Category: Language
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Counterattack In The War For The Language
To: The entire conservative / classical liberal worldFrom: Mitch Berg, obstreporous super-straight anti-Blueanon peasantRe: Anti-BlueAnon Superstraight Super-Intersectioality More of this, please. That is all.
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Dumb And Dumber And Dumber And Dumber…
Policy is downstream of politics. Politics is downstream from culture. Culture is shaped, to a disturbing extent, by people who want to try to influence it. And it’s been a cultural cliché for generation that television in its many forms has an overwhelming influence on society. And as someone who spent way more time in…
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Meaning
A friend of the blog emails: The number of words that have totally lost their meaning over the last couple of weeks is astonishing. Coup, treason, sedition, insurrection and now unity. What’s next. Anyone’s guess. They join other terms – “white privilege”, “white supremacy”, “ Anti“ – pretty much any western virtue…
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A Scientific Experiment
My hypothesis: “Progressive” politicians can say anything, no matter how outlandish or false, not only because they know the media will nearly never call them on it, but – more importantly – because they know people who are susceptible to voting for them are gullible, lacking in critical thinking skills, and so poorly-informed and in…
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Hail To The…Er, VIP
A friend of the blog emails: Last night at a prayer meeting one of the members of the group told us that Minneapolis public schools made a change to job titles. This friend of mine is a teacher at Minneapolis South. He said it was announced yesterday that all titles in the Minneapolis public school…
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Slippery Semantic Slope
I keep hearing these words used interchangeably, typically by liberals.That is wrong; they are not the same words. They do not mean the same thing. Equality is when everyone gets the same. Equity is when everyone getswhat they deserve. You studied hard, went to class, turned in assignments on time. I nevercracked a book, skipped…
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Snappy Answers To Casual Gaslighting, Part III
“If You’re Not Part Of The Solution, You’re Part Of The Problem” People who use this statement always use it incompletely. I’ll do it again, filling in and emphasiing the words that are unstated but that actually define the statement. “If you’re not part of the solution I’m demanding, you’re part of the problem that’s…
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Snappy Answers To Casual Gaslighting, Part II
“If You’re ‘On The Fence’, You’re Complicit”\ No. If I’m “on the fence on an issue”, then neither side has convinced me yet. “Better to be quiet and have people think you might be a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”. And being considered a fool by anyone using a line…
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Snappy Answers To Casual Gaslighting, Part I
“Silence is Violence”. No. It’s not. Silence – if you catch me silent at all – is me keeping my mouth shut while I figure out what I think, to say nothing of what I’m going to say. Your freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to tell me what I’m going to say.…
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Fearless Prediction
I hereby wager a shiny new quarter that this episode is one of two things: A harried, part-time employee in a busy, loud store, hearing someone talking, very possibly with an accent of one kind or another, hearing “Isis” when someone, possibly with a mask on, said “Aishah”. A hoax, exactly as spelled out in…
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MiniHealth Has Never Been At War With MiniPol
Some Henco Commisioners want to declare racism a public health crisis: Hennepin County Commissioners Angela Conley and Irene Fernando plan to introduce a resolution on Tuesday declaring racism a public health emergency in the county. “We need to be explicit about racism,” Conley said. “We need to say that at the root of the disparities…
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Times In Which The Mundane Is Spectacularly Radical
Let’s say I write an article in which I assert that the mid-day sky is actually bright scarlet red in color. You might respond “You’re just Mitch Berg. You’re a conservative, so you always think stupid things”. That response is half, maybe 3/4 true – but doesn’t say anything about the color of the sky.…
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Open Letter To The Entire Irish Linguistic Family
To: IrelandFrom: Mitch Berg, Irascible PeasantRe: Ineffective Camouflage Dear Ireland, You may think you’re clever, dropping an “e” at the end of the word *s**t”, or into the middle of “f**k*”, and calling ’em safe for polite company. But you’re not fooling anyone – and you’d be a deuchbege to think you have. That is…
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Shot In The Dark: Today’s News, Two Years Ago (Again)
The Babylon Bee – America’s most accurate source of news – defines “Karen”, who is sort of the anti-“Rosie The Riveter” of the current crisis. Watch carefully. Anything look/sound familiar? “Karen’s” hairdo – it’s “ELCA Hair“. If you read Shot In The Dark, you’re years ahead of the hoi-polloi.
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Fair Warning
I can listen to people scrape their fingernails on chalkboards (kids, ask your parents) all day long. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t sounds and words that make my teeth hurt and make me nauseous. My example I have always hated the word “Document”, and all its uses and derivatives. Document? Documentation? Documentary? All of…
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Word Of The Day
“Metrolectual“
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Chanting Points Memo: Let’s Make A List, 2020 Edition
I noted the other day that “progressives” seem to have only read-only memory; once they get a point in their heads, regardless of veracity or logic, it just stays there. It has literally gotten to the point where the politicians and pundits of Big Left don’t even bother trying to convince people with any basis…
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For Joe Biden
It’s too confusing to keep track of all the different ways that liberals impugn conservatives. And the words don’t mean the same thing each time they’re used; the meaning shifts depending on the user, the victim, the situation.I would prefer that liberals adopt one general-purpose word to use for everyone and everything they don’t like.…
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Linguistics 1. Intersectional Feminism 0.
I didn’t write this. Truth be told, even at my peak, I didn’t have this kind of command of historical etymology. But oh, Lord, this is something to celebrate: I may just memorize the whole thing, since I’m sure this isn’t the last I’ll be seeing of these, er, “arguments”.
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March Of The Strawmen
Over the weekened, I listened to “It’s Been a Minute” with Sam Sanders – one of NPR’s many mad grabs for virtue-seeking relevance – and I heard a bit that simultaneously nauseated and thrilled me. It’s at about 17:00 into this week’s broadcast. But don’t worry – I listened to it, so you don’t have…
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What’s Spanish For “Hack”?
I love languages. I speak three of ’em passably enough not to get made as a Yank, and can order a drink, pay a tab or find a bathroom in a bunch more. If I could learn more full-time, I would. I’m a linguistics geek. I’m probably an outlier among Americans at large – we’re…
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The Moody Boor Stood Bloodily Aloof
This winter, the news media ran stories about ice dams causing damage to the roof. How do you pronounce the word “roof?” Why don’t all -oo- words sound alike? Try this sentence:While the goofy cook chewed a root and doodled in a book on the roof, a pooch looked at a boot and woofed as…
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From Now On, You Will Pronounce My Name In My Ancestral Norwegian, To My Satisfaction, Or Be Called A Bigot
If I had a nickel for every stranger that’s pronounced my name “MIchelle” or “Michael”, I would have enough money to not need to interact with strangers at all anymore. It seems I’ve hit the intersectional lottery. Or maybe not. Because mispronouncing peoples’ names isn’t a matter of trying to wrap one’s tongue around a…
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Why Does Governor Walz Hate The Environment And Want Rural Minnesotans To Die Flaming Deaths?
Governor Walz provides the service for which Big Environmental paid good money. Notwithstanding the fact that the Enbridge pipeline would replace hundreds / thousands of derailment-prone tanker cars and crash-able «trucks that currently transit populated areas and sensitive environments with a pipeline that will be gallon-for-gallon vastly safer for both people and the ecology; Walz…