Words and Phrases I Think Should be Put in the Dustbin of History
I go a little nuts when I hear these words
My last post was a fun post about who I think is the best baseball player at each position. Click the link below if you missed it.
Today I’m climbing back on my soapbox and will rant about a bunch of words I think are overused, don’t make sense or are just plan dumb. As you know I’m far from politically correct and this list of words and my thoughts on them may offend some. So beware, that is your trigger warning, and that is also the first word on the list.
Trigger Warning:
This phrase is used to warn someone a work contains writing, images, or ideas that may be distressing to some people. “Trauma triggers” has been used in the mental health field since the 19th century and is a universally accepted concept. However, in the 21st century the use of the term changed from a medical concept to one warning people that they might encounter concepts or ideas that make them uncomfortable. These are especially prevalent on college campuses, warning our future leaders about things that might offend them. In 2014, the American Association of University Professors criticized the use of general content warnings in university contexts, stating, "The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual. It makes comfort a higher priority than intellectual engagement and it singles out politically controversial topics like sex, race, class, capitalism, and colonialism for attention." In other words, life is mean and you better get used to it or it will run you over. If you are in college, trying to learn, and become a more rounded adult, the idea of trigger warnings is absurd. You are there to be challenged, not just look at things that reinforce the ideas you currently hold. If you cannot even allow a speaker on campus that doesn’t align with your belief system, YOU are the problem! If you get PTSD from reading a text book about slavery, YOU are the problem. If you can’t have a civil, rational debate with someone about “climate change”, YOU are the problem. In short, if you need trigger warnings to shield you from uncomfortable things YOU are the problem. Grow up or go away, and let the adults run things.
Migrant:
I don’t even know how this word is applied to modern people. I know an immigrant is a person from another country that enters a second country legally, following all established immigration laws and regulations. I’ve heard of migrant workers, people that move around a country following crop harvests, but I’ve never heard it applied to illegal aliens that have entered our country by breaking every immigration law we have. Changing the label of illegal aliens is meant to make you forget that they are breaking the law. In news reports in the last ten years the term “illegal alien” have disappeared and been replaced first by “illegal immigrant”, then by “undocumented immigrants” and now migrants. I’m not against people entering our country the legal way I just don’t want people to flout or laws and then demand the benefits that come with living in the greatest country in the world. I don’t care why you feel the need to come to our country, for jobs, to escape a tyrannical government or just to be part of our great experiment, all I ask is that you do it the right way. They could, and this is just a suggestion, try to fix the problem in their own countries, before coming here. I mean, that’s what the Founding Fathers did. They didn’t like being taxed without a voice in the body that levied the taxes. They asked for a redress or their grievances and were told to shut up and quit complaining. So, they took up arms against the strongest country in the world and won their independence, probably the biggest upset in the history of the world. So, if they can do it, so can all these illegal aliens swimming across rivers or jumping fences. Yes, the Statue of Liberty says:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
but that doesn’t mean you can come in regardless of the laws of the land.
People of Color:
This phrase offends me simply on the grounds of inaccuracy. It refers to non-white people but by definition white is a color, therefore, I am a Person of Color and demand all the benefits therein. I know what I’m about to say is verboten, but I don’t care what color a person is, I judge them, (to paraphrase Martin Luther King), by the content of their character not the color of their skin. I treat everyone the same until they give me a reason not to. I prefer the way the Marine Corps dealt with race. There were no black, brown, red or white Marines, just light green Marines and dark green Marines and we all bled red, that is the way we should treat each other. I understand that not all people believe that, but the few that do not, shouldn’t affect the rest of us.
Cultural Appropriation:
This phrase is just ridiculous, everyone, everywhere throughout history have taken something good from a culture they have encountered (even if that encounter was in the form of an invasion). We're not supposed to wear hoop earrings because they were supposedly invented by Africans. Tacos are forbidden unless you are Latino, no Bollywood themed parties unless you're from the Subcontinent. I mean, how far do you want to take this stupidity? Ok, no cities, farming, our alphabet, the concept of zero or the wheel for anyone that isn't Iranian or Iraqi? Do you like spaghetti? Well none for you unless you're Chinese, (they actually invented it, not the Italians). Flying in airplanes, not unless your American. No one is stealing from a culture, they are adopting something that they found valuable and shared it with more people. That is how the modern world was born.
Toxic Masculinity:
What the left calls “toxic masculinity” is really just how men are, they don’t like it because it doesn’t conform to their world view. In their clown world. men should, at the most, be equal to women in every aspect of life. If they had their way, men would be inferior and treated like a unclean thing that has to be dealt with at certain times in their lives. It shows a lack of understanding of genetics. Men have been wired to accomplish a specific range of tasks, since modern humans entered the scene at least 300,000 years ago. Men were the stronger of the two sexes and were therefore responsible for hunting, protecting their group, especially their mates, warfare and a role in leadership. Men are wired to be stoic, good/bad decision makers with a innate desire to act on their initial assessment of a situation. If anything you might be able to say that men have progressed less than women and still act on these built in directives. That is why most police and firemen are men. The world today is filled with a bunch of men that can’t make the simplest decisions and wilt in the face of any kind of hardship. If World War II was taking place today, we would soon be speaking German and/or Japanese. The weaklings of today would never have the courage to charge a machine gun nest or sacrifice themselves for the rest of their unit. What the world needs is MORE toxic masculinity not less.
Fascist and Nazi:
These two words are tossed around willy-nilly by every leftist, progressive, liberal and Democrat (which nowadays are all one and the same), without any real knowledge of the actual meaning of the word. In most places the word is used it means a “far-right” authoritarian person or government. In reality Fascism and Nazism are NOT movements of the right but ones of the left. Just look at what the acronym Nazi stands for: National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparte in German), it’s right there in the name, Socialist, no self-respecting socialist would ever accept the label far-right. They are loudly and proudly of the left, just not as left as a communist. At the same time remember that USSR stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik in Russian). If conservatives were Nazis they would round up all their enemies and at best, put them in concentration camps and at worst kill them. Since none of the people calling Trump a Nazi, are in a camp or dead, it proves he’s not a Nazi. It’s not the right that is using the power of the government to spy on political opponents, it’s not the right that is co-opting social media companies to censor people, topics and ideas they don’t like, it’s the Left. Leftist should take a hard look in the mirror they next time they feel the urge to call someone a Nazi and I bet they will see a picture of Hitler staring back at them.
Silence is Violence:
No, idiots, violence is violence. Words, or lack of them, can not be violence. People that say this are stating that if you aren’t an active supporter of whatever cause they have, you are part of the problem.
Please read the Hate Speech section of my post You Know What Really Grinds My Gears, it goes into a little more depth on speech.
To quote my favorite Norse quote (I’ve mentioned it a few times in my posts), If one cannot tell the difference between axes and words, let both be thrown at them until they can.
Institutional Racism:
This is just a crock, after 65 years of affirmative action programs, there is no way that any governmental or societal institution has built-in racism. The Constitution guarantees equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. Not everyone can be Elon Musk or Patrick Mahomes. We were not all given the brains or athletic ability when we were born. Proponents of this term are really trying to say that life isn’t fair, and as victims, they deserve more then everyone else. Stop being a victim, get a good education or learn a trade, get a job, work hard and you will do fine.
Reparations:
This idea is ludicrous, just because you’re black doesn’t mean your ancestors were slaves. In fact, with all the genetic mixing the population of the US has done, it turns out that a lot of black people had ancestors that were slave holders! What about half black people? or 1/4 black or 2/3 or 1/8? Are the payments based on what percentage black you are and if there not, how is that fair. Does Kamala Harris have to pay herself because her white ancestors owned slaves? What about people who’s relatives didn’t enter the United States until after slavery ended? What about me? My ancestors were killed because they were Slavs (which is close to slaves) don’t I deserve money? How about Jews, Asians, Native Americans, Gypsies, the Irish, Catholics, Armenians and Italians? All these groups have legitimate arguments about discrimination against them. If you take this to its logical conclusion then we don’t have enough money in the world to pay everyone.
Indigenous:
This is a term that should be reserved for plants only. The idea that a person or even an animal is “indigenous” is just wrong. All creatures with legs came to where they are from somewhere else. The people that call themselves “Native Americans” (another term I dislike, since I was born on American soil, making me a Native American too) walked here from Asia or migrated from the Pacific islands some time around 19,000 years ago. They did not spring from the ground like a plant. They followed food sources through what has been christened “Baringa”, the area of the Bering Strait today, which was above water because of the lower seas levels due to the huge glaciers in the northern areas. Another round of migrations saw Pacific Islanders sailing to South America around the same time, (quite an ambitious undertaking), and than both groups spread over the entirety of North and South America after that. Since North and South America was devoid of humans at the time I would be fine with using the Canadian term “First Nations” or “First Peoples” but that is a far as I’m willing to go on that. As for the animals let’s look at the humble raccoon. Based on fossil evidence from Russia and Bulgaria, the first known members of the raccoon family (Procyonidae) lived in Europe in the late Oilgocene period about 25 million years ago, then crossed the Bering Strait six million years later. So, there you go, nothing that can walk is indigenous.
There it is my list of ten words or phrases I hate. There are more but this good for now. I’m sure I’ll do another post about this later on. I hope you are enjoying my posts and maybe even looking forward to seeing what kind of silliness I can come up with. I’ll do my best to keep you interested going forward. Until next week. Have a good time!
Chris
I'd add, "Experts say..."