A Horse is not a Chicken
As something of a wordsmith, I have an ongoing beef. Folks don’t seem to get the power of words. That’s ok when you’re playing catch, I guess. It’s not okay in the workplace, schools or any arena requiring verbal or written communication. It is most definitely not okay in politics. Words matter. Dammit.
The right wing has long coopted language as a means to dominate and control the narrative. It has been a strong ally as they’ve stalked democratic norms. The media has blindly fallen in line while our side either doesn’t recognize its importance or doesn’t know how to fight it.
Words matter because language has enormous power. Repetition changes minds, hearts and world views. Words are tools to explain the world to ourselves and communicate our observations to others. We may quibble over whether the ocean is sea green or dark blue, or waves large or wild. Fair enough. But there are societal truths. Facts. No matter how powerfully you want a horse to be a chicken or how many times you call it a chicken, society still agrees that the maned, four-legged animal is a horse.
Here’s an example of a successful, galling misnomer. We’re stuck with “pro-life,” which on its face is a perversion of truth. It is a lie repeated often enough that we’re liable to forget where truth got buried. Like the horse and chicken, claiming pro-life as something it’s not, repeating it often and over time doesn’t change the fact. Those who oppose abortion are not pro-life. That would mean they were pro all life. And they’re not. Wanting to choose a fetus over its mother doesn’t make you pro- anything. It makes you anti- a lot. At the top of the list is opposition to the fundamental right to choose what happens to our bodies.
It is a lie to claim to support life while opposing the life, sometimes the very existence, of a woman, and by extension all women to make personal decisions about their bodies. If the word life is to enter the discussion at all, by opposing the human rights of the woman whose fetus it is, they are anti-life. The accurate descriptor for them is anti-choice. They negate a woman her human right to choose. Worse, they believe it’s their right to legislate that opinion. OK, I digress. I’m not trying, not really, to discuss that sniveling, sneaky misnomer.
I will though, when Roe is overturned. After Republicans finish packing the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Just like they’ve packed the federal judicial system with radical activist right wing, often highly inexperienced and incompetent judges.
I’m tired of quietly gnashing my teeth every time I hear how Democrats may “pack the Court,” and thought I’d share. The so-called packing is in reference to an expansion of SCOTUS. It’s clever. It’s trumpian — they’re attacking the opponent for exactly what they’re doing. And it’s a blatant attempt to deflect attention and dominate the narrative.
As I write this, the GOP is busy packing SCOTUS by ramming through their right wing judge even after more than 21 million Americans have voted. They were packing the court in 2016 when a full 10 months before the election they refused as much as a hearing for Merrick Garland. That’s textbook. Packing is an attempt to enshrine one ideology, in this case for decades — no matter the will of the people.
I keep wondering, where is the outrage? Where is the indignation from every elected Democrat who is asked about “packing” the Court? I haven’t heard one person disagree with this misnomer, including Joe or Kamala. If they win, there are several options open to them beyond expansion to help rebalance the Court, including changing the terms of service from lifetime to a fixed number of years. That’s not packing. It’s allowing for change and the will of the people to be done.
As to changing the number of judges, it is legal and constitutional for Congress to change the size of SCOTUS. There are precedents. The Court began with six and the number of judges changed several times[1]. There is no precedent for what the Republicans are doing. For more on this read Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent and terrifying letter from Oct 14th.
The right wing attack against “activist judges who legislate from the bench” has been around for decades. A brilliant piece of nonsense the right has used repeatedly to their advantage. An originalist like Scalia or Barrett — by the way a teensy minority of constitutional judges — interpret and intuit what they view as the original intent of the authors of the Constitution. They decide what those long-dead folks from an agrarian society would say about abortion, health care, computer privacy, monopolies, immigration, driverless vehicles, mixed gender, stem cells, racial identities and more.
Since the founders’ ghosts are likely not guiding their positions, originalists are forced into the activist position of ‘legislating from the bench’ on their interpretations. How is that different from what any judge does? Right. But there is an enormous difference in what those decisions are likely to be. They’re predictably anti-democratic as we in the 21st Century view democracy.
This is perhaps easier to understand with religion. Say you’re a Christian and you choose to take the (translated into English by men) words of the Bible literally. The words, as you see and interpret them, are from long-dead beings, human or otherwise. You would be the religious equivalent of an originalist judge — a fundamentalist Christian. You would be what society would consider old-fashioned, Bible-thumping, or closed-minded.
What if you’re a Christian who does your best to understand the spirit of the Bible and implement that into your life? You are no more or less a Christian or an activist. You are no more rewriting the Bible than an open-minded 21st Century judge rewrites the Constitution. You would be what society would consider liberal or open-minded.
The list of words we take for granted in this gaslit, doublethink, head-spinning era is exhaustive. The GOP lie of “election fraud” is important right now. Remember this. Voting is not election fraud. Voter suppression is election fraud. Suppression — the current single issue platform of the GOP — is criminal. It goes against the Constitution. If flies in the face of the rule of law. It whittles away at democracy. It is fraud, writ large.
The only good thing about current GOP efforts at voter suppression is that trump has been speaking the quiet part out loud long enough that we know what we’re facing. More importantly, we hold the power to stop them. We can demonstrate, write, share, Zoom, canvas, phone, support, contribute. And we can vote.
Vote.
Vote thoughtfully.
Vote early.
Make your opinion count.
VOTE
[1] “In 1807 a seventh justice was added, followed by an eighth and a ninth in 1837 and a tenth in 1863. The size of the court has sometimes been subject to political manipulation; for example, in 1866 Congress provided for the gradual reduction (through attrition) of the court to seven justices to ensure that President Andrew Johnson, whom the House of Representatives later impeached and the Senate only narrowly acquitted, could not appoint a new justice. The number of justices reached eight before Congress, after Johnson had left office, adopted new legislation (1869) setting the number at nine, where it has remained ever since.”
