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The language of the left

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Griffin.”]

Andrew Sullivan is one of those writers of whom you can say that when he’s good, he’s very very good, and when he’s bad he’s horrid. In this essay he’s good:

And that is the only recourse an average citizen has when buried by this avalanche of abstraction: ask the language-launderers what they are really talking about. When some doofus apologizes for the “terrible pain” they have caused to the whatever community, ask them to give a specific example of that “pain.” When someone says “structural racism,” ask: what actual “structures” are you referring to? How do they actually work? Give concrete examples.

When someone calls American society “white supremacy”, ask them how you could show that America is not a form of “white supremacy”. When someone uses the word “Latinx”, ask them which country does that refer to. When someone says something is “problematic”, ask them to whom? When you’re told you’re meeting with members of the BIPOC or AANHPI communities, ask them first to translate and then why this is in any way relevant, and why every single member of those communities are expected to have the same opinion. And when you’re told that today is IDAHOBIT Day, ask them if you can speak to Frodo.

…[W]e do not have to speak this debased and decadent language. It is designed to overwhelm and confuse and smother and subdue. And the more it is used by elites, the more normal Americans, still living in the real world, feel utterly alienated by their masters, and the deeper our divide goes. Reclaiming our discourse from these ideological contraptions will make our writing better. It will help us think more clearly. And it could help re-start a genuinely national conversation. In everyday English, the language of democracy.

You often hear or read the sort of language Sullivan is describing, coming from the left. Such language is indeed designed to “to overwhelm and confuse and smother and subdue.” But even more than that, it’s designed to indoctrinate and to make a certain sort of attitude automatic. The confusion it induces makes it difficult to even think clearly about what’s being said, and therefore tends to block an effective public response or even a private one.

If an offense is not even properly described, it becomes formless and pervasive. How can something that amorphous and slippery be fought against? It becomes a Gordian knot that cannot be untied but can only be cut.

The sort of language Sullivan describes dominates academia and school administration. It is becoming more common in corporations that issue diversity and other social policy pronouncements. You can also read it in the many apologies that have been issued by those attacked on social media for thoughtcrime. It has become a form of quasi-religious dogma, to be repeated and repeated and taken on faith.

Comments

The language of the left — 55 Comments

  1. That statement from the ‘Institute of Medical Antiracism’ or whatever it’s called that Sullivan comments on in his piece is total gobbledygook.

  2. A book I read in my academic days by the late Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric, is a great benchmark for how our language has degenerated.

  3. I teach English, and I refuse to allow to have the language stolen or circumscribed.

  4. It’s too late. They’ve rigged the game. Ask for proof, examples, or explanation and you’re just showing that you are too privileged and ignorant to not see all the racism and bigotry around you. Ask to argue and debate objectively and you must just be a rich white guy with so much privilege that you couldn’t possible understand how difficult it is to be objective and have an intelligent debate when your very existence is at stake! The Enlightenment is dead.

  5. Without agreed definitions, language devolves from a great engine for social life, exchange and shared purpose, into a crude tool for survival and an instrument for tyranny. If you don’t know what the speaker “means” because it’s a string of jargon, you must guess, you cannot extrapolate and test the claims, you must wait to be told what to do and how things will be arranged. You are at the speaker’s mercy, and the speaker, having introduced these exotic and mystifying neologisms, can always shift ground: “That’s not what ‘cisheteronormativity’ MEANS, you idiot! Haven’t you been paying ATTENTION???!!?”

    Very dangerous.

  6. “Goddessoftheclassroom” teaches English.

    With a moniker inspired by the biography on Ayn Rand entitled “Goddess of The Market” perhaps?

    Droll is how ya roll?

  8. While Sullivan makes a good point about calling them out on such by asking to give examples or explain what they mean my own experience is that those who freely use such language have only one response and that is to call you a racist!

    Most likely it is because they really cannot explain or give examples so their knee-jerk reaction to those who don’t chime along is that we must be racist.

  9. Thought y’all might like this little credo from a laboratory group at the Yale School of Public Health: “We Believe”

    And note their smug self-description: “A diverse team to combat mosquito-borne viruses
    (and other things… thanks, COVID)”

    http://grubaughlab.com/team/

    If they patted their backs any harder, they’d break their arms. But this parade of virtue is what’s important to our medical research centers these days.

  10. Such language is indeed designed to “to overwhelm and confuse and smother and subdue.” But even more than that, it’s designed to indoctrinate and to make a certain sort of attitude automatic.

    Lefties have worked this linguistic tactic out brilliantly. I suppose that all dominant in-groups participate to some extent – the Oxford accent, the Harvard both lay the speaker’s claim to omniscence – but where it really originates is in the unrestricted use of wholesale murder by the leaders of the Bolshevik party, and the enforced submission of followers to their cant.

    George Orwell and Arthur Koestler, and now Andrew Sullivan have provided the rest of us with periscopes to examine the tactic, and Sullivan here attempts to provide some clues, to furnish some questions as armor against the presumptions of the new generation of arrogant knowitalls and motormouths and lynch-mob instigators. But it will take some sincere mental preparation – and quite likely self-sacrifice – for individuals to successfully fight the expulsions and blackenings they’ll face for resistance to such poisonous linguistic garbage.

  12. Griffin:

    She may be the poster child of the truly mentally ab-normal gravitating to psychology/psychiatry. ‘Am I messed up or is it everyone else, and why are they?’

  14. Those of us of a certain age will remember a fun game called “Mad Libs.” No, not a political comment, despite the appropriateness, but an often-hilarious pastime in which randomly chosen nouns, adverbs, verbs and other parts of speech were inserted into a sentence and then read aloud. The statement from the ‘Institute of Medical Antiracism’ quoted by Sullivan reads like a Mad Lib. Someone with more talent and time than I have should write a political Mad Lib book, if only to invoke Alinsky Rule #5 (ridicule is man’s most potent weapon [I know I’m irredeemably sexist for saying “Man,” but that’s the way he wrote it]).

    Also, hetero is normative. No matter what they say.

  15. “I know I’m irredeemably sexist for saying ‘Man.’

    I wouldn’t worry; “C’mon, man,” is Slow Joe’s favorite filler phrase when he can’t read the teleprompter.

    Apropos of heteronormativity, when do we get Straight Pride Month?

  16. ‘Straight Pride Month’

    It’s become pretty funny how we are fed AAPAAAI Month, Black History Month, Pride Month, etc. month after month. And of course not only is this apparently Pride month it’s also Black Music month because that gets no coverage in American culture.

  17. I have long felt that society started to slip away when we began to let language become manipulated and corrupted for political purposes.

    Now language and pejorative labels are weaponized more than ever before. Too few resist, whether from disinterest, or from intimidation.

  18. The “average citizen” who tries these things is just going to get fired and possibly blacklisted. These aren’t discussions where people want to learn from one another. These are typically mandatory events because someone higher up in the organization has decided these sessions check a box whether it’s avoiding liability or what. And your compliance is required, or you won’t keep your job, and that’s that.

    Anybody who wants to give advice about how to handle these really needs to engage with that reality if he expects anyone to make use of that advice, and I’m not seeing that Sullivan does in this essay.

  19. Those of us of a certain age will remember a fun game called “Mad Libs.” – West TX Intermediate Crude

    I have one of their books for party games.
    The biggest problem is that too many people of the younger generation (and the older as well, sadly), don’t know all that many words anymore, and many of the others are misused (see any blog or online post these days).

    https://www.madlibs.com/

    PS Born and raised in the WT cattle area, which isn’t all that far from the oil wells.
    Both industries have featured in the common joke about either feed lots or crude pump jacks.
    Newcomer (usually a yankee): “Ewww, what’s that awful smell??”
    Texan: “Money.”

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=crude+oil+pump+jacks&t=brave&iax=images&ia=images

  20. om, re the Yale race-looney: “She may be the poster child of the truly mentally ab-normal gravitating to psychology/psychiatry.”

    That was exactly my thought. I can’t even be all that angered by her disturbed raving, except insofar as it does that much more to elevate the general level of racial hostility that’s been turned loose.

  21. Pingback:Links and Comments | Rockport Conservatives

  22. For the last twenty years or so of my career, I worked for universities. I’ve been retired for almost twelve years, but I used to parody this kind of gibberish with a dumb act full of apparent innocence and good intentions. But the act would leave the politically correct wondering whether I was making fools of them. Sex, gender, and sustainability were frequent targets.

    Yes, I did get into trouble a couple of times, but I was able to talk my way out of it without apologies. These days, I’m sure that I’d be fired. In academia, freedom of speech, pursuit of truth, clarity of thought, and a sense of humor are suppressed at all costs. The woketarians have picked up where the Marxists left off, because they are little more than the most recent species of Marxists.

  23. “What kind of brain did you get for the monster?” asked Dr. Froedrick F.

    “Abbey, Abbey Normal, it was” answered Igor.

    Aargh! And a struggle ensues. “Young Frankenstien”

    Well the monster is all grown up, a psychiatrist, speaking at Yale.

  24. “It becomes a Gordian knot that cannot be untied but can only be cut.” neo

    Exactly. They’re “calling the tune” and will have “to pay the piper”. No sympathy, no compassion, no mercy for those who would stomp on our faces… forever. At least not while they march us toward tyranny.

    Hosea 8:7 – “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

  25. shadow,

    Benjamin Franklin noted that it is impossible to reason someone out of a position they reached without reason. ‘Other’ means’ are required.

    Frederick,

    Agreed. In reaction, stealth is required. Quietly record the indoctrination with your smartphone. If questioned, answer in a noncommittal manner, such as “racism is always wrong”. Don’t answer questions directly. Asked if you agree that this country is systemically racist… answer yeah, racism is systemic among racists.

    Do not challenge the indoctrination in any way. Once off work, contact a conservative legal firm in preparation for being fired when you speak out on your private time. Record the conversation when fired.

    Then sue in a civil service lawsuit every individual in higher positions for a violation of your first amendment right. Sue each individual separately. Sue for wrongful termination. Sue for pain and suffering. Sue for defamation. Sue for discrimination. Sue, sue, sue. Make them personally pay “through the nose”. Laugh all the way to the bank. Personally acquaint them with “get woke, go broke”. No mercy for those who would destroy your life, simply for disagreeing with them.

  26. That was exactly my thought. I can’t even be all that angered by her disturbed raving, except insofar as it does that much more to elevate the general level of racial hostility that’s been turned loose.

    It gives you a sense of what board-certification examinations can do and cannot do. She got through a residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital – Weill Cornell. Heckuva job, guys.

  28. Art Deco:

    For some crazy reason, I clicked on your link to Dr. Jack Barchas. I haven’t taken the time to read any of his publications, but they look interesting. What do you find so offensive, aside from his relationship with Dr. Aruna Khilanani (the psychopathic psychiatrist wannabe white-killer)? Or is that relationship enough to condemn him?

    I gotta go, but if you have time to respond, I’ll check back tomorrow.

  29. @Cornflour Re Barchas

    Perhaps Art+Deco is simply Naming the Eunuch.

    In the Good Old Days of Yore When Men Where Men and didn’t have to cringe their way through life constantly looking over their shoulders, this Paki Harridan would have been shown the door at one of several progressive hurdles along the Cursus Honorum.

    That’s never going to happen today when any attempt to bring her to heel would result in Barchas experiencing immediate and permanent Loss of Caste and Livelihood.

  31. What do you find so offensive, aside from his relationship with Dr. Aruna Khilanani (the psychopathic psychiatrist wannabe white-killer)? Or is that relationship enough to condemn him?

    She’s a loon. She got through a three-year residency right under his nose. What do you have to do at New York Presbyterian Hospital / Cornell Weill to get tossed out of a residency program? Who was her immediate supervisor? (Yeah, I know, Nidal Hassan made it through a residency program at Walter Reed).

    The fellowship program was briefer and I cannot locate the name of the chief of psychiatry while she was there (it’s a Dr. Marmar as we speak). I merely note their departmental leadership includes a woman whose job is to be the department’s woke-tard.

  32. “”But “There is a Balm in Gilead” that is freely available as well.””

    Perhaps, perhaps… But I’d wager more on there being a Starbucks in Gilead.

  33. Art Deco, or anyone who knows the answer: is it the case that psychiatrists have a full-blown medical degree, with all the associated hard science work –chemistry, biology, anatomy, and so on? I was under the impression that it does, but I’m having difficulty imagining this person grinding away at all that sort of thing. I mean, English lit degree…? And if it doesn’t require that, what does it mean? I certainly don’t see evidence of anything resembling scientific thinking on her web site.

  34. Actually, Starbucks did try, about six or seven years back IIRC, to make it “in Gilead”; and bomb it did—badly—its “roast” (i.e., burnt) signature product proving no match for the European-level quality coffee with which it had to compete.

    (Talk about doing “market surveys”!… Actually, “Second Cup” also tried and failed, though it may have survived a tad longer than the 12 months it took Starbucks to discover that nobody wanted to drink its astringent brew.)

  35. Re the dreck rising at prestigious places.

    Time to re-read Hayek and the Chapter in Road to Serfdom on why the worst ride to the top.

    Now, to apply Alinsky’s ridicule Rule to “Black History Month, Pride Month.”

    “Slack History” with a pic of Joe Slacker, the model for a gen not long ago. And “Ride Month” with a photo of a Harley

    Counter PC memes with counter-propaganda snark!

  36. My mother was incredibly intelligent. Seriously incredibly intelligent. (She got the highest score in NY when she took the Regents Exam back in the early fifties.) When I eat in grad school and had to read some dreck by Judith Butler, I felt like an idiot for not being about to understand it. My mom read it it and pronounced as nonsense. That make me feel better. She was essentially saying the emperor (empress?) Want wearing anything.

    Believe me, of my mother said something was nonsense, it seriously was.

  37. Mac-
    Yes, psychiatrists are MDs or DOs who did all the hard science pre-med stuff. A year of physics, 2 years of chemistry, a year of math 2 years of biology. Other than that, pre-meds can major in anything, but admission committees do look at the rigor of the entire undergrad degree when deciding tough cases. At least for non-BIPOC applicants.
    Psychologists do not have the MD/DO degree, and do not have to take the STM courses. As a rule, they cannot prescribe meds like psychiatrists do.

  38. it the case that psychiatrists have a full-blown medical degree, with all the associated hard science work –chemistry, biology, anatomy, and so on?

    Psychiatry has long required pre-medical courses, medical school (four calendar years), and a three year residency. Nowadays, a fellowship of a year or two is modal (as it is for other medical specialties), but not required. Sixty years ago, psychiatrists commonly put in time at a psychoanalytic institute, but I think that’s rare today. When Charles Krauthammer was in residency, it was common to insist residents undergo analysis, something he thought a waste of time and which he managed to avoid doing. I think that sort of requirement has disappeared from residency programs.

    In clinical psychology, post baccalaureate programs vary in length and venue and vary as to what combination of course work, thesis, and internship they require. The three clinical psychologists in my family include one with a research degree in hard sciences (PhD), one with a research on the soft side (PhD), and one with a professional degree on the soft side (PsyD); all three had to take licensing examinations. Others have a two-year master’s earned from a dedicated faculty, a social work faculty, or a teacher-training faculty. I think Gregory Popcack (EWTN, retired blogger) started out as an LCSW and then earned a PsyD.

    Speaking somewhat impressionistically, I think nowadays psychiatrists take inventories and prescribe medications but provide little of the talking cure, whether you call it therapy or counseling. That’s done by junior-grade practitioners.

    It’s my personal opinion that outpatient psychiatry and clinical psychology should be cash-on-the-barrelhead bar for the supervision of schizopherenics and a few others with manifest neurological injury. If your employer wants to provide part of your compensation in the form of an EAP program, that’s their choice. AFAIK, third-parties seldom if ever pay for cosmetic dentistry or cosmetic surgery, and they shouldn’t bother about the talking cure, either.

  39. The writer Andre Maurois asserted that people who are *intelligent* but not in any way *creative* tend to be eager adopters of intellectual systems created by others, and hold to those systems more rigidly even than their originators did.

    There are a lot of people in academia and media who fit the ‘intelligent but not creative’ description, and many of them have adopted the thought-mode and weird vocabulary of Wokeness.

  41. This is true, but with the younger ‘indoctrinees’, who are utterly bereft of the ability to think critically or respect differences of opinion, attempting this usually just results in said person shouting their mantra (‘ARE YOU RACIST?! ARE YOU RACIST?! ANSWER THE QUESTION! or similar) again and again with vacant repetitiveness right over the voice of the person asking questions.

    There’s a video out there of this very thing happening to Dave Rubin on a campus, and Showtime actually now has a show that is nothing but that – putting some white person in a chair where they are essentially grilled by a young, black, modern day German interrogator under the assumption that, of course, all white people are racists, and given no opportunity for dialogue.

  43. So will Fauci be asked some long, hard questions?
    https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/epidemiologist-claims-faucis-credibility-is-entirely-shot/

    Heh, “Not so fast” says True Jen. Dr. Fauci (may his name be praised) is “an undeniable asset”!!
    https://nypost.com/2021/06/03/psaki-calls-fauci-an-undeniable-asset/
    https://nypost.com/2021/06/04/wh-says-there-is-no-circumstance-where-biden-would-fire-fauci/

    …But Why? And, more importantly, for whom? (Pesky enquiring minds are wondering…)

  45. I am binge-reading Jordan Peterson’s new book “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life” — just finished the couple of chapters where he body-slams the PC and other Marxist nonsense, including CRT & BLM & Antifa (without naming any of them, but it’s pretty clear what he’s referring to).

  46. “When I eat [got] in grad school and had to read some dreck by Judith Butler, I felt like an idiot for not being about to understand it. My mom read it it and pronounced as nonsense” – Lee Also

    When our youngest was a senior, he confessed to not quite understanding one of his English assignments. I’m probably not as smart as your mom, but I managed a couple of university degrees, and the Kid is no slouch.
    I read the paper explaining the assignment and told him he couldn’t understand it because his English teacher was illiterate and what she had written made no sense.

    We cobbled together something that we thought might address what she thought she was assigning.
    So glad my kids got out of K-12 before education went totally down the drain.
    University was sinking while they were there, but they were all STEM except the art major, and he got burned badly.

    Watching the grand-kids schooling; if CRT comes in the door, we are going out the window.

  48. “CRT & BLM & Antifa (without naming any of them, but it’s pretty clear what he’s referring to).”

    Of course he won’t name them. The Peterson Shtick is to sidle up to the brink and then get all mystical-metaphysical and eye-rolling and beat a dignified retreat. He does this with both ends of the Overton Window.

    Which tells you what he really is: A Herdsman.

    And what does a Herdsman Herd?

    Sure is very remunerative to park yourself Bottom Centre of a Widening Gyre, but in the long run, just going to end up covered in Bird Shit.

    Makes a nice change from his telling us about his youthful sexual fantasies about his cousin and hysterical psychoses about Nuclear Armageddon. Head Case.

    But while I’m here… Om: Go Tidy Your Room!

  49. Living rent free in Zaphod’s head, such a small, dark, sad space.

    Can Do! Zaphod Can Do!

  50. Perhaps…. But a “Great (Bi-Polar) Herdsman”.
    (And for all intents and purposes a great person…who has—YES!—overcome a lot
    AND himself inspired millions around the globe to PICK UP THEIR SOCKS and/or buy a laundry hamper, etc., which is nothing to be sneezed at…. though just thinking about all that lint does make one a bit sneezy…)

    The point being (in spite of all that nonsense about “accepting” blatantly, brazenly, stolen elections): LOSE NOT HOPE, YE WHO FOLD YER UNDERWEAR, HEAR HEAR!…
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9639731/Headstrong-lamb-refuses-confrontation-sheepdog.html

    File under: Never baaak down?

  51. “AND himself inspired millions around the globe to PICK UP THEIR SOCKS and/or buy a laundry hamper, etc., which is nothing to be sneezed at….”

    I guess we need to replace the Old Most Important Question with the Shiny New Most Important Question:

    But is it Good for IKEA?

  52. Mac and West Tx–
    Med School has gone PC. They promote SWJs because Obama wanted it, and one of his henchmen took over the College Board and they redesigned the MCATs seeking out future Social Justice Warriors to be for promotion to MDs.

    Never trust Med School grads from 2019 — then and since is the corrupted class of fake docs. Never again give this category of MDs business
    to these corrupyoCrats!

  53. Twenty years ago I used to read Andrew Sullivan’s “Daily Dish” and Charles Johnson’s “Little Green Footballs” every morning. However Sullivan became demented with his gay marriage and torture obsession and delved into conspiracy theories regarding Sarah Palin’s uterus as well as embracing anti-Semitism. Charles Johnson went completely left wing in 2009.

  54. Some good points from the second (chronologically earlier) LI post (just to remember them). Also, the VA teacher’s school has been ordered to un-suspend him.

    Commenter CommoChief:
    Two dozen more decisions like this and plenty of awarded damages may have a deterrent effect. Though I won’t hold my breath.
    It amazes me that the folks who demand that they be allowed to ‘be themselves’ refuse to acknowledge that someone else can hold and express contrary viewpoints while ‘being themselves’.
    It’s one thing to tolerate opposing viewpoints, demanding an endorsement of one viewpoint and the exclusion of all other viewpoints is quite another.

  55. AesopFan:

    “It’s one thing to tolerate opposing viewpoints, demanding an endorsement of one viewpoint and the exclusion of all other viewpoints is quite another.”

    The more woke a person becomes the less effective mirrors prove to be.

    Because Justice! And Racism! And Fascist! But mostly h8 and the love of Power!

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