5 Political Terms which Thwart Change Because People Always Define them Differently
(How seemingly simply terms including small-business, middle-class, liberal, bourgeois and sodomy are given wildly different definitions and how this stalls worthwhile change)
5 Political Terms which Thwart Change Because People Always Define them Differently
(How seemingly simple terms including small-business, middle-class, liberal, bourgeois and sodomy are given wildly different definitions and how this stalls worthwhile change)
By
David Gottfried
Very often politics is like a car’s wheels spinning wildly while the car doesn’t move because there’s no traction with the ground. Sometimes there’s no movement because the same words are defined differently by different people and, consequently, the political conversation goes nowhere. Sometimes, some politicians like this lack of comprehension as they want stasis and stagnation because they are in the driver’s seat and they want to keep it that way, even if the car is a stationary jalopy.
In fact, some of the most important terms in politics are given dramatically different definitions:
A) SMALL BUSINESS
Is a small business a mom-and-pop store or is it any business with no more than 300 or 400 or 500 employees?
Slick, lying politicians play you like Mozart plays the piano. Just as Mozart knew how to make a piano flutter like an enchanted heart, a shrewd pol can make a dumb American voter shout “lock her up” or whatever inane slogan suits his nefarious purposes. When he wants to sound like a man of the people with business sense and propriety, he says that he wants to aid and promote “small business.” He utters 15 seconds of blather, your shrunken head has visions of darling ladies in bakeries making pumpkin pies in “small businesses,” and you have given him your vote because he has pledged to help small businesses.
But, please, little morons of the nation, understand something: Legal definitions are not the same thing as laymen’s definitions. According to various federal statutes, and various provisions in the Code of Federal Regulations, in some industries one is a small business if one has under 200 employees, in some industries one is a small business if one has under 500 employees, etc. Very often, a politician who gives a speech with tales of his plans to aid small businesses is thinking of his buddies who have companies that hire 190 people.
B) MIDDLE CLASS
By middle class do you mean someone who makes 40,000.00 per year or do you mean 340,000.00 per year.
This is how political change is defeated. For example, Chuck Schumer, the walking, speechifying bore who is everything that makes the Democratic Party seem as dated and as worthless as a Menshevik on the verge of being drowned by a red communist tidal wave, always tells us that he is in politics to help his goddamn lovable middle class. Like most conservative and bullshit liberal politicos, he puts everyone into the middle class. By defining the middle class very broadly, as something encompassing people who make as little as 15 K a year and as much as 500 K a year, he doesn’t have to make decisions and tell us whose side he’s on.
For example, if you make 500 K a year, you own a home, and you want to deduct interest payments on your home. If you make 25 K a year, you probably don’t own your own home and the interest payment deduction is averse to your interests. However, American politicians obscure and paper over our adversarial economic interests with the pretense that we are all part of one big happy middle-class family. Well, hey, Chuckie Schumer, since we are all middle class and part of one big stupid happy middle class family, I think I’m gonna force my way into your home for Thanksgiving, and Passover, and I’ll eat your caviar (Caviar isn’t kosher, but given the sort of Jew Chuck Schumer probably is – a Jew whose Jewishness consists of a love of bagels, Bloomingdales and the guttural pronunciation of a few “Jewish” words, such as shvatza, shlemeil and Oy vey – he probably don’t know that caviar isn’t kosher)
C) LIBERAL
By Liberal do you mean the liberalism associated with the Founding Fathers of the United States or do you mean the liberalism of George Mc Govern and Nancy Pelosi?
If you are listening to CBS or CNN or reading any part of the New York Times except for the Book Review, liberal refers to a politician who cares about the poor, will tax the rich to aid the poor and wants more regulation of the economy. If, however, you are an academic or a philosopher or a Frenchmen, a liberal is someone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, economic freedom and getting the government off of your back. In short, a liberal for an academic or a philosopher is someone who believes in the ideas of Barry Goldwater, who was the Father of Republican Conservatives until they abandoned freedom of religion and insisted on banning homosexuality, abortion etc. Because most people are oblivious to the different definitions of the term liberal, it is very easy to confuse the hell out of them.
For example, I remember that some left of center editorialists were able to help liberal politicians, who were being savaged by conservatives who called them liberals, by writing that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were liberals. The editorialists of course did not bother to mention that George Washington fit the definition of liberal put forth by academics and philosophers.
D) BOURGEOIS
By bourgeois are you defining it as it is defined by Marxists or are you using the term the way a film critic will ?
For Karl Marx, one is bourgeois if one extracts surplus value from a worker. One extracts surplus value from a worker if one hires a worker and pays him less than the amount of money the worker makes for your business. If you pay a worker 1000 dollars a week and he is worth 1500 dollars a week, you are extracting, as surplus value, 500 dollars from the worker every week.
If you are a cultural critic for Salon, or if you are Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, you are bourgeois if you drive a Volvo.
E) SODOMY
By sodomy are you referring to the sexual act that laymen and psychiatrists are referring to or are you referring to the broad array of sexual acts encompassed by the legal definitions of sodomy.
Laymen and psychiatrists define sodomy as male on male anal-phallic intercourse.
In the Law, sodomy encompasses just about anything other than penile-vaginal intercourse.
Interestingly enough, when news announcers recount stories of rapes committed by men, against women, they very often note that the alleged rapist had been charged with, among other acts, sodomy. This, perhaps, buttresses anti-gay politicos by suggesting that a heterosexual criminal is someone always tainted with the act of sodomy, which most people think of as the cardinal act of male homosexuality. The takeaway for the innocent and ignorant people listening to the “news” is that every hardened rapist is a little bit of a fag because homosexuality is, allegedly, aligned to rape like roaches going together with mice. The people conned by newscasters don’t realize that the legal definition of sodomy has nothing to go with the laymen’s definition of sodomy.