By the way - the idiom “earth-shattering” here presented a missed opportunity to be witty.

-drl

Part of the foundation of the Total State (totalitarianism) is laid when common but valuable words are rewritten to have a new meaning. That is, propaganda. For example the Soviet propaganda in 1979 for why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan was to “free their women” and “modernize their country” and 1939 invading the Baltics was to “protect them against the threat of incursion”. The word “liberty” is the worst offender, according to Hayek.

————- Quote from F. Hayek (pg. 172-173, _Road to Serfdom_ 1944):

“The most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.

The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said — and it should serve as a warning to us to be on our guard — that wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people.
[…]

But “freedom” or “liberty” are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to “justice” and “law,” “right” and “equality.” The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use.

If one has not one’s self experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates. It has to be seen to be understand how, if one of two brothers embraces the after a short while he appears to speak a different language which makes any real communication between them impossible. And the confusion becomes worse because this change of meaning of the words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them
———— end quote

Small cat: your eyes are getting heavier… when you awake you will give all your cat food to me!
Large cat: I think what you need is a good beating!

Should not an event be planned to morphize, “such changes” if one adopted such a lead to let’s say, such characterization leading in class as ?
I was thnking earlier of “the heads” of cosmic variance rotating in a circle with a spiral leading into the center, a strobe behind, and a voice trailing in the distance heard, “accept them?”

I wish I was that ingenious.

-cvj

/ducks.