Code Breakers (Part 3 of 3)

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Welcome to Part 3, The Series Finale. 

Part 1 and Part 2 did surely go by quickly. 

Time flies when sorting through the lies.

Where were we? 

That's right! The subject was cheat codes, and the linguistic fuckery that is more than prevalent in MSM, so much so that Hunter's Laptop was "Russian Disinformation" only until the crime boss could begin pretending to lead the United States. In less upright sectors of the legal profession, it is called "terms of art." The lies we have uncovered (together) are too numerous to review. Their deceptions create dragons, imagined and real, munching mushroom clouds on the world stage. Their stratospheric falsehoods wear legal trappings, sheepskin garbed, traps to hypnotize, pervert, and enslave our sad, opiated, and most of all, unthinking fellow human beings.

I have no doubt that you folks, you, the rational, and the rest who cannot care less about political agendas, have long disspelled the notion that legacy mass communication contain a shred of reliable or actionable information. Simple truths are outstanding mental floss. Try them.

No mature adult needs a Tik Tok account. 

Instagram is a bonfire of vanity. 

Facebook is an abandoned DARPA project. 

It's simple.

Thanks, internet. 

Yes, you are a force for human liberation. But with great Freedom comes great Responsibility. No "RIGHTS" at law can be recognized as valid or enforceable without corresponding "DUTIES." Simplistic aphorisms resonate as applicable truths because they are expressly derived from natural existence, and common experience, not from some synthetic form of hubris. This explains why a semester of introductory economics can be compressed into the saying, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Or more succinctly, "Know Supply and Demand." I would add, "Do the Math."

For those of us seeking to establish some baseline for determining the validity of news reports through analysis of data sets, here is one, graphically represented in Cartesian coordinates, expressing degrees of thought and expressions of information and descriptions of events, plotted along the XY quadrant of a multi-variable function. 

Oh, and thanks, Trigonometry.

One look at that chart, and you know, here comes trouble. 

This week, I will simply add to our roster of linguistic cheat codes, the ones that slip by so easily amidst the booming buzzing noise of daily life, permeating our consciousness and sub-consciousness. These are the programmed phrases, playing on Repeat, leading future generations to a Never Never Land of snowflake nirvana, where accuracy in reporting is sacrificed at the Altar of the Unthinking, and zombie-like trance of shit posts, dumb tweets, cowardly commentary, and unbeareable hypocrisy. This is the final highlight reel of well-used weasel words that boomers should find particularly irritating, if not outright malevolent.

OK, Boomers.

 "Long story short." -- [translation: "Forget the details."]  Making a long story short is a great time saver, and it is also a way to hide the devil, who as we know hides in details. Or was it god who hides in the details? Oh well, long story short, watch out if someone is communicating to you, yet finds they really don't have the time to share important or unimportant details of the narrative. Real, lasting content is in fact comprised of long stories. They are called epics. Be epic.

"Thoughts and prayers." -- [translation: "I'm online and I really am a good person."] This phrase has become recognized as the epitome, and early expression of "virtue signaling." So prevalent in the world of online social media, "thoughts and prayers" is a sad by-product of our digitally induced shallowness, whose insincerity is soon to be surpassed by the currency devaluation of the phrase "Thank you for your service."

"Social Justice" -- [actual meaning: "collective retribution"] Justice is experienced on an individual level. The concept of "Social" Justice is mob justice, a shakedown, and a money-grabbing ruse for the race-baiter industry. It is one the biggest frauds out there, and an insult to the proposition that we are judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. If you are a "social justice warrior," leave me out of the guilt-tripping 21st Century revenge fantasy against my counttry. YOU are the real racists. Period. Dot. Fin.

"Follow the Science" --  [actual meaning: "It is immoral to disagree with me."] We decoded this one in a previous post. The realm of science is the least capable discipline to determine social policy. It is the least capable to form precepts to guide benevolent human conduct. "Follow the Science" is the reason we needed the Nuremberg Code. In fact, the classical origin of being "scientific," means being a skeptic, not a sheep.

"Trope" -- [???] I am seeing the increased usage of the word "trope" as a shiny debate tool growing in popularity among the internet generation. A trope was a figure of speech, a metaphor, when the writer employs a word that is used in a non-literal manner, e.g., through irony, hyperbole, liltote (opposite of hyperbole), metonymy, or synecdoche. It is particularly fascinating as, perhaps, the word "trope" is not so much a linguistic cheat, as much as it is a definitional error, and its rise in usage (to dismiss potentially valid propostions before examining the proposition) supports my favorite trope generator: Wittgensteinian analytical philosophy.  Put simply, he says that regarding language, Usage trumps Definitions, and not only that, Usage creates Meaning. Humans play Language Games. As I have seen it, some folks think an idea can discredited by calling it mere "trope." Actually,  when someone says, "Oh, that's just a trope," they probably intended to dismiss your idea as cliché, and that could be a valid point.  But by no means should a concept (or policy preference, for that matter) be dismissed merely because it was expressed creatively. Enough on the difference between "trope" and "cliché." I rant.

In closing, as an homage to being a North Carolinian for 28 years, here is one of my favorite linguistic decodes, courtesy of comedian Jon Reep. If you have lived in the South, you already know this.

Peace. Out. 

 © 2022 by Roy Santonil