Words Have Meaning

     Ever since I was a kid, as I'm sure it was for many of you, I was told that words have meaning. Meaning, in the sense that whether you speak them in front of others to hear, or write them down for others to read...they can sometimes have an effect on the reader or listener. Words can hurt, encourage, profess love...or hate. Words can also incite. They can move one, and raise the listener to a higher place, as my grandfather would say. Or...they can incite to a lower, almost pre-Enlightenment baseness. Now, to be fair, sometimes the listener has to take a little responsibility for this. I mean, I can sit here and type words like, "I think affirmative action does more harm than good," or "The idea of, and punishment of someone for a 'Hate-crime' is not only immoral and unethical, but should be stricken from any law or courtroom proceeding because you simply CANNOT charge and/or convict someone for what they THINK." Or, “I find it abhorrent that courts now allow victims' families to come in and tell the convicted, the judge, and the courtroom how the crime, usually a murder, has affected them and this is supposed to somehow influence the punishment.” Really? The person is convicted, there's a punishment on the books for a set term of imprisonment, etc. At the risk of sounding heartless, it doesn't matter what the family and/or friends feel about it. Answer me this; if one of these family or friends said, "I know murder is wrong, but I'm glad you whacked this prick. He may have been my friend (or brother...whatever), but the world's a better place without him." Does that get the accused a couple of months or years off his sentence? Do those words not have meaning or import? Please...just stop. Now, it’s up to the reader/listener to decide whether to engage in debate upon reading these words, or engage in marching, looting, and possibly killing, upon reading/hearing those words. I have no qualms writing, “It’s not on me.” But either way, those words have meaning. Go ahead...start writing your e-mails or Facebook replies. Have at me! But all of this brings me to the following...

    If you follow politics on any level, you might be aware that politics involves a lot of truth-stretching! No, really Boss? You might also know that Populist politicians lie even more than most. You might ask, why? Why, Boss? Well, I'll tell you, Sancho. It's because that populism requires a certain degree of exploitation and public anger not found in other groups. Populists need to be told that everyone else is evil, and they (the populists) are always getting screwed. If you're a populist politician, you can't sit there and say that the issue is complicated and that solutions come with trade-offs, and that your opponent may have some fair points. Trust me, the mob will turn their collective back on you in a heartbeat. You have to tell them the solutions are easy and your evil enemies are stopping you and keeping you, and only you, from fixing everything. Now, you're good to go! Dopes...

    Anyway...all of this rambling brings me to the following. For those of you that pay attention to these things, you may have heard that not too long ago the previous occupant of the Oval Office, and the current front-runner for the Republican nomination, one Donald Trump, said that he would be a "DICTATOR" on Day 1 of his presidency if elected. Now in a more perfect world, no one would pay any attention to this dope...But, and there's always a "But"...since he IS a former president and unless something crazy happens, he may be our NEXT president...people are paying attention. Because…Words have meaning. 

    Let's try to ignore the fact that Trump throws out a lot of words or phrases as if he's joking just to see how people will react. And if they don't react too venomously, he figures he's good to go. But still, when you use the word "dictator", it not only has meaning, it causes concern. Because, again, words have meaning. Now, given that a good part of the country thinks that Trump WANTS to be dictator, people got all fired up and lost their damn minds. I get this...no matter how many times I have to tell people that presidents don't have that much power, no matter how much members of Congress act like lap-dogs. That said, Trump doubled down in an interview with Sean Hannity on FOX (who actually tried to give Trump an out so he could back-track on the dictator comments...to no avail, because, you know, it's Trump) and said something to the effect that after "closing the border" and "drilling, drilling, drilling," he'd be done with the dictator thing. Whew! Thank the gods. Thanks, Don! Really??? Moron...

    Now, if you ignore the dictator part, it's all so banal and quasi-juvenile. Again, presidents don't have that much power. Remember when Kamala Harris told the country back in 2020 that if elected president, she'd repeal Trump's tax-cuts on her first day. That was a lie. The president doesn't have that kind of power. You'd think a lawyer would know that! Apparently, Harris graduated from law school having missed that question on the exam. It's also frighteningly clear she missed a lot of other questions on the exam, but again, that's another story. No wonder voters think presidents have powers they don't have. 

    But it's not just about powers, or lack thereof, of the office. Think about this whole drilling thing that Trump wants to do. [In the interest of full disclosure, I am in favor of Arctic drilling, as well as limited amounts of drilling off our coasts.] Trump is screaming about how Biden has shut down energy production in America, and this lack of drilling is what's causing "massive inflation." And that "we have the highest energy costs anywhere.” Now, that would be very bad, were it true. But...it's a lie. Have high gas prices contributed to inflation? Sure! But high inflation also helped drive up energy prices. Remember, economics is complicated. 

    The Donald also boasts that gas prices were $1.87 a gallon when he left office. That's a lie...again.They did get that low in April 2020, but only partly thanks to his energy policies. COVID smothered demand for gas, thanks, in part, to his moronic lockdowns. But that's another story.

    To be fair, under President Biden (who probably didn’t even know what he was signing), domestic oil production has hit record highs. Did you know we currently produce (according to what I've READ in reputable publications) more oil, almost double, than Saudi Arabia? And we're the largest producer of natural gas by miles, producing almost as much as the next three countries (Russia, China, and Iran) combined. And this is happening even though Biden's energy policies border on reckless. But it's easy for politicians to mislead when so many people want to be misled. I could make a snarky simile with regard to religion, but I'll be good for now! And here's the disgusting irony. This administration doesn't even want you to know what a great job they are doing with oil and natural gas production because they have promised their supporters (people like some of you readers, and their financial backers) that they were going to wean us off fossil fuels! I know, I know...you can't make it up!

    Anyway, I use the above elementary example of the power of words when politicians are trying to convince certain people who want to believe so much, that our problems are easy to solve and that sinister forces - "billionaires," special interests," globalists," big corporations," even "Jewish financiers," or just "business-as-usual politicians," blah, blah, blah - are getting in the way. And if you get rid of these string-pullers and spineless worms and just steamroll them, everything is gonna be fine! That's the language of demagogues boys and girls, who understand more than most that words have meaning and power, and those who help pave the way for them. 

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com