For no particular reason, this concept popped into what’s left of my mind. Decided to reprint in honor of the pop.
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I wonder what Sam Johnson would think. He defined a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. Modern lexicographers are mass murderers. Words have always been weapons for propaganda, but the genocidal power of a single definition is relatively new.
When a man is a woman, he can commit all sorts of crimes with impunity. When a country is a failed state, we can wipe it off the map with impunity.
These weaponized is verbs are a new grammatical form.
Discussing this in the realm of grammar would get hopelessly confused and meta-ish, so I’ll use math and programming to explore the criminal nature of this weapon.
In normal language is carries the same structure as the equals sign in an algebraic equation. It expresses the equal force, or equal meaning, or equivalent characteristics, of the items on both sides of the balance. The items, and their characteristics, exist before we write the is or = sign. We are merely making an observation.
A country is a bounded geographical region with one government.
12 * c = (3 * c) + (9 * c)
You can replace a country with France or Tanzania or Bolivia, and the is will hold true.
You can replace c with any ordinary number, and the = will hold true.
Balance signs work both ways. You can replace 12*c by (3*c + 9*c) if it’s more convenient. You can replace (3*c + 9*c) by 12*c if it’s more convenient.
Here Storekeeper Polistra is using a balance to OBSERVE that the jar of craft beer is the same weight as the calibrated standard.
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In contrast, our new forcible is resembles the computer use of = for assignment. In a computer the equal sign NEVER means an observed balance. It ALWAYS means assigning the number or combination on the right to the named variable on the left. Calculate or evaluate the stuff on the right, place the result in the empty labeled box on the left.
When you start a program by declaring some constants for convenience, as in
const FloatTwo = 2.0
you are NOT observing that the two sides of the sign have the same properties; in fact they don’t start with the same properties. You are FORCING the box labeled FloatTwo to carry the properties of 2 in floating-point form.
In a simple free-standing program this does no harm. But if the forced assignment alters the properties of a global variable that exists before we make the assignment, serious harm can result. Changing Pi to 365, or changing DaysPerYear to 3.1416, will ruin an engineering or financial calculation, with potentially deadly results.
Modern computer languages take great pains to avoid this type of semantic piracy. The compiler won’t let one module assign a new value to a global that has already been defined as a constant. Computer viruses often make this sort of change in a running program after it’s been compiled.
Here Storekeeper Polistra is ASSIGNING the beer to coffee. From now on, everything in the barrel is coffee. Everything in the barrel was always coffee. Anyone who claims that the coffee tastes like beer, or claims that the coffee violates their religion, is an Unperson who must be exterminated.
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There is no compiler protecting the world against Sorosian monsters. When Soros assigns that a specific man is a woman, the official arbiters change all of the legal properties of this man. She is a woman, she always was a woman, and every law and rule and custom must operate on the assumption that she is and was a woman, even when the result is physically impossible.
When Soros assigns that Guaido is the president of Venezuela, the official arbiters change all the legal properties. Every law in the world must now operate on the assumption that Guaido has always ruled Venezuela, even though Maduro is still the actual physical ruler of Venezuela.
In computers, and well-designed circuits and mechanisms, enforced modularity prevents this form of imperial destruction. In the real world there is no simple way to enforce modularity.
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Polistra's Mill 