This week, both in posts and on GrokTALK!, I seem to be mentioning “language definition”. Or, to be more precise, language REdefinition – especially by those on the Left in order to move a political agenda ahead. They use common words and frequent phrases in what “seems” to be normal parlance – unless you listen and analyze their usage carefully. “Abortion is “womens reproductive health”, “asking them to pay a little more” really means “The Democracy Mob is here to legislatively take your money – there is no asking”, and “judgementalism” simply means “how DARE you hold me accountable for my actions!”.
We’ve all heard about “food insecurity” – another manufactured crisis in which the Left defines this as “well, in the last year, if you had ANY concern about getting a meal during this past year, you are food insecure”. Heck, that’s happened to me before – arrive late at an airport at night after a cross country flight and I have had “food insecurity” – as in “is there anyplace open here to get a meal before my next leg?”. After all (to use another example of redefinition), if being Transgender is solely a manifestation of how one feels on a particular day with respect to school kids deciding which bathroom, locker room, or athletic team they will participate on (re: the “California Bathroom Bill”, or even the NH Bathroom Bill that was barely defeated a few years ago) – I may be a physical male but I’m opening that ladies room door right now. After all, the end result of this perverse language redefinition will end up as “who are YOU to interpret or malign MY intentions?” and when applied to law and policy, it will come down to a Wonderland type definition: “a word means what I want it to mean – at least right now. ‘Cause I can change my mind later and mean it to be something else later.”
As the AP is trying to do here.
The gauge defines “economic insecurity” as experiencing unemployment at some point in their working lives, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.
And in this case, the AP has pretty much defined “Economic Insecurity” just like “food insecurity” – except its baseline is your entire life. Which, pretty much, makes it a useless definition – but I’m betting that they will tout it will in order to advocate for even MORE Government intrusion and distortion of the marketplace (for the MSM no longer reports the news, they want to create it and then advocate for a given . I think it is a given that our economy, with the rise of globalism, shifted years ago from the “work at one company for one’s entire life” to entire industries or sub-industries becoming obsolete. The question is no longer whether a company is responsible for your well being but are you adaptable to be responsible for yourself and not get the axe because you weren’t watching trends at the company, industry, country, or technological levels? Yes, for the haters out there that may be thinking that I am an “economic snob”, I’ve experienced the death of the mini-computer industry up close and real poor. I’ve worked for a lot of companies that have tubed themselves as well as startups in trying to reach for the brass ring (but got the economic brass knuckles instead) – so I speak from personal experience when things go REAL wrong. Yes, bad things happen to good folks for no reason on their own and their tribulations may be, in part, decisions they have made or by decisions made by others (e.g., “the bosses” or “the politicians”; mostly the latter because a lot of the former, especially small biz owners, will end up in the soup too).
Defining something over one’s lifetime is tantamount to having that thing come true. Even though I have now worked at the same company for almost 15 years and have not been caught up in the multiple layoffs that have happened over the years, I still keep thinking “Is it my turn – finally”? Does that make me “economic insecure”, paranoid (hmmmm, probably), or realistic that stuff HAPPENS and stuff CHANGES. Be prepared and pro-active about one’s life is the advice I can give. Like I said here, “Can Do” used to be the American watchword – have we gone so far down that road of “somebody has to do something about it”, so far down that Progressive road of “outsource your responsibilities to Government”, that we can’t help ourselves writ large or small?
Or has Government’s size, cost, and regulations (e.g., Obamacare is making a complete mess of the small biz labor market) actually become the problem?
