Situation Report: I steamed my eyelids open again with real coffee, a nice treat for a weekday. This idle, schedule-less time is a gift from my era. It is a gift from the same chunk of time that decided a long while ago that I was not only economically redundant, but execrably so, and so, I was added to the Shoals of the Doomed & Adrift -- and then expertly excreted from the highly-lauded realm of competitive, cutthroat capitalism and into the murky lagoons and mired holding ponds of Excess Capacity.
In economics, as in most other areas of America life since, oh, 1960, it's best to fog and cloud the real issues, and all-too-human effects, with cold, distancing euphemisms. So, the Shoals of the Shredded & Damned are magically converted -- presto! -- to Excess Capacity. Language is very much like statistics: What is revealed is routine; what is concealed is essential.
Add to this phenomenon of distancing, by language, to things we'd rather not face, one more thing: The purposeful, political maiming of language to accomplish the demands of propaganda. It's why Frank Luntz has Luntzified the language for right-wing think tanks, policy groups, and political hacks, converting the neutral and descriptive inheritance tax and estate tax into the now-infamous, and heinous, barbarian death tax.
Same tax -- but, now with super-massaged Ultra Spin, that marketing miracle!
You can see the same obscene twistifications of language all throughout the land. If you can hide the Truth within a phrase that really riles people up like crazy, well -- then, for the most part, you don't have to face the Truth! Shucks --Thanks, Republicans!
In January, part of a decades-old sewer line in Maryland collapsed by the Potomac River. Over...
It might head out to sea, or it might be a 'blockbuster" late-weekend blizzard for the...
