July 31, 2022
Naming Things
By Clarice Feldman
In Genesis, Adam names all the creatures of the earth. “God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name.” There are lots of explanations for why this is significant, depending on your theological viewpoint. To me naming things is not insignificant in everyday life. How you call something shapes the meaning in your mind and manipulates your point of view.
Years ago, when I represented workers who were challenging their union’s leadership, the wise lawyer who worked with us (someone who had earlier honed his trade working for FDR and General MacArthur) cautioned me to be careful how we described ourselves -- we were to fashion our movement Reform Miners, not rebels, insurgents or anything else. Repeated often enough by us in interviews and in litigation papers that’s what the press would call us and that was to our advantage in the public mind.
So to me it’s not a small thing that this administration is changing the definition of so many things like women, vaccines, recession, and illegal immigrants. The press plays along. Wikipedia was forced to suspend the definition of “recession” after there were so many edits to hide the fact that we are in one by the classic definition used for years.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/naming_things.html
