Uwe Poerksen wrote the book from which this title originates and will weigh heavily in this conversation. If you can find the book, the title is: “Plastic Words: The Tyranny of Modular Language.” It is important to note that when this book was written, it was heavily criticized, castigated, hated, derided, and demeaned. Yet, the truth of this book continues to ring across all nations, and modern society needs to understand tyrants are manipulating them.
The first principle under discussion is abstraction; in Latin, we find “Cui Bono” or “who benefits.” “Abstraction frees us from having to think consequences through to their ends and from having to answer the question: for whom?” Considering the current riots on college campuses, the media claims these are protests; herein lay the first tyrannical use of language. Consider with me the legal definition of these two terms:
- Protest – A right covered under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. You’re generally allowed to demonstrate in public spaces—a sidewalk, park, or the grounds of a government building—as long as you don’t block traffic or access to buildings or streets. You are NOT allowed to become violent; your protest must have proper licensure from local authorities and have a defined start and end time. Failure to follow the law automatically moves a protest to a riot, from a right covered under the Constitution to a criminal activity.
- Riot – 18 US Code § 2102 – Definitions section lists the following parameters for the legal definition of riots. “the term “riot” means a public disturbance involving (1) an act or acts of violence by one or more persons part of an assemblage of three or more persons, which act or acts shall constitute a clear and present danger of, or shall result in, damage or injury to the property of any other person or the person of any other individual or (2) a threat or threats of the commission of an act or acts of violence by one or more persons part of an assemblage of three or more persons having, individually or collectively, the ability of immediate execution of such threat or threats, where the performance of the threatened act or acts of violence would constitute a clear and present danger of or would result in, damage or injury to the property of any other person or the person of any other individual.”
The media knows the definitions and legal parameters of a riot and a protest but intentionally chooses to call riots “peaceful protests,” mostly peaceful protests,” and more. Looking abstractly, we must ask, “Cui Bono,” who benefits from the tyrannically plasticized term “protest” when riot is more appropriate?
- The media reported that media members were involved in the Summer of Rage protests, and several were caught on camera rioting in different locations. Thus, Corporate Media benefits monetarily and criminally. But who sent the media, who gave them their preferred narrative, and why?
- There are people in this world who would watch it burn for no greater pleasure exists in their minds than to see chaos erupt. These people are practicing a form of low-intensity conflict (LIC), also known under the guise of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
Remember, thinking abstractly opens the mind to consider the consequences, but the twisting of language means the subjects, in this case, the rioters, are not encouraged to think; they are encouraged to merely act emotionally. By clouding the mind from thinking, the tyrant can manipulate to achieve personal goals, political power, or even monetary gains. Remember, BLM used emotionally driven rioters to amass a considerable fortune for personal gain.
How do tyrants gain power over a population?
The question has puzzled me for a long time, and Ewe Poerksen answered this while discussing slogans, catchphrases, and clichés. Moreover, these abbreviated empty phrases cloud something important, “Information is far more than a lightweight and short-lived cliché. [Information] is anchored in the structure of our world to be heavyweight, not lightweight.” Yet, what do we see minute-to-minute; we see heavy topics boiled down to 140-character sound bites.
Cui Bono, who benefits when reason and logic must be boiled down to the attention span of a modern “intellect” who will not engage unless nudity, vulgarity, and inanity are mixed in? Those who benefit are those who control the language, passing emotional hyperbole off as pithy statements. Where do we see this exemplified? Look no further than Karine Jean-Pierre (KJP) and every press conference she leads. KJP is known as the worst PR flack to ever stand at the podium for White House press briefings.
Did you catch that “PR Flack?” Public Relations, marketing, social media, and more benefit from pithy catchphrases, sloganeering, and clichés. What does it mean to be called a racist when roads, bridges, taxes, elections, mountains, oceans, food, etc. can all be racist? Therein lay a tool of tyrants; by boiling down everything to a 140-character soundbite, the context, meaning, and purpose of Information is lost, manipulated, and emotionally plasticized into meaning something that cannot possibly exist.
Inanimate objects cannot be racist; Webster proclaims racism is defined as a person, “A PERSON,” who believes a race is superior to others. A road, food, bridges, mountains, etc. are not people. Yet, who benefits from the confusion of calling inanimate objects or foods racist? Race hustlers, racists, and tyrants who moderate language to obtain and keep power through emotionally damaging people.
Have you ever asked yourself why Pelosi and Sharpton (among many others) always boil their topics down to race? They have nothing else to discuss; they gained power by race hustling, and they will not give up the power gained. Meaning they must keep inventing new enemies to be fought against that would represent racism. Their power base comprises those who want to carry on the faux battle through the tyranny of language.
Does this mean there are no real racial problems; of course not. The problem is that in all the confusion thrown up by race-hustling tyrants, the term racism has become twisted and plasticized into meaning something that is not racism but freedom-killing tyranny. We see this same pattern in so many other fields and endeavors. What does wealth inequity mean? Does it mean that when two people are hired, and both make $15.00 an hour, where one invests, and the other is a spendthrift, when the first gains wealth status, that person’s choices now need to be punished? Yet, almost daily, those who are spendthrifts want the investment prosperity of the wealthy, which is not equitable. Jealousy is not equity, and it can never be. Yet, the call has gone out to create equity from wealth inequality.
Who benefits when jealousy is called wealth equity? The same ones have weaponized wealth, choose to tyrannize instead of build, and depend upon chaos to keep the money rolling in. When the surface clichés are peeled back, what do we find? A tyrant who manipulates language for personal benefit, political gain, or merely to watch the world burn.
When discussing clichés, we must also discuss catchphrases, as they always contain action. Historically, “Remember the Maine, To HELL with Spain” was very popular and abbreviated to “Remember the Maine.” It referred to the USS Maine lost in Havana Harbor, possibly “to a spontaneous explosion.” Still, the phrase was catchy, and a war was fought. The Spanish-American war resulted, and “Remember the Maine” was employed to emotionally tie people together with an idea and kill other people. What if the Spanish-American War was a big mistake? Who benefitted?
In the recent plethora of college/university riots, a regular phrase was used, “Free Palestine,” which is two lies in one. Palestine does not and has never existed, and to be free means you cannot terrorize your neighbors. Another slogan was, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” What does this mean: the complete, total, and absolute extinction of Israel and all Jewish peoples? The catchphrases want action; they are calling for blood, calling to tie people to a cause, and inciting war using emotions. Who benefits; the tyrants who want to watch the world burn.
Let’s discuss commonplace concepts, words that express an idea, are regularly used in slogans, and have a scientific definition. Consider the term education. Education has a scientific definition, “the science or art of teaching.” Education also means the process or act of imparting or acquiring knowledge. Yet, education has been twisted, plasticized, and morphed into an empty, amorphous, plastic word, valid for useless slogans such as “Educate! Smart is Great!” There are thousands of empty slogans and catchphrases with the modular term education. Every one of them is supposed to get you to take action. But what is meant is to become indoctrinated, not independent, not learned, not to grow into a free-thinking, empowered individual.
Who benefits? Tyrants who do not want people to read, learn, and decide for themselves. John Dewey forced upon America, and then to the world, whole word methodologies for learning to read, forcing out phonics, and we name schools after this tyrant. He, among several others, is most notable in teaching children how not to read. He removed tools like phonics, rhyming, and others, replacing them with whole-word instruction, making reading problematic and deleterious. These principles have morphed into the modern society where there are no attention spans.
Who benefits “Cui Bono?” Tyrants masquerading as politicians, religious leaders bent on demonizing others for personal gain, and wealthy people who fear competition. By controlling language, these tyrants can manipulate emotions, reducing logic and reason to concepts to be hated. They then prey upon fears while stoking other emotions, all to watch the world burn.
How do we fight these tyrants?
Fighting tyranny is a daily, minute-by-minute activity, and the following steps are provided to help you start on the path; they are not complete solutions, as each tyrant fought will be different.
- Get to know words and their established meanings. Learn their etymology (history). As you begin, you will be surprised at how many words you “know” but are not familiar with.
- Read! Not comic books, unless they are a stepping stone to improving reading skills long rusted. Harlequin romances are not allowed unless they are employed as a starting point. Develop a love and thirst for reading. If you find it difficult, learn from this experience of mine. I am a bibliophile and have been reading books since I was a very young child. I joined the US Navy and didn’t touch a book for the first 18 months on board. When I started reading again, the skill was arduous; I had to relearn how to read, comprehend what was read, and then relearn how to enjoy reading. Find a topic of interest and give yourself the time to learn how to read and comprehend what you read.
- Ask questions! Tyrants cannot answer questions reliably. You will observe how they struggle to define and explain their plasticized concepts. Since these concepts are empty, they may choose to use slogans, catchphrases, and clichés instead of logic and reasoning. Keep asking for clarification.
- Don’t Stop! Choose to become a lifelong learner, discovering new topics, opening historical books and records, and digging to discover more.
- Build a society of learners around you. Skilled, intelligent, and educated people seek out differences of opinion and ask if what you know on a topic is correct or needs adjustment. There is a term you will come across, “Loyal Opposition.” These valuable people provide the necessary resistance to help you seek, learn, and become better.
It will not be easy to take America back and remove the tyrants. Believe it is possible. Hope for a better day. Prepare your minds. Then, stand confident and capable and watch the tyrants run for cover.
© Copyright 2024 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Employers throughout the world, including Disney, American Express, Wells Fargo, and thousands more, have begun to battle their employees. Unionized shops, the battle has been waged for 50 years and shows no sign of relenting. Only recently have other employers joined the fray, not to help employees but to rid themselves of employees. These businesses are fighting employees against their employees for the company’s culture and soul. Couched in many a buzzword, political stance, and archaic practices, the employers want to rid their workforces of those they despise, and the battle is legal!
One truth that should give hope to the employees affected is that when the minority becomes the majority in a body and does not have any substance, they destroy themselves. C-Leaders, are you sure you want to take the company you have been placed in control over down this dangerous path? On my first day at American Express, new hires were introduced to the rich, proud, and stable company history and core values. How sad it is to witness how fast this company has fallen! Who will replace these companies? Will their replacements learn from the failures of the past?
After discussing 
Is the distinction clear? A right cannot be stripped from you by anyone, ever unless you choose to deny your inalienable rights to that particular right. For example, the 
In most societies, you can purchase and legally become the owner of an item due to the purchase. Thus, liberty allows you to become free to use that purchase however you desire. Until the use of that purchase interferes with someone else’s inalienable rights. For example purchase of a baseball bat is legal, mostly around the world. Use that baseball bat for its intended purposes, i.e., to play baseball or softball, and the government does not infringe upon your liberties. Use that baseball bat outside its intended purposes, to break windows, cause injuries or property damage, and you can lose your liberty and your property.
Thus the confusion and complication in defining and detailing liberties. Liberties can be taken and refused; liberties can be eliminated by government force and social changes. Liberties are not inalienable rights or even a right. You do not have a right to liberty. You may pursue happiness, but achieving happiness is not a right, freedom, or liberty.
Civil liberties are freedoms you pay the government to enjoy. For example, driving a car requires a license. By issuing licenses, the government can control the population, even though driving is considered a privilege, a right, and is often confused with “freedom of the open road,” which is two lies for the price one. Another example is 
Freedoms are often defined as political independence, which is fine insofar as civil liberties are concerned. Freedoms entail several other qualities that the government cannot give, take, invent, or delete. True freedoms do not need legal support from case law to be enjoyed. True freedoms include living without restraints, acting without control or interference, and not being bound by conventions, rules, and authorities. It cannot be stressed enough, even though liberties and freedoms share some components, they are merely similar, not identical. In trying to push liberty and freedom as equivalent, the tyranny of language is discovered to sunshine disinfectant. A right, especially those inalienable rights, are not freedoms or liberties to be granted and removed at the power of authority, and the distinction should be clear.
It has been said that my freedom of speech ends where your nose begins. Thus, I cannot exercise my freedom of speech through physical violence, or I lose my right to speak and, more likely, some freedom and property as well. Thus, the role of responsibility begins with knowing the extent of and limitations formed around rights, freedoms, liberties, and privileges, for ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Our responsibility of living in society is to know the rules that form the laws and the social constraints of that society.
Rights, especially inalienable rights, are yours as provided by a higher power than the government. Liberties are the power to act without constraint, provided your exercise of liberty does not infringe upon the inalienable rights of another. Freedoms rest upon political independence, something feared by every bureaucrat and power-mad politician in history. Privileges are permissions granted by a higher authority to conduct business or fulfill a purpose. Civil liberties are not liberties, but privileges can be taken away by authorities and social changes. Regardless, the role of responsibility is inseparably connected to rights, liberties, freedoms, and privileges. One day, accountability will be demanded for the responsibilities connected to how a person used their liberties, freedoms, rights, and privileges.
Any time a debate about taxes arises, the terms progressive and regressive get thrown around like popcorn in a food fight. Whether or not those speaking, even know, or care about the definitions, implications, and repercussions are different topics and one I will not hazard a guess. My intent here is to help you know and better understand the terminology as we discuss the broader topic, sales taxes. Please note, since the early 1900s, the word progress has been twisted by tyrants, plasticized by the media, and manipulated into means one thing to one person and a different thing to a politician. Of all the terms plasticized for tyranny, progress is one of the most egregious examples. Just like the term “Buffalo-wings.”
The terms progressive and regressive are a perfect example of how emotions and language mix. Without knowing all the definitions of a word, people will choose to use the sound of the word to decide whether the word sounds harsh or pleasant. For example, progression sounds good, and regression sounds bad, but progress has roots in royalty taking a trip, and regression is a privilege or returning. Hence, one of the main themes in these articles has been and continues to be how to control your emotions to improve your decision-making, the need to read, the opportunity to learn and keep learning words to empower conversation and knowledge.
Of all the progressive ideas needing to be eliminated, the sales tax sits at the highest pinnacle for regression. Consider this, in states with the highest sales taxes, the sales tax is a pyramid where the final consumer winds up paying taxes on business-to-business transactions, dynamically increasing the price of the final goods or services delivered. Business A buys raw goods from Business B and sells these goods to Business C to make small parts. Business A buys these goods from Business C and sells them as finished goods to a consumer. In a sales tax pyramid, the government gets paid at the end of every transaction; thus, a product in Vermont will be less expensive than a product in South Dakota, due precisely to the sales taxes paid by Businesses AB, B, and C during the manufacturing process. Thus, the top five states in the United States with the highest sales taxes have a tax pyramid scheme in place, and the end consumer pays through the nose for everything!
While the Tax Foundation does an admirable job pitching for “right-sizing” the tax base to make sales taxes more “equitable,” they miss the forest for the tree. Sales taxes are a silent killer and need to be regressed from American purchases at the earliest opportunity! 
Starting in the 1930s, during the “Great Depression,” changes were made to America’s methods of governance by the President, a willing media, and sycophants in the Senate and House. Establishing the Federal and State Government’s ability to rule by largess; picking winners and losers based upon obeisance to a bureaucrat’s whims, wishes, and will. Reich lays out this history, walks the reader through the laws, and makes the case that because of democratic rule America’s Republic has been reduced to a feudal system where the government decides who gets the largess and who does not. With the Federal and State Governments making these decisions, businesses do not compete fairly upon their own merits but upon how much taxpayer money they can bamboozle from Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, the entire system hinges upon reducing private property ownership and the freedoms private property allow to feed the ever-hungry beast of Government consumption.
Thus, America needs to demand change through the ballot box, insist that freedom and private property are returned to the people. Those representatives who have no moral center, or cannot serve their constituents from both parties equally, are removed from politics; indefinitely! Since America is a Republic and not a democracy (yet!), the problems in representation can be solved.
Shakespeare (2016) used Hamlet to relate a line that frequently applies, especially when communicating online, “… thou doth protest too much, methinks.” Too often, those intent on misusing words are protesting too much about something. On social media, every communication, every interaction, and every person is a threat to the intellect of the one protesting and must be lorded over, trolled, and publicly shamed. A recent example of this the world witnessed during Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, where the judge’s children were physically and verbally assaulted—using a warping of legal rights, guaranteed justification for the assault. A careful review of any newspaper, news broadcast, and many politicians speaking will evidence the plasticization of words to justify actions, e.g., President Clinton, “Depends on what your definition of “is” is.” Words to couch a threat while seeming to be helpful and friendly, or worst of all hide abuses of others through twisted logic. Every time words become disconnected from standard meanings, society crumbles, language becomes useless, and the consequences are multi-generational, which is precisely what transpired in recovering Germany after Hitler’s demise.
I had the great personal pleasure of speaking to a senior citizen from Germany who lived through Hitler’s oppression and the recovery of Germany post-WWII, and the person I spoke with affirmed the most challenging social problem was relearning words and definitions to communicate without the taint of Hitler’s Germanic Language. Hence, we can draw several lessons from this experience; language is trained. It can be retrained; relearning language is a social problem fixed through social interactions and personal knowledge, and personal responsibility and accountability remain pre-eminent in communicating correctly. Another lesson from my experience, history repeats itself, and those with dastardly designs will always corrupt language to gain the advantage before showing their true colors as tyrants. Every single despot in recorded history has employed plastic language to lull the population into acquiescence before demanding loyalty and destroying that civilization, society, or culture.
Poerksen is not mentioned to sell his book, although it is an excellent read. Poerksen is mentioned because, during the Obama presidency, modular language’s tyrannical actions took an enormous leap. Words never before plasticized began to be stretched to describe all sorts of things they do not fit. For example, Speaker Pelosi called Veterans of the United States “Terrorists” and used this label to weaponize the government against veterans. We all should remember the day a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich became racist and was removed from millions of sandwich lovers’ diets.
Thus, this article aims to provide you, the reader, with a clear, distinct definition for the term patriotism. That patriotism continues to be plasticized to cover the work of terrorists who are burning, rioting, looting, and destroying America remains a consideration of great importance. The first job of any American who desires to retain their liberty and freedom is to learn.
While my answer might not be your answer, our combined answer will strengthen those who desire to become patriots. I gladly shoulder the title patriot because America is me, and I am American! I am a veteran by the grace of God; but, I am an American because my fathers and mothers came here from foreign lands so I could have the opportunity! I am a patriot by choice; there is not another country on earth like America. After traveling ¾’s of the way around the world, I would not live anywhere else. I am a patriot by conviction; I firmly believe the world is better with America, with all her myriad of faults than without America.
America is hope for the war-torn refugee! America is the bread provider for the famished! America is the “Shining city on a hill,” as referenced by President Reagan. I know America is worth fighting for, keeping, and renewing through the “Rule of Law.”
DNC-Consulting 