language

Don’t call it “Alligator Auschwitz” 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged history language liberty on by

The new ICE confinement facility in Florida, semi-officially called “Alligator Alcatraz,” is by all accounts brutal, unsanitary, and degrading. It’s a showpiece of the Trump administration, whose followers admire it for its sheer viciousness. Some people, including plenty on Bluesky, have taken to calling it “Alligator Auschwitz.” The term trivializes the Nazi extermination camp. Bad as the Florida facility is, it isn’t designed to kill people systematically. Equating the two implies that Jews in the Nazi camps merely had a very rough time of it.

Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp, a place where many civilians are involuntarily moved to and confined in without charges or due process. The Japanese-American internment camps of World War II were concentration camps in the same sense, and I’ve used the term repeatedly for them. But it isn’t a death camp. Trump is evil, but he hasn’t reached that level of evil yet.
(more…)

Americans do not have a commander in chief 2

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged language usage vocabulary on by

We’re regularly subjected to the obscene notion that the president of the United States is the “commander in chief” of the American people. It’s part of the cult of the presidency, the notion that we live or should live under a powerful ruler. It’s an idea that goes against everything the country was founded on.

The Constitution says: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” If you’re in those categories, then he’s your commander. Otherwise, no. If you’re a civilian employee of the executive branch, he’s your boss, not your commander.
(more…)

The misuse of fallacies

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged language philosophy reason on by

Recognizing logical fallacies is important when evaluating claims and arguments. At the same time, it’s important to recognize when someone misidentifies or misapplies a fallacy. People can claim to knock down valid claims by saying they commit a fallacy, when actually there’s no fallacy.

Take the “slippery slope” fallacy. Some slopes really are slippery. You have to evaluate a claim that X will lead to Y by the specifics, not just the formal structure. A trivia quiz I recently saw offered something like this as a supposed example of the fallacy: “If I give you an extra day to complete the assignment, I’d have to give it to anyone else who asks.” The quiz’s author was probably thinking something like, “The teacher can give special favors to some students and not others, so it’s fallacious to make that claim.” That assumes that consistent and fair treatment count for nothing.
(more…)

Authoritarianism and the control of names

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged language Trump usage on by

Authoritarian regimes control language as a way to control thought. And let’s face it, the United States is well on its way to becoming an authoritarian regime. Congress is asleep. It’s not clear how much the courts can do in the long run. Trump has made it clear that he can rename things at a whim and punish those who don’t use the names he chooses.

He issued a decree that the Gulf of Mexico shall henceforth be called the Gulf of America. The USGS updated its data accordingly, and the change quickly flowed into Google Maps, DuckDuckGo, and other online information sources. More significantly, Trump has banished Associated Press from the Oval Office for not falling into line. AP has said, “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences,” so it continues to use “Gulf of Mexico” as the primary name.
(more…)

Words without meaning 8

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged Internet language SanityProject vocabulary on by

To answer an accusation, you have to know what it means. If the words have no fixed meaning, no argument can show that it’s false. Certain words in the culture of the left serve this purpose. They allow irrefutable accusations — irrefutable because they mean whatever the accuser wants them to. Denying the accusation or defending someone else against it can even become evidence of guilt. Words are supposed to be the tools of thought, but these words are designed to make thought impossible.
(more…)