The Danger of Unchecked Language Appropriation
Under Pres. GW Bush and VP Dick Cheney, every undeclared US war was justified by calling it a "War" on "Terror." Triump is taking the dangerous process further.
Earlier this week 11 VenezueLans were blown up and sent to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea by a missile fired at it by a US destroyer, one of a numbber of Navy assets deployed off the coast of Venezuela in violtion of internqational law by president Trump, who falsely claims there is a national emergency of drug smuggling for which Venezuela is responsible.
Presenting no evidence, Trump has claimed the 11 killed on that boat in a extra-judicial murder/execution in international waters with no attempt made to capture amd arrest them, Trump claimed they were all “known to us” and were members of the Tren de Aragua Venezuelangang (or alternatively cartel). He pointedly referred to them as “narco-terrorists.” the latest new category of “terrorist, which since the BushCheney administration, and on into the Obama administration and Biden administration has been used to argue (with no push back in any of the Supreme Court majorities during all those presidencies) means they can be offed/liquidated on orders of the “Unitary-Executive” in a “national emergency” declared by said president.
The question is, where does this language apppropriation by presidents giving them dictatorial powers to arrest and kill people, including American citizens end? We have heard the term “eco-terrorists” used to describe such groups as Earth First!, which attempted to block the gutting of first-growth trees by the tqctic of driving large metal spikes — the bane of chain saws— into the trunks of such old-growth forweatr denizenss.
Now, on college campuses, the Trump administration has been going after students seeking to deport foreign foreign ones despite their student visas or Green Cards for being pro-Palestinian or anti-IsraeL Th administration is also demanding that US students supporting Palestine in protests be suspended or expelled and that professors should be punished or fired for being “antisemitic.” These people will before long undoubtably be labled “edu-terrorists.”
Now, with a new national election for all the members of the House of Representives and a third of the Senate coming in just 14 months — dan election that if held fairly could neuter Trump and the Supreme Court’s radical right majority, we can expect to hear charges of Democratic chicanery trying to ensure that everyone can vote. Those charges will iinevitably include the type of false claims that Democrats are encouraging “illegal immigrants” to vote, or are cheaing on mail-in ballots, etc. Will these alleged vote fraudsters soon find themselves called “ballotc-terrorists, making them subject to armed arrest by Trump’s new federal police force, currently called the Iccccccssmmigration and Customs and Enforcement agency. and/or National Guard?
But why stop there? Health care workers nd feminist activists who work to help pregnant women obtain abortions or s medication. x even the women seeking abortions themselves, could ind thermselves being labeled gyno-terrorists.
Then too, there will be those vile emplouyes in the not-for-profit world and even in the corporat world wo will resist or ifgnore the Trump administration’s anti-DEI rules. They become DEI-terrorists.
And of course, since the Trump Adminsitrartion is inceasingly going off the rails with the economy collapsing, his tarriff strategy is proving to be a legal, practical and theoretical catastrophe, his Epstein links are appearing to be deep and dark, and the corruption of his administrationand nd of him personally to be epic and unprecedented in the nation’a history there are sure to be increasinf leks to the media and publifshed stories which Trump will of course decleare ‘treasonous,” leading to ye another new term: “journo-terroris.”
Guess i better renew my memberhship in the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Writers Union and make a donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists.