Posts Tagged → Language
September 22nd, 2025
Conservatives are treated to a daily barrage of “Can You Believe This Person” reports about awful responses to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. These reports emphasize the worst of the worst, which is always a statistical outlier, in order to get more clicks and keep the audience whipped up. I do admit to being surprised at how much open mockery and sneering has been done towards Charlie Kirk, his wife, his friends and followers, as well as the steady flow of outright lies and hate.
These are not appropriate or responsible responses to a political murder. Especially of someone so young and so gentle.
This makes me curious, because in my innocent naivete I cannot imagine so many big-hearted Americans deliberately lying about or hating someone they do not know. The very same people who openly pride themselves on being open minded, kind, nice, tolerant, factually correct… right? Their professed qualities seem to be starkly contrasted and at odds with their lousy behavior in this instance.
Made me wonder How are American liberals experiencing Charlie Kirk’s murder?
Since Kirk’s 9/10/25 assassination, I have spent a fair amount of time with liberals in two locations. Generally, they are either unfazed or not thinking about the murder. It does not appear to be foremost in their minds one way or another, unlike conservatives, who are understandably talking about it 24/7. Liberals are not socially talking about the murder in any way that I can see. If the subject is raised, it catches them by surprise, and the moment is uncomfortable.
One half day was spent with a gathering of people from around south central PA, the day after Charlie’s murder; the other was three days with liberals from all around the country in southwest PA last week.
These people did not watch Charlie as fans, or listen to him out of curiosity, as far as I can tell. If they did, their response was negative and they filed it away with the “not this guy” stuff. No one I encountered said anything like “Yeah, I have watched some of his videos and I like his style but disagree with his policies” or anything like this.
My impression, and that is all I am reporting here, is that the opinions of liberals I was around run the gamut from Charlie Kirk earned his murder because he said things Leftists strongly disagree with, to something like There are bad apples and violent radicals everywhere and on both sides; today it was Charlie Kirk, tomorrow it will be a liberal leader who gets whacked.
Again, my impression only, but liberals are experiencing this political assassination very differently than conservatives. This is obvious to anyone who reads the news at any site, but I had to see it for myself to believe it.
More broadly, it looks like there are two different languages being spoken in America, one language spoken by one political side and the other language by the other political side. It’s why firing late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel was important to both sides: The Left needs these big sources of partisan disinformation like Kimmel to hold onto their inaccurate political narrative, and the Right wants to break the Left’s stranglehold on disinformation flow, so that Leftists are forced to seek out new sources and, hopefully, encounter new information.
But the Left seems to be like crack addicts over this information sourcing thing. They really really do not like to give up what they like, nor do they want to hear anything different than what they are comfortable with. Thus, they are mad as hell about Kimmel being fired for what he said, but they are not all that upset about Charlie Kirk being murdered for what he said.
One thing I saw (again, it is the same as I have observed over my past lifetime) past two weeks was liberals get their information second hand. Happily. A newspaper or tv channel they trust or like tells them something, and they accept it.
Alternatively, dueling podcasts and websites are huge on the political right. The political Right’s information ecosystem is wildly diverse and raucous. Because there is so much source competition and diversity on the right, so much hands-on/ eyes-on/ street-level reporting, so much direct fact checking or argumentation, the political Right thinks it has better answers to political questions. There is real dynamic debate on the right, and it attracts people comfortable with debate.
On the other hand, leftists seem allergic to debate or questioning their narrative. “Fact checking” by legacy media only started when the truth started coming out from new media sources, like Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit, and the legacy media needed a symbolic way of stopping it. Legacy media fact checks are just as ridiculous and innaccurate as the original spin-narrative they put out in the first place.
Liberals formed BlueSky as an alternative to Twitter/X, not because they were being censored on Twitter/X, but because conservatives were not being censored there. Liberals fled from inconvenient truths and uncomfortable facts on that platform, and have done all they can to suppress, censor, and chase off different points of view on every other platform, too. Is it any wonder, then, that they seem generally unaffected by Charlie Kirk’s assassination?
So, Charlie’s murder is not on the Democrat leftist radar except as a distant, cold data point. Not an emotional thing. He did not speak to them or for them. He scared them.
Said a friend to me, “Which is why even those Liberals who know not to comment about Charlie’s murder really dont care about it. Most have been completely lied to about him, and the far leftists who are the ones lying about him are happy. Godless people dont care about this type of thing.”
That is one way of describing it. I don’t disagree, and I also believe these leftist people have been heavily programmed for a very long time. They think they are godly. To them, God is pacifism, appeasement, open borders and endless spending on the government credit card. They believe that Americans who do not share their policy views are mean, heartless, unkind, un-Christian, etc.
Two really different languages are being spoken, and neither side understands the other. And while the political right has had to learn the language of the left over the past fifty years (due to not controlling the means of information production), the left has never had to learn the language of the right.
Obviously the left is resistant to hearing our point of view. They do all possible to censor, suppress, punish, and stamp out ideas contrary to their own. They do not want to think about this huge political assassination, except in ways that are strategic. Like, how can they beat it, and defeat it, so they don’t lose more power.
America, you are in big trouble.
June 17th, 2022
When I was at Penn State in the 1980s, one of my Spanish professors was an older gay man. How did we know he was gay? It seemed evident to us students that this small, shy, demur, effeminate, carefully dressed man was probably a homosexual. That he also lived a quiet life with another man in a beautiful old stone house with perfect lawncare and meticulous flower beds on the historic north end of campus pretty much cemented our conclusion.
We did not care about his sexual identity, and he did not demand or expect that we did care. He never mentioned it, and instead lived and taught in dignity. We gave him our loyalty and respect because he was a phenomenal teacher, who taught 400-level Spanish language literature from a place of deep passion and personal resonance. He could easily have been an English literature professor quoting Shakespeare, exhorting his students to comprehend the subtle nuances The Bard emanated from the stage to his audiences. But instead, he taught us The Aleph, among other deep and inspiring masterpieces of the Spanish language. This professor did not only teach us the most complex spoken and written Spanish, he also taught us to think carefully. About symbols, potential meanings of words, and the whys of writers of all languages; the reason for the idea-conveying purpose of literature, in any language.
His courses required real contemplation and reflection, and they strengthened our brain muscles. As a result, our professor lived on in our lives as a great teacher who greatly rounded us as individuals.
Fast forward to today, and every aspect and angle of human sexuality is daily artificially and forcefully thrust upon all of us, regardless of our age, with demands that we embrace all of it and simultaneously abandon thousands of years of shared human culture, religion, and biological science. This brutal, crass sexuality is the dominant subject of just about every subject, be it science, math, or language. This is a shock-and-awe, beat-you-over-the-head, we-will-destroy-you, revolutionary assault being led by people whom reporter Salena Zito calls the curators of culture. That is, people with careers in academia, education, and journalism. As in, writers of fact and fiction, reporters of human behavior, the (historically speaking) diligent and careful chroniclers of human culture.
Contrasted with Dark Ages monks carefully preserving the written word and human knowledge behind stone walls, and even with academics of the recent past like my gay Spanish professor who was devoted to the rules of Spanish language, these modern day curators of culture are neither diligent nor careful nor deep nor meaningful. Rather, they are rampaging intellectual rapists and murderers, leading a grotesque attack on what had been one of humanity’s most tolerant, productive, and vibrant cultures, ever, America.
The biggest of their sexual assaults is the demand for new pronoun uses, for which the English language, like all languages except Esperanto, is unprepared and thus will never naturally accommodate. For example, you could not write a literary masterpiece using the bastardized pronouns now hobnailed onto daily English usage, except maybe as a farce to highlight the ridiculousness of the self-appointed pronoun police and culture-raping revolutionaries. Like all languages, and probably more so than most, English is a mix of different languages (German, French, Celtic), and has its own long-developed unique rules that render it tamper-resistant.
If you try to communicate in English using the revolutionary pronouns (e.g. they for a woman who self identifies as both man and woman), you fall flat on your face, because this attempt to bodger English just doesn’t work. It can’t possibly work, because all languages are designed to help humans maximally communicate with one another. All languages have rules that maximize their effectiveness so that people may fully comprehend one another.
Which means that this sexual revolutionary assault via pronouns is not really about erasing lines between people and bringing people together. Rather, it is about erecting barriers and causing confusion. Religious Americans have identified the new pronoun mis-use as a modern day Tower of Babel situation, just begging for divine intervention. It certainly seems to be that significant to me.
However, whatever linguistic rules of English may be daily axe-murdered by woke pronounsters, my primary objection to them is that they fail the one universal language spoken by all humans: Love. While deliberately sowing confusion and fierce disagreement about the most elementary aspects of science and human relationships, the revolutionary pronounsters are also trying to destroy (not expand) the concept of love. Love, the truest, most pure universal language which can bind all humans to each other in the truest of relationships, and has been known humanity-wide since the dawn of our species by fidelity, commitment, and truth, is now being exploded by this sexual assault by mispronoun. Every human culture has sanctified love through marriage and commitment, family, honesty, and truth, baseline values all now being thrown out the window and publicly burned at the stake by the wokesters.
Love is a simple thing, and it is the one thing that all humans around the globe immediately understand. Love is bomb proof and it will get us through this turmoil, misused pronouns notwithstanding. Dear child, I am your parent, I created you, and I will always always always love you, no matter what f**king asinine pronouns you have been disinformed and misinformed to use by evil people who are misusing you as cannon fodder in their inglorious revolution against God knows what.
By Josh • Posted in
Family •
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March 21st, 2019
“Lan—Cas–Ter.”
When I heard the radio ad with that unnatural, long, drawn out pronunciation of the county and city just south of me, the endless chasm between the syllables felt years apart, so unnatural that my internal warning system flashed “outsider alert, outsider alert.”
This ear-grating goofball advertisement played for two days before being pulled and replaced with the same voice, but subsequently correctly saying “Lancaster” as almost one long syllable.
How many calls and emails did the radio station get about this? Evidently enough to make an impression on the people in charge of advertising. Running a radio advertisement that annoys the audience is counterproductive, and you’d have to hear from a large enough segment or sample of that audience to get the message that your message was not just falling flat, but actually bothering your target audience. People cared enough to contact the radio station and voice their opinion.
Why do Central Pennsylvanians care about how their locations are pronounced?
Probably for the same reason that Perry County has communities like Newport and Duncannon and New Bloomfield housing most of the county’s 30,000 citizens, and yet those same people will tell you they are from Perry County. Not from Newport, New Bloomfield, or Duncannon. This is because the identity of the locals in Perry County, and elsewhere around the Central Pennsylvania region, is one of community, togetherness, joined together in common interests and identity. Not separated from one another, as in most other places. The larger community, like the county, is the defining characteristic for the residents. We all belong here and we belong to each other, in common and shared purpose.
I recall reading a linguistics study of Central Pennsylvania years ago, and how the authors traced the unique accent here to Swiss and German immigrants in the 1700s. And in fact, if you talk to older old order Amish and some older old order Mennonites, you will indeed hear that very distinct English spoken with some sort of heavily foreign accent. Like all languages, including British English, Southern drawl American, Ebonics in the ‘hood, and so on, this common sound is the sound shared by a commonly identifying group of people. When they hear the familiar pronunciation of their own language, they know they are communicating with someone who is “one of us.”
One of the defining characteristics of Central Pennsylvania is its pretty resilient regional identity, including political views and political engagement, religiousness, and so on. Outside forces may be at work here, altering our beautiful landscape with criminally ugly warehouses and temporarily bombarding our ears with Flatlander-foolish pronunciations of our local places, but through it all, we still hold on to our common identity, our common purpose, our common interests.
Central Pennsylvania is still one big community with common identity. This is one of the reasons that the Obama Administration targeted Lancaster County (and rural Minnesota) for simply air-drop dumping huge numbers of fresh foreign immigrants, most of whom could neither speak nor read English, but who had been carefully instructed how to vote for the “(D)” on the ballot. Politicized efforts to disrupt traditional American sense of community and togetherness, and common purposes and commonly held interests and values, are increasing, as one political party in particular attempts to destroy and re-make America into an identity-less, gender-less, Constitution-less, all-powerful big government global nerve center for everyone on the planet and every cockamamie idea that will destroy “evil” capitalism etc.
And this is why people here so strenuously resist the improper pronunciation of “Lancaster.”
This mispronunciation concretely represents the outside evil forces arrayed against our traditional identity and lifestyle. When we reject that pronunciation, we are asserting our identity and rejecting outsiders, carpetbaggers who attempt to sell us snake oil without even taking the littlest amount of time to understand our closest held thoughts and beliefs. And they fail to do that because they simply don’t care about us or our religious redneck identity; and, in fact, they look down on us.
For all you outsiders, for the record, here in Central Pennsylvania we pronounce Lancaster as one long, fast, single syllable, Lancaster. Not like actor Burt Lan-cas-ter, who, as a Hollywood actor engaged in silly dress-up and fanciful make-believe his whole life, was the ultimate alien to our deal-in-real, natural, down-home, farming and mountain dweller environment here.
So say it again, quickly, Lancaster.
No time or spaces between what your head tells you are syllables. Say it again, fast, one quick word, Lancaster.
There, you said it, and we like you already. See? You fit right in, you hillbilly, you. Here’s a gun, and a Bible. Display them prominently in your home.
September 19th, 2014
A majority of Scots voted yesterday to not rock their world, not screw up their currency, not throw 300 years of cultural, financial, and military entanglement with Britain into a complete mess.
So although there was a sizable groundswell of independent-minded identity, about 45%, more Scots (55%) believed that the change was not worth the inevitable costs. That 55% may indeed share the same cultural identity and passion for change as the 45%, but they believe that the price was too high.
Fair enough. It is understandable. Reasonable people can disagree about these things. After all, Scotland will still be Scotland, with a common language, culture, and identity. And British lawmakers made clear concessions in recent days that will only strengthen and enhance Scotland’s sense of separate identity and self-determination, so the mere threat of separation gained new, valuable rights.
But Scotland goes to show that there is a sweeping change around the world, including in America, where changing identities are tugging at frayed social fabrics. Eventually, these frays will become tears, whether we like it or not.
A good indication of this cultural change happened right here in America this past Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Constitution Day in America, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that American students could be denied their First Amendment right to wear shirts with the American flag on “Cinco de Mayo Day” in California.
Citing fears that Hispanic gangs in certain California government-run schools would see the American flag as intolerant of their Hispanic identities, an instigation to violence, a school principal, and subsequently one of the highest courts in the land (ain’t that the truth) decided that American citizens must be barred from wearing the flag of our nation, America, on their clothes.
On just that one day.
Needless to say, that an American court would conclude such a violent attack on our free speech rights is OK in the first place is incredible, especially when it involves wearing our national flag.
That a court would cite potential violence by criminals, many of whom are not American citizens, as a reason to deny American citizens their free speech rights is a whole other thumb in the eye. It is not legal reasoning but rather giving in to mob rule.
That the court decision was given on Constitution Day really highlights the symbolic meaning and significance of this event. The court is either tone deaf or purposefully showing its disdain for our guiding light.
It really marks a widening cultural identity gap increasingly growing in America, as it is growing in parts of Spain (Basques), France (half the planet is still French-occupied), Syria (Kurds, Sunni vs Shia Muslims), Iraq (Kurds, Sunni vs Shia Muslims), Turkey (Kurds), Argentina (Falklands, occupied by Britain), and so on.
In each of these locations, there are large groups of people who believe that the present government is actually working against their interests, not for their interests. They want a government that they believe is representative of them, their needs, identities.
Come what may of these various separation movements, many of which have turned into open civil war, what concerns me is what this portends for Americans.
One poll this week shows that one in four Americans support some sort of secession or breakup of America.
Some states, like Alaska, Montana, and Texas, already have large secessionist movements or large population segments who want Republic status either restored, or instituted.
At some point these different intellectual disagreements will result in actual, physical disagreements, usually known as civil strife or civil war. As much as this terrifies me and anyone else who enjoys the relative tranquility and opportunity America now enjoys, it is a fact that such events are part of human history. They are probably inevitable.
When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hands down a patently ridiculous ruling like this one, to satisfy some small group of people who threaten violence against otherwise Constitutional behavior, you can be damned sure that a much larger group of actual Americans take notice, and they begin to see their nation a lot differently than they did, say, on Tuesday of this week.
If threats of violence by alien invaders can suppress our Constitutional rights, then what the hell does our Constitution really mean? Has it now become meaningless? Will threats of violence by other groups, alien or native, gain sufficient legal traction to suppress other Constitutional rights, too? Will or could threats of regional insurrection or violence against alien invaders result in similar court holdings that the Second Amendment no longer has standing there?
Can anyone imagine what that would then mean to tens of millions of law-abiding American citizens, whose otherwise legal ownership of plain vanilla firearms had suddenly overnight become criminalized. Like people using the Internet to promote their ideas, those Americans would use their guns before they would lose them. Surely here in Pennsylvania that is true.
America’s Constitution is what binds us all together. It is the great equalizer, the super glue that keeps America’s different, pulsing forces together.
Behind this week’s 9th Circuit decision is a morally relativist, multiculturalist mindset that places first priority on vague feelings of separate ethnic pride above and beyond the limits on government and expansive freedoms for citizens granted in the Constitution. To this court, government is an enforcer for grievances and hurt feelings; the Constitution is irrelevant in how that enforcement is carried out.
Pennsylvania is undergoing quiet but dramatic demographic change, similar to many other states, including California and New York. These same sorts of issues and questions are about to descend upon us. Do we Pennsylvanians have the quality leaders necessary to keep us bound all together in one identity?
Or do we have elected leaders and courts who are willing to inject anarchy and civil strife in the name of a perverted sense of justice, what Hell may come as a result?
September 14th, 2014
If there is one hotbed of kooky political extremism in Western Civilization, it’s England.
As it was in the 1920s and 1930s, England is full of self-proclaimed “peace” activists and anti-imperialism yellers and screamers.
Their weak righteousness brought on World War II, and paved the way for massive treasonous infiltration of English government at all levels.
Many Soviet Russian spies were warmly welcomed by these activists to set up shop and undermine the individual rights and liberties that mark the strongest European democracy.
Anti-British sentiment ran and still runs quite deep in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, the Falklands, and many other far-flung places unassociated with England proper.
Yet where were those activists then, when those nations next to England yearned for their own self-determination? Sure, the activists accused everyone else (America, Israel, the actual anchors of Western freedom and tolerance) of vicious imperialism, but they themselves loved the unfair, artificial, imperialistic, forced notion of a UK. Scotland, Ireland, Wales were independent places with unique languages, cultures, and religions. They were hardly “united” with England by choice.
The Falklands? WTH?!
Why now that Scottish citizens are finally waking up to their own freedom are the British trade unions, left wing activists, and self-appointed bosses of equality silent on Scotland’s chance for true opportunity?
I’m not Scottish, Welsh, nor Irish, I am an American, but I do know that my country fought British imperialism many times, and that Americans greatly benefited from their Constitutional republic’s individual liberties.
It is time for Britons to act in a consistent, civilized way, and set aside their imperial self-interests.
As a former Scottish freedom fighter once said on film, FREEDOM!