When language comes from certain groups – notably politicians, clergy, or marketers – we should be aware of how often it does not refer to anything in the real world and be sensitive to attempts to tell us what’s true or otherwise manipulate us.

 The truth is what most people believe. And they believe that which is repeated most often

Josef Goebbels

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell

 Linguists have long been fascinated with the question of how language originated.   Our earliest written records are only five thousand years old. Think of all the millennia of human speech before that. 

My best guess is that language did not spring full-blown from the mouths of one generation, but rather developed gradually from the first elementals: humans began associating verbal and other gestures with tangible items in their environment.

Birth of the shaman industry

That was a big jump, but the next step was huge: we learned to refer symbolically to these items even when they weren’t immediately present…and then, an even bigger leap, to realities that were never present, that were totally subjective, from which point sprung literature, prayers, folklore, ritual, astrology, pseudo-science and -medicine…and the most elemental form of knowing: that things were true by hearsay and authority, especially if repeated often enough, and by the right people.   Thus was born the shaman industry, which continues to this day.

Modern shamans include such BS merchants as marketers, clergy, and politicians.  All are adept at word-to-thing reification.  Instead of assigning names to things and experiences already present, the process is: here’s the new name; now I’ll tell you what it refers to.  That’s the basic premise.   Also, something is true because I say it is true, especially if it sounds good and reinforces my audience’s confirmation bias.

Keep ‘em stuck in stupid

It is in the interests of the ruling elite, including the pseudo-literate classes in this country, that the middle and lower classes stay stuck in stupid, susceptible to anything they’re told to believe.  I note the recent coinage of fact-free – not a compliment. 

No one ever asks, “What the hell does that even mean?”  Things are true because contemporary shamans say they’re true.  

In a recent, appalling incident, Border Patrol agents on horses with long reins are portrayed as no different from the men who whipped slaves, and government officials accepted and repeated the story with great outrage.  But it was all a lie. .

Control ‘em with slogans

It is in the ruling/educated classes’ interest that the populace be easily manipulated by slogans and that the slogans be repeated mindlessly and verbatim. 

“Diversity is our strength.”  No, it’s not.  There is not a shred of evidence that ethnically diverse organizations perform better, certainly not enough to justify the billions invested in the bloated, arrogant diversity industry. 

Besides, and much worse for the organizations that adopt this perverted thinking, hiring and promoting on the basis of gender and ethnicity (and now, sexual orientation) to the exclusion of competence invariably makes the organization LESS effective, because competence is ignored in favor of color (prime example: Kamala Harris).

Aren’t human beings diverse enough in themselves?  Or are we to believe the underlying, imbecilic kind of “essentialism” doctrine (actually, a simplistic version of sortal essentialism) that every person somehow brings a piece of his/her ethnic/racial essence to every situation? 

Has anyone actually made comparisons with non-diverse industries, institutions, or other societies?  I would think there’d be strong bonds between the people of a mono-ethnic country like Sweden or Japan, while diversity brings constant strife to multi-ethnic countries like India.  

But that’s OK.  We don’t need proof.  Slogans will do. 

And the slogans, like prayers, must be repeated correctly.  People have actually been disciplined by profaning the sacred screed with variations (no less true) that “all lives/blue lives matter.”

Why they’re stuck in stupid

Maybe it’s not intentional, but it certainly benefits the ruling classes that virtually no one, including the elites themselves, knows the elements of critical thinking and epistemology.  Here are a few:

(1) Merely saying “in fact,” “true,” “really,” or “actually” doesn’t make it real or true.

(2) Be super-skeptical of any explanation that claims to account for a vast range of different phenomena.  Be super-super-skeptical of any “theory” that claims to explain everything.

(3) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.  Take this definition of critical race theory (from The Western Journal):

Critical race theory, for the unaware, is a far-left field of academic thought that originated in legal studies but has since been extrapolated to other disciplines. The highly subjective theory holds that America is structurally racist, that the racist bias benefits whites and that all institutions must be critiqued through the lens of race.

What would have to happen in order for this theory to be regarded as fact? How could one prove that “all institutions must be critiqued through the lens of race?”  What does that even mean, in practical terms?  Something different for every institution?

Years and mountains

You would need mountains and years of research and documentation – videos, emails, records of meetings where decisions were made, and much else proving beyond doubt that there is racism here and there and everywhere, to justify investing boundless resources combating this evil entity.

First the name, then the (supposed) thing

Once again: here is the name for something you didn’t know existed, but take my word for it, it exists.  It is “systemic” (a science-y-sounding word); it is everywhere. 

Well, if it were everywhere, it should be easily observable, but such is not the case.  That’s why CRT calls itself a “theory.”  Any theory can be proven false.  But here “theory” is a misnomer.  In practice, it’s “Critical Race Dogma.”

(4) Truth and facts are established not by authority or “sounds like it could be true” or “I really want it to be true” — but by the hard work of observation, verification, substantiation, documentation, experimentation, accumulation of empirical evidence, or some other reliable indication of the extra-linguistic, consensual reality of the item in question.

The origins of America  

Thus, the claim that America was founded to preserve slavery — is not true, no matter how much we might want to believe it is.  It’s a fabrication, an alternate history if you will, until proven by actual documentation, which does not occur anywhere in the country’s founding documents…or in any documents.  

So it was an unspoken secret among the Founders, nowhere committed to writing?  Gimme a beak. 

Dumbing down, faster

The widespread and unquestioning acceptance of unsubstantiated dogma prevailed until (and despite) the intellectual revolutions of the past few centuries.  It continues to dumb down society and make people malleable, and at a faster pace than before we had mass, then social media.

Systemic racism: the real kind

Which brings us to the ultimate linguistic switcheroo: systemic racism.  Of course, there are racist individuals and groups and racist acts, by people of various skin colors, a sad commentary on how primitive humanity still is. 

But systemic racism against Blacks (and presumably, other “people of color”)? What is it and where is it?

It’s a vapor, a phantasm, filling the atmosphere, creeping into every crevice, sneaking into people’s brains and “every institution,” always there but never obvious, kind of like “white rage” or any other negative, disparaging word  with “white” in front of it (“white privilege,” “white fragility” – huh?  I don’t feel fragile today).

Another “white” chimera to add to the whitelist/blacklist is white supremacy.  Synonyms for supremacy include predominance, primacy, dominion, hegemony, authority.  Supremacy is such a militaristic word, implying domination by force.   Do we really have white supremacy in this country? Do white people really run everything and control everybody else? 

Or is this another case of political hyperbole for, if not ‘total control,’ then ‘too much white control, which must be changed by continuous, punitive, reparative action.’  And is it another refusal to look at tangible, observable reality, where Blacks are in positions of power, authority, and wealth in every walk of life?

Still, there is systemic racism

But if we can’t perceive systemic racism, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.  It’s of an entirely different kind; it’s right in our faces, hiding in plain sight, masquerading as virtue and compassion. It’s called “anti-racism” by some, but it’s racism nevertheless. 

And it is truly everywhere: affirmative action programs, racial set-asides, preferential assignment of government contracts, “diversity” and “equity” (= forced equality) everywhere in hiring and employment (companies invest untold sums in diversity recruiting and mentoring, even though it detracts from the organization’s main function and adds nothing to the bottom line), supplier diversity programs (again, zero value-added, but it would be political suicide not to have them, so companies cave in), race-norming of grades, giving college-admission points for “lived experience,” countless black-only associations, proms, graduations, and other events.   

And in universities.  Especially universities.  At my alma mater, an indoctrination center which still calls itself “Brown University,” students report being so stressed out by their diversity activities that they don’t have time to study. I recently learned that at orientation, students are asked how they would like to be addressed (if they mean “pronouns,” it should be “how would you like to be referred to?  

Charlie Kirk’s new book reveals just how far this mental virus has gone. 

The Mayor of Chicago won’t let white reporters interview her, white students are asked to leave campus on a college’s annual event ….and on and on it goes, an endless cycle of driven by guilt and revenge.  It’s never enough.

One group benefits; another loses. If all this doesn’t constitute “privilege,” then I don’t know what the word means.

That, friends and neighbors, is systemic racism.

Propagandists brazenly rely on the assumption that the more far-fetched the lie, the more likely people are to accept it, because it’s too outrageous to be false, as would be revealed by the briefest moment of skepticism. 

The ideological left has accomplished something that would make Orwell or Goebbels gasp with envy: it has defined a phrase as its opposite AND as itself. 

Real, palpable, empirically verifiable “systemic racism” (= actual exclusion of Whites) exists everywhere, but only with the meaning we choose to assign (= vague, imaginary, perceived exclusion of everybody else).    

The systemic racism that’s all around us, that insists that we examine every institution “through the lens of race” — we have to root it out.  Yeah, pull it out by the roots.  If you can find it.  

Pay no attention…

But, to paraphrase the guy in The Wizard of Oz,  pay no attention to the systemic racism that is actually all around you, its tentacles choking every organization (including, God help us, the military), eating up resources, and constantly distracting from the organization’s core purpose…the systemic racism that excludes and degrades people, every day, in the hypocritical name of “equity.”

Or, as the old saying has it, “Who ya gonna believe?  Me or your lyin’ eyes?”

#systemicracism #politicalcorrectness #criticalracetheory