I have written before about the fact that words matter. These thoughts started when I realized my conservative friends were using words and phrases that will raise fears in both themselves and their listeners. I’ll admit I don’t always agree with my conservative friends, but I don’t always agree with my liberal friends either. Both sides seem to have staked out extreme positions and are unwilling to compromise even in the smallest ways but that discussion is for another time. I think we instinctively recognize that words matter because of the way we will talk with children. For example, the death of a pet will be characterized as it going to heaven where it will be happy and waiting for us. We don’t say, “It’s dead. We have to bury it.” Those are very factual words and exactly express what has happened and what must happen, but we also recognize they will be disturbing to the child. What we don’t seem to realize is what we say and words we hear can be disturbing us. The other thing we do not seem to realize is the more often they are repeated the more they seem very real to us. The Nazi propaganda chief during World War II understood that and even said that a lie repeated often enough will become fact in the listener’s mind.
Let me say that I don’t think all this is done purposely. Someone with a conservative viewpoint will tend to resist changes; i.e., “I’ve always done it that way. Why would I want to change?” A current hot topic is immigration. The Pew Research Institute estimates that as of 2016 there were 10.7 million illegal immigrants living in the country. That’s approximately 3% of the population. That number had gone down by approximately 1.5 million since 2007. The current numbers of people from South and Central America trying to cross the border according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, is less than 1% of the current legal immigrants living in the country. Sorry for all of the statistics here. They are important to understand the size of the problem. One other fact to note here is the previous administration had caught and deported more illegal immigrants than any previous administration. It clearly shows there is a problem with illegal immigration. Everyone seems to agree that it’s because of bad governments in South and Central America. Again, that’s a discussion of how to correct that for another time.
Now back to the discussion words. I noticed that my conservative friends were using words indicated they felt like they were under attack. Military words such as “overwhelmed” and “being attacked.” They use phrases like “Our way of life is under threat” or “They will destroy our way of life.” I can actually see the fear in their eyes when they talk about immigration. When you are afraid, you can’t reason. Your body has prepared you for fight or flight. That is the reason the military trains extensively, so the soldiers just act from the training without thinking. However, in a democracy, we must always think. We must always also be aware of how the words we use and hear influence us.
