Words That Mean Nothing – In These Times
Much of the time that we think we are talking about issues, we are actually talking about words. One side will argue against one definition of aword, while the other side argues in favor of adifferent definition of aword. Each side can claim that the other is not addressing the issue, because the issue is defined differently on each side. In this way, political debate can carry on unimpeded by any barriers of mutually agreed upon terms, like separate superhighways rushing on at full speed in opposite directions. This characterizes alarge amount of political discourse in this country: Torrents of people talking about different things, all of whom assume that they are talking about the samethings.
There is much hand-wringing today over the idea that misinformation and conspiracy theories and omnipresent propaganda have created asituation in which Americans dont seem to have asingle set of mutually agreed upon facts. That is true. But it does not capture an even more elementary flaw in what we are doing. We allow entire issues to be created and to be talked about endlessly in the national political media without ever determining what those issues mean.
The absurd effect of this failure is twofold. First, it allows bad faith political actors to purposely exploit this rhetorical vulnerability in order to smear the other side by inflating the definition of bad things to include whatever the other side is doing. This is standard issue political scumbag behavior, and is to be expected. Worse, though, it creates aself-reinforcing cycle in which widespread use of some vague, ill-defined term convinces the public that this term is something important, driving media coverage and creating impenetrable towers of meaninglessness that come to dominate our partisan politicallandscape.
If you can push abullshit issue into everybody knows territory, you can get away with never having to define it at all. What does it mean? Stupid question. Everybody knows this is anissue.
What does cancel culture mean? Does it mean Being fired from your job for being racist or sexist? Does it mean Being criticized in public for saying racist or sexist things? Does it mean Things that used to be seen as okay for white people to say now are seen as not okay and Iam upset about that because Ilike to say those things? It is easy to see how at one end of the spectrum of definitions, cancel culture is an extremely narrow, niche problem without any major impact on the general publicand at the other extreme, it is apernicious force that might come for anyone. If Iwere making an honest attempt to offer the definition of this term as it is most often used, it would be: People suffering consequences for things they said, with an overwhelming emphasis on the most goofy or misguided examples that we can find. By this definition, cancel culture is just arebranding of the ordinary human foibles that accompany the slowly evolving standards of society. Engaging in any debate at all about cancel culture without ameticulous definition of terms is to fall into atrap before you have evenbegun.
What does woke mean? Does it mean Aware of racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination and committed to working to eradicate them? Does it mean Khmer Rouge-style fanatics coming to seize and indoctrinate your white babies into their vicious cult? Its genuine operational definition is probably something like Anything that makes white people feel guilty. It is aterm that means nothing, and it is aterm that can instantly serve as aslur to discredit anythingan empty bucket into which people can dump every uncomfortable thing in order to invalidate it. The fact that major media figures allow debates about wokeness to happen with astraight face, and without awritten definition, is ridiculous. It is aperfect political black hole, amagic wand that can tarnish whatever anyone dislikes and be said not to apply to anything that they like. It means everything, which means that it meansnothing.
This same dynamic applies to terms that may have once had alegitimate definition, but which become definition-less by the time they have been elevated into the popular mind, laden with propaganda. Do any of the politicians or commentators decrying critical race theory have aprecise working definition for this academic term? Of course not. It now means Anything that talks about white peoplesracism.
And what does socialism mean, exactly? Apolitical scientist (or, you know, an In These Times reader) could tell you the textbook definition, but that does not matter one bit in the context of the terms actual use in America. Here, socialism is used as shorthand to mean anything and everything from a more democratic and egalitarian alternative economic system to capitalism to Social Security and Medicaid to Kim Jong Un executing his own top officials with anti-aircraft guns. To stand up and argue Hey, many broadly popular government programs could be considered socialist is to miss the point that the other side is not and will never be arguing against anything that is broadly popular; they will always redraw the definition of socialism at will to suit their purpose of making itunpopular.
To attempt to have any kind of good faith debate on any of these topics is the political equivalent of trying to hold back an ocean wave with your hands. Its just going to go around you. We cant expect politicians to stop creating these sorts of terms. After all, undefined words that serve to make the other side look bad and can never be pinned down enough to make your side look like hypocrites are the pinnacle of real world political speech. What we can expect, though, is for the media not to get sucked into this stupid and meaningless game, to serve as amechanism that reinforces the idea that unreal things are real. None of these pseudo-issues should be written about in respectable publications or spoken about on the airwaves until they have been subjected to arelentless and scrupulous defining of what they do and do not mean. Idont care if the attempt to define woke in ameaningful way takes the entire length of acable news segment, leaving no time for the ensuing talking points. The fact that coming to arealistic, mutually agreed upon definition sounds so daunting and time consuming is asign that the underlying issue does not, necessarily,exist.
Meanwhile, things like poverty and inequality and death and disease and climate change and war can all be easily quantified, defined and debated in ameaningful way. When someone instead spends all their time talking about things that seem undefinable, it is probably because they find reality to be an uncomfortabletopic.
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Words That Mean Nothing - In These Times