Let's continue our foray into the logopathologies to which man is heir.
Perhaps we should put them on a scale, as we do with other crimes: spinning and twisting of words isn't as serious as linguistic abuse or first degree logocide, let alone a White House press boofing. But the lesser crimes lead to the more serious ones, in part because they are essentially a warrant for the passions to authorize the will to do evil in good conscience.
For example, if President Trump is actually a Nazi, or Ron DeSantis an antisemitic homophobe, or Brett Kavanaugh a rapist bent on denying women's rights, someone is likely to take the language seriously and do something about it. And in his corrupted conscience, why wouldn't he be a hero for doing so?
The first and most consequential lie occurs back in Genesis 3. One chapter later, the first murder. Two more chapters and God is in full facepalm mode: And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
It all begins with speech being cleverly used for extra-linguistic purposes: to deny reality and manipulate one's fellows, instead of conveying reality to them, which is the proper end of language. Pathological use of speech regards one's interlocutor not as
a "partner," another "subject" on the same plane as myself. Instead he is an object to be "worked on," the object of a "power grab," who is being "given the full treatment." So what is really going on is in effect the exact opposite of what appears to be going on (Pieper).
Wouldn't it be great if we had some kind of institution that could help mediate between appearances and reality? I would call it the media, but not only is that word already taken, it is the very anti-institution that abuses language and manipulates people, treating both as tools in service to power.
I have pretty low expectations of my species, so it's remarkable that so many of us not only don't trust the media, but hold it in utter contempt:
Television news is today considered the second-least trusted institution in the country, following Congress.... Just 5% of Republicans said they had "a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" in newspapers (https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-trust-partisanship).
"Trust fall in the news media been driven mostly by Republicans," such that Big Media has essentially been reduced to Democrats telling outrageous lies to fellow Democrats. One thing I don't understand is why rank-and-foul Democrats aren't pissed off at the media for constantly lying to them and treating them like mentally ill children.
Oh, wait. I just figured it out. Professional courtesy.
If I am pandering to you, on the one hand I am robbing you of your dignity and treating you with contempt. But on the other hand, if you are generally clueless, the pandering will feel like flattery -- like you are special, and I understand your specialness. I feel your pain, as a serpent once said.
Now, it has long been recognized that the Democrat party scarcely consists of any coherent ideology, but rather, a menagerie of disparate identity groups to which its elites pander.
Often the pandering is mutually exclusive, but the children were too stupid or too manipulated to notice -- for example, that illegal immigrants harm the interests of black and Breakfast Taco citizens, or that an Asian American is about 100 times more likely to be assaulted by an African American than vice versa, or that defunding the police makes white liberals feel incredibly virtuous while the black victims stack up like cordwood, etc.
Well, I guess you could say that the Democrat party is undergoing a full-blown Crisis of Noticing, and that all the lying in the world can't prop up the narrative. Does this mean I am cocky about November? Please. If there's a way to screw things up, Republicans will find it.
For Republicans are no less subject to Genesis 3 All Over Again, often just in a different way. There's even an aphorism for that:
The progressive forgets that sin frustrates any ideal he longs for; the conservative forgets that he corrupts any reality he defends.
The irony is built into the nature of things:
Such is the complexity of every historical event that we can always fear that from a good an evil might be born and always hope that from an evil a good might be born.
To be a conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.
So,
No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us.
The conservative is a simple pathologist. He defines sickness and health. But God is the only therapist (Dávila x 5).
There's an old saying that "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." Likewise, if you glimpse utopia around the bend, blow it up.
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