Saturday, June 22, 2019

Definitions, Pondering Definitions

Today was a glorious day, the sort of early summer day in the scenic Hudson River Valley that is exceeded only by the sort of late summer days we get here. I work in spectacularly beautiful surroundings with lovely people... as I often say, my life is okay. Still, there's an existential horror occurring in this land that I have loved, something which intrudes even on days such as today... this week was particularly disquieting because it involved the mainstream media splitting semantic hairs over the definition of 'concentration camps'- I imagine Merriam-Webster is getting a ton of web traffic these days.

As is typical of the post-November 2018 mediascape, the 'controversy' was ignited by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the favorite bĂȘte noire of right-wingers and the idiotic media flacks who 'bothsides' issues to a fare-thee-well. The hair-splitting also plays into the hands of Holocaust deniers, who often dispute the fact that the Nazis intentionally killed Jews in an industrialized fashion.

The real problem here isn't the definition of 'concentration camps', it's the definition of 'Americans'... who are we? What have become?

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