Redefining words as a power play

I’ve had a more varied career in journalism than most, and part of that entailed spending a few years covering the Federal Reserve for a financial wire service. This involved learning and using a lot of very complicated terminology, but some of it was pretty straightforward. For instance, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

Except that the Biden administration, which has already unleashed the worst inflation this country has experienced in over 40 years, is suddenly trying to redefine “recession” as something other than two quarters of negative growth. That’s because we’ve gone into a recession as we’ve always understood it, and they don’t want to admit it.

Of course, lying with statistics is a cherished government pastime. Recall that when Barack Obama came into office, the housing crash had just occurred. Unlike the current situation, President Obama’s policies couldn’t plausibly be blamed for a cratering economy, and administration officials still felt the need to lie about what was happening. So, they invented a new metric of jobs “saved or created” to try to hide the fact unemployment hit double digits and the economy shed two million jobs.

But this time feels different. That’s because attempts to redefine reality, however insulting, are now a common strategy for both politicians and our elitist social engineers. For instance, Merriam-Webster recently redefined “female” as “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.” Similarly, it now defines “male” as “having a gender identity that is the opposite of female.”

So according to the dictionary, the basic differences that determine the propagation of the human species are an exercise in circular reasoning without a biological or anatomical reference point. If you can redefine what “male” and “female” mean, changing the definition of a recession has to be comparatively easy.

The problem, however, is that the vast majority of us who are not mentally ill or enthralled by politically correct delusions know the differences between the two sexes. We make those distinctions many times a day in the course of our ordinary lives. Similarly, our economic troubles right now are so intense they’re obvious every time we go to the grocery store. No amount of wordplay can obscure the reality economic here.

So why even try? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that there is a small and unfortunately energetic group of Americans who are so spiritually void they are trying to fill the hole in their soul with politics. This may not be a large percentage of the American people, but these voices are disproportionately loud on social media and write checks much more frequently to political campaigns.

These people will drive even the most extreme political messages, because they’re so committed to the idea that the other half of the country is evil, they reflexively fear emboldening anyone who would disagree with them. And while hardcore partisans exist across the political spectrum, leaders on the left know that attempts to gaslight ordinary Americans and rewrite reality will be amplified by a media establishment that is undeniably extremist. It took about a day for the corporate media to start buying into the Biden administration’s attempt to redefine a recession.

However, while surface level political analysis may explain some of this, it is ultimately not about partisanship so much as it is about power. By forcing people to confront such bold and insulting lies, the goal is to make them feel powerless and demoralized so they don’t question those in power. That’s how propaganda works.

And on a personal level, the embrace of ideologies such as “gender identity” are also about power. Being unhappy with your physical body and mental state is part of the human condition, but the healthy response is to do what we can to improve ourselves and try to find solace in healthy relationships with others.

Trans ideology turns this notion of mutual sacrifice and shared acceptance on its head. It demands absolute fealty to the misguided belief that a person’s thoughts transform him or her into something different than who God has created. If you do not agree with this ideology, you are promptly told that you are harming that person for not participating in the delusion. Such threats should be recognized as manipulation. Instead, the threat of being called a bigot has forced many cowardly people and institutions to reorient themselves around the insane notion that being a man or a woman is a personal preference.

Certainly, the pressure to conform or remain silent in the face of all manner of attempts to redefine reality is growing. As George Orwell observed, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act”—and we’re long overdue for a revolution in truth-telling.