak nonsense; that, or I'm suffering a catastrophic stroke. Today I awoke and the first two things I read were from serious professional writers being serious. Their words landed on me as pure gobbledygook.

First was a serious local reporter writing on serious themes who wrote, in all seriousness, "Tides, storms, and sea level rise mean danger ahead for First Nations like Musqueam that have been 'landlocked' by water after colonization." As far as I'm concerned, if "landlocked by water" is something one is even capable of writing then we have entered the land of doublespeak.

As if to corroborate, another serious writer working with a serious organization, the Manhattan Institute and its City Journal, wrote in all sincerity, and then defended his statement, that "Conservatives should start using the phrase 'trans stripper' in lieu of 'drag queen.'" If people are going to give folks who do not remove their clothes and are not trans the label "trans stripper" then truly anything is permissible.

When professionals employ words to mean their opposite, regardless of content or intent, I read it as tantamount to wartime propaganda. (And then I have to ask why this has been done.) I love semantic shift and our endless renegotiation and outright conflict over words; but this is something different. If only to me, words having recognized and recognizable meanings feels less about being dogmatic and controlling and more about maintaining some ability to communicate. Abandoning this, and doing so so very casually, feels weirdly scary from where I sit.