Use Words that Tell It Like It Is
Call a spade a Spade and a dictatorship a Dictatorship
Support the Resistance - upgrade to a paid subscription.
It is the support of readers like you that makes this publication possible. These essays are the result of a good deal of work. I rely upon voluntary supporters to keep going. I encourage you to become a paid subscriber, and to share this with others. Click here to become a paid subscriber:
I sincerely believe that we would not be in the existential crisis we are if the media—and the rest of us who write or speak publicly—had been more careful with the words we use.
Probably the most important failure in this regard is the ubiquitous use of conservative to refer to people, ideas, and policies that are the opposite of conservative. People advocating the overthrow of the constitutional republic are not conservatives. They are rightwing extremists hell bent on destroying the system the Founders set up in 1787 and obliterating the grand values set forth in 1776
Yet even people and media venues that are liberal continue to this day to call them conservatives, making them sound reasonable and mainstream. They are not.
They are authoritarians. But what does that term mean to most Americans? They are fascists. But what does that mean to many Americans? They seek to concentrate all power in a Leader (auf Deutsch, Führer). What Project 2025 calls for is making the President a king or dictator. We need to say so.
People in the media have been talking about conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists for years. It makes crazy ideas sound like they are the equivalent of hypotheses by Newton or Darwin.
Call them what they are: conspiracy nutters.
As MuskTrump rips apart the social contract and engages in a scorched earth campaign against everything that helps human beings, we hear and read about norms and guardrails. No! what is being overthrown is the rule of law and the Constitution.
Some media outlets are saying MuskTrump are trying to “overhaul the government.” No—they seek to destroy our limited government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” and replace it with an all-powerful government of the people, by the oligarchs, and for the billionaires.”
We use words such as autocratic. What does the typical American think that means? My guess is that most of them don’t have much of an idea.
We hear that MuskTrump want to “downsize government.” That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Well, it is absolutely not what they are doing. They are upsizing government. “Bigly.”
They call themselves—and many in the media repeat it—“libertarians.” Well, who’s against that? “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” right? Wrong. The only liberty they seek is for the ultrarich and corporations to be “liberated” from regulations that keep them from doing whatever the hell they want to exploit consumers and workers. What these “libertarians” are is the people who, in control of the government, will send the jackbooted thugs that actual conservatives have long feared into people’s homes.
Now, as MuskTrump and Vance indicate that they will just ignore court orders, we are hearing about a “Constitutional crisis.” Hmm. That doesn’t sound good, but what does it mean for me?
We need to make it clear that if MuskTrump ignore court rulings and “Republicans” (we need to stop calling people who are trying to end the republican form of government “Republicans”), what we are facing is the end of the American Experiment in freedom and self-governance.
What we are on the verge of is Dictatorship.
Maybe that word will awaken people to the stakes.