Words

Even our words are under attack from our soon to be administration. When I say security, it means the lowest crime peiod in over thirty years, it means being free from tyrants and fools, trying to meddle in my affairs, secure in my person and property, not bombs, weapons or espionage. Re-defining "security" to mean weapons, or police states, lists of undesireables, well, now how will we separate free speech from getting on the "enemies" list. Truly, this is how our current future state has evolved. The more intrusive the government has become on our personal lives, the worse the quality of life becomes. The steady erosion of all the New Deal programs has led once again to uberwealthy donor class of citizens who drive decisionmaking and the 99% who take the candidates that they purchase.

This piece of plywood has more lives to live, but already, it fed my family once when I painted it as a sign for a business. It became both my son's and daughter's desk ,so it helped with their education and development in addition to feeding them. It will have other uses, but for now, I hope it brings as much joy to you as it does me.

I remember my grandmother Alberta, everyone called her Bert or Berta. For a terse discussion, she would say, "We are going to have words." She meant that she was going to make her meaning extremely clear and there was going to be some sort of resolution made, and quick! If you were not prepared to "have words" with Grandma, it was best to just listen carefully and change your behavior immediately to avoid having to do it again later on. Our society needs to have words with the wordsmiths. I'm over fifty, for instance and have never heard of a single person who was pro-abortion, even though I have heard those words badied about by supposed "defenders of life". How many of those people fight for the rights of children who are born into the world, how many stand for the rights of males to stay intact, without sexual molestation which is done when the child is still trying to latch on to their mothers breast? How many fight for the rights of center-city folk to not live in food deserts? How many are on the front lines standing against cuts to nutrition programs and education? Yes, we certainly need to have words with these self-righteous single issue voters!

I am sorry to reflect such rancor, but it is all too often the rule rather than the exception that things get named by the existing power structure, they are the only ones who can push the discussion by their sheer financial capacities. Here are some of my favorite mis-spoken words and you can tell where the money came from to change the terminology we use to have effective dialog. Military calls it "friendly fire", in reality, it is shooting to kill your own guys! Accidental murder perhaps? Changing that one term would force our behavior to change, because the nature of discussion changes. Defining words properly is essential to good communication. Pollution control is another redic concept. It permanently supposes that there is such a place as "away". Controlling pollution is ultimately moving it around. The only fact that is missing from the discussion is that clean-up is always more expensive than reducing consumption, re-using products for many functions over the course of their life cycle, re-purpose, of recycle wastes, emulating natural cycles, in which nothing goes to waste. Pollution shell game may be a better way of expressing what most government regulations amount to.

Other examples exist and I'm sure you have heard them. Farm Bill, sounds good for farms right? What if we called it agro-corporate subsidy?  I have spoken with many farmers who are only offered credit with a bank, if they have specific plans to do corporate supplied, industrial scale farming that renders the soil off limits to most healthy soil organisms. These same farmers over report their harvest routinely to make sure that when they have a crop failure, they get the higest subsidy. The worst part is that they feel that they are doing nothing wrong. The growing numbers of farmers who are doing things right need to be supported fully, not the agro-giants and financial sectors. Respected agricultural researchers as far back as the Twenties and Thirties were seeing what the hippies and back to the land types have been saying continuously as well. Your soil is only as healthy as the microbial community that thrives in it. The basis of the higher food chain, which includes human beings begins below the surface of the soil with microscopic living organisms. when they are healthy, the plant community living on that soil would be healthier and contain more nutrients, be more resistant to pests and produce more biomass per acre than sickly plants would. Look at the budget for the Farm Bill and you will find huge outlays for doing the absolute wrong things and precdious little for transfoming acreage to at least carbon neutral if not carbon negative to build soils and counter climate destabilization. In the public debate, these ideas are met with the sound of crickets...

We need to parse our ideas and understanding using the best tools we have, and that is our mind itself and we know what a large part vocabulary has to our ability to think in ways that allow us to communicate. We must not let the discussion be carried out on terms sacrificed to the pyre of the oligarchs. Taking back our words is essential to speaking truth to power.