Abuse of Language

I have many opinions on politics, but one of my firmest principles is that language should not be abused.  You may be aware of George Orwell's famous essay, "Politics and the English Language," in which he argued that people use language to obscure political realities more than to clarify them.  I can't speak for his day, but it is certainly common now, when you commonly hear "speech" equated with "violence" and violence (by the correct side) equated with legitimate protest.

This morning, I was eating breakfast in a hotel and I saw a segment on CNN about the Capitol "insurrectionists" on January 6th.  (I can't find an article that uses that word in the headline as the news story did, but there are many articles on CNN that make liberal use of that word, e.g. this one.)  CNN has put a lot of effort into maximizing the potential danger from the riot that day, but I don't think any amount of rationalizing would equate what happened to an attempted insurrection.  There may conceivably have been people participating who actually wanted an insurrection, but was happened was clearly an excited crowd in which some members got carried away and entered the Capitol (without any resistance from security, from what I hear, so basically without violence, although some violence did occur).  You would think if anyone seriously wanted to attempt an insurrection, they would have done something like kidnap a member of Congress or attempt to enter the legislative chambers and make demands.  Instead, some people stole some souvenirs.  If this was an attempted insurrection, it was the lamest attempt ever.



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