In Need Of A New "Front"

Political discourse is rife with inexactitude. Politicians want to mislead when it is politically advantageous. Lobbyists want to push an agenda. Voters hold opinions based on varying states of information that, unfortunately, tend more towards ignorance than knowledge. Journalists most often do not redress the balance for a variety of reasons; they might not want to piss off their main sources of information and access; they might have their own agendas at play, they might suffer from incompetence or ignorance; etc.

One effect of all of this is the dubious way some terms are used. A common example would be the political use of the word "censorship." Far too often you will hear folks screaming about their being "censored" when nothing could be further from the truth. Being criticized for your statements or writings is not "censorship" in any way, shape or form. Even doing something as stupid as removing Mark Twain books from school libraries is not "censorship." But the inexactitude of our discourse allow such things to be labelled as such. It makes me wonder how folks would react to real censorship. Would they even recognize it as such if they wanted personally to silence the folks being censored? I have my doubts.

Another term that gets thrown about is "McCarthyism." Unlike "censorship," the term "McCarthyism" suffers from no set definition. This helps explains the amorphous way in which it is often used. However, it should be possible to set some minimum standards by which we can evaluate any given political program as being more or less "McCarthy-ish." Off the top of my head certain qualities come to mind:

1) There must be an attempt to create public hysteria,
2) There should be efforts to silence critics through moral posturing or innuendo and slander,
3) The generation of a "blacklist" of suspect individuals,

Well, if these are the basic requirements of being correctly labelled "McCarthy-ish" the anthropogenic climate change crowd must be proud. With the Union of Concerned Scientists providing the "blacklist" they are now three for three.

Everything old is new again.

(Gleaned in part from The Colossus of Rhodey.)