Parental Advisory: Explicit Content

There's a guy named Noam Chomsky who is one of the most influential political theorists alive today. His works are widely dissemintated. Funny thing with him is that he was never trained in politics. He earned his name as one of the world's most premeir linguistics professors. Most people I talk to would say this is coincidental. Yet, truth be told, language is political by nature.

Language in many ways controls how people think. It controls how they communicate and relate to one another. This understanding of language has come to a head in the 20th and 21st centuries. Most of the postmodern discussion revolves around language. Most of the leading philosophers of our day are linguists or deal primarily with linguistics as their field of study. Beginning in the 60's Existentialism, Structuralism, and recently Deconstruction have been the most revolutionary of philosophical concepts to hit the scene. Especially in regard to the latter two, they all dealt largely with language and its power over human existence.

Most people are unaware of the way in which politics is a battle over language and meaning. For anyone in high position in government a large portion of money is relegated to "spin artists". One of Chomsky's major themes is the way that American media is sickeningly monopolized by American government and the rich beauracrats by which the government is controlled. Media in America is a joke. That CNN represents the most "liberal" voice in a land marked by its "liberty" is a joke.

American ignorance to the state of our globe is prepetuated by the fact that the media is the source of its worldview, and this worldview is biased in order to benefit the invisible corporate autocrats who pull the strings to their own advantage.

In other words, the evening news is a lie.

And, what are lies? The use of language to construct a reality that does not exist. That people would be concerned to be "living in a lie" reveals how powerful the control of language is.

I thought of all this as I began a book my friend sent to me. In the foreward an author is describing how the just intent of the young evangelicals in the 70's was highjacked by people who were content to make evangelicalism mean consenting to the conservative, Republican ideology. There was a fight over the meaning of the word 'evangelical'. Humans live and die in the war over what words will mean. Once the meaning of evangelical was secured to imply an 'ideological conservative' the war over language continued, except this time more publically.

Soon the 'moral majority' or 'religious Right' began the fight to keep the media decent. The media was up for grabs. Consider with me, why would people spend multiple millions of dollars and countless hours simply to keep specific "four letter" syllables from being uttered on public TV??? At first this appears to be quite an arbitrary thing to be concerned about. After all, there are gang wars going on in most of the big cities, rivers of drugs flowing across the boarders, and we're spending our time to contest someones right to say 'shit' on TV??

Yet, pay attention to who this battle is between. Overall evangelicals tend to be white, married with children, and rich. In light of my last post, what could we assume they are concerned with preserving. More than moral values, could we not assume that control of the media could prove to aid in preservation of privilege and assets for themselves and their 'group'. On the other side are the "others" who do not share their values and don't think that being 'evangelical' warrants any sort of privilege at all. Suddenly 'shit' becomes a good barometer of who is truly in control.

Consider the connotation of the word "homosexual" and the various slurs attatched to it. For a long time these words were said with the connotation of taboo. Yet since the early 90's these words have increasingly been used playfully for a lifestyle that is less and less a mark of shame. Now homosexuals openly call themselves 'queer', 'gay', or any number of other words which were originally used as slurs. This is part of the battle to control language. Conservatives who opposed homosexuality before could use such slurs as a means of keeping homosexuals in an inferior position, but now this tactic has been flipped around. In doing so it is conservatives who suffer, being labeled as 'fundamentalists', 'biggots' and 'homophobes'. Obviously in rural conservative areas this has not yet occured, but if one goes to any major city they will see that homosexuals are no longer at a disadvantage.

As Walter Brueggemann wrote, "the discussion of homosexuality, for the most part, is not about sexuality, but is about the reordering of social power, the fearful effort to maintain conventional forms of power that carry less and less conviction, and the awareness the the old center 'will not hold'".

Homosexuality is a major piece on the chessboard being played out between the conservative, traditional ideology of America and the newer pluralistic ideology. In the conservative eye the nuclear family and Caucasian decent were identities that preserved economic and social privilege. Homosexuality is one of many lifestyles accepted by the new pluralistic ideology that threatens the social privilege of the "all-American" lifestyle.

The battle over language is one of the foremost concerns on both sides. On the popular side it seems that pluralism is winning the battle over culture, though politically conservatives still hold sway.