It’s kind of like when she denied our inflation crisis for months, then admitted she was “wrong” about the “path that inflation would take” when the charade got too embarrassing to keep up… But I digress. Even Wikipedia — long known as a website run by people rather than institutions — has been impacted by this war of the words. Their page for the word recession has been locked against new edits. And wouldn’t you know it: the vague new jargon being pushed by the White House is front and center. Elon Musk even weighed in on the issue, tweeting that Wikipedia was “losing its objectivity” and outright tagging its founder, Jimmy Wales. George Orwell was passionate about the importance of language, and the dangers of changing the meaning of words we don’t like. Chilling storylines based on socially acceptable “Newspeak” and politically incorrect “thoughtcrimes” were front and center in his most famous book, 1984: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” He also wrote in an essay, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Can you think of anything that’s been narrowed by changing language lately? I sure can… starting with the word gender. And woman. And peaceful protest. And vaccine. And bipartisan. And tolerant. The list goes on. These words have been weaponized and redefined so heavily that they’ve lost their meaning. And if you use them incorrectly, or have a so-called “outdated” understanding of their meaning… You, my friend, are guilty of thoughtcrimes. The good news? If you believe that words have meaning, truth is objective, and facts matter, you’re not alone: 4 million Tuttle Twins books are sitting on the shelves of families like yours to prove it. If you’re ready to push back on the moving goalposts and lies from our politicians, there’s no better place to start than your own family. |