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People don’t exist anymore

Have you noticed? “People” don’t exist anymore. I do not recall a single instance in which President Obama referred to “people.” He always preferred “folks.” It was they whose opinions he tried to shape and whose opinions he said he represented. “People” went out of style.

After Obama, “folks” still exist but they are giving way to “individuals.” “Folks” are going out of style and “people” are still out of style. Now, from baseball fans to voters to students, they are “individuals.” One does not have to be individualistic to be an individual, just as one did not need to be folksy to be a folk.

Language changes.

New words are coined. Back in the 1920s, “normalcy” was considered one of those malapropisms that should never be uttered. Today, normalcy is normal.

Words move into common usage. In the early 1980s, “oxymoron” emerged.

It had been around a long time, but was not used. Then, some 35 years ago, it became an upper crust word whose usage smacked of snobbery. It was one of those words that one had to look up in the dictionary. Today, oxymoron is as normal as normalcy.

Words acquire new connotations. “Carbon” used to be the indispensable element of life. Now it’s the kiss of death. Of course, it’s both, but language is seductive. It can become alluring when emptied of nuance.

Or, take “hate.” Hate used to be something that one, well, hated; that is, something to which one was irrationally opposed based on prejudice.

Today, “hate” has come to include a political or moral view that one strongly disagrees with. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been called out for labeling groups whose politics it does not like as “hate groups.”

Similarly, “leftists” and the “alt-right.” “Leftists” embrace a great variety of, ahem, individuals, but they’ve come to signify a pejorative more than advocates of a political philosophy. As for the alt-right, no one really knows who they all are, just that the likes of Steve Bannon leads them, and they are all very bad . . . individuals.

In the Jewish context, one might cite a similarly abused word, haredi.

It is a type of Orthodox Jew whose differences from other Jews are taken to be obvious. They oppose the state of Israel, their males wear all black, they oppose secular education, etc. Just like “leftists,” however, there are haredi Jews who serve in the Israeli army, who do not wear black and who hold advanced degrees. It has become easier to fall back on a single word than to ferret out subtleties, easier to categorize than to think.

George Orwell observed long ago that words can become tools of the worst kind of oppression. “Work Makes One Free” is the sign over Auschwitz. “Living Space” (lebensraum) was a Nazi rationale for mass murder. “Purge” was Stalin’s code for mass murder.

Today, we have new words, not as vile and repercussive as those of dictators, but still, words that corrupt meaning. “Fake news” comes to mind. Like all words of this genre, it contains a kernel of truth. There is news out there that is made up. But basically “fake news” has come to serve the same function as “hate,” albeit from a different political perspective. Just as “hate” has come to embrace “disagreement,” “fake news” has come to embrace news that one disagrees with. It’s not really fake, it’s just objectionable from one’s personal point of view. Just as the dilution of “hate” serves to obscure real hate, “fake news” serves to obscure real news that isn’t fake.

So, while the words change, the cycle doesn’t. Which reminds me of perhaps the purest reincarnation of George Orwell’s warning about words: breaking the law on a bicycle will preserve the law in a car. It is said:

The more cyclists we have who run stop signs and red lights, the safer the streets will be. Animal Farm rationale lets bicycle riders go their merry way, oblivious to the rules of the road, with or without helmets, putting their lives at risk. Thus, the new meaning of “safety.”

Safety — and “safe spaces.” These, you would think, are bomb shelters in Syria, or germ-free surgery units or swimming pools without a deep end.

You would be wrong. “Safe spaces” are places on campus where people who don’t like hearing ideas different from their own can retire to. “Space spaces” at institutions of higher learning undermine learning. At DU, the UC Irvine law school, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, recently put it this way:

“It depends what you mean by ‘safe spaces.’ If you mean we should always make our students feel welcome and comfortable, I completely agree.

“But, ‘safe space’ cannot mean that ideas or views can be punished or censored because they make people feel uncomfortable, because once we go down that road, there’s no end to censorship on college campuses.”

Translation: free speech may, or may not, be free.

“Free speech” used to be the indispensable element of democracy. It still is, some academic fashions to the contrary notwithstanding. Far from the kiss of death, free speech is the safest road to thought. This is something that all folks, er, individuals, I mean, people, should agree on.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg can be reached at [email protected].

Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News



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