If it don’t come from mammaries, it ain’t milk

The popular penchant for calling things that are not as though they were

even God, who…calleth those things which be not as though they were.

 - Romans 4:17b, King James Version

Soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, and cashew milk all have something in common: they aren’t milk. Each is a blend of water, sugar, some form of processed (boiled, blended, and filtered) plant product (soybeans, almonds, oats, cashews) and any number of other ingredients such as salt, and added vitamins. Believe it or not, this did not start as an attempt at promoting better health. Soy milk, predecessor to all the others, began as an intermediate product from the process of making tofu. As happens so often, someone realized this by-product could be marketed and monetized as its own product. Now soy milk is a $5+ billion dollar per year industry. What’s the point? Well, as I said from the start, while these bear the name “milk” on their labels, they are not, in fact, milk. Milk, real milk, is produced in the mammary glands of maternal mammals (yes, mommies - they are the ones with mammary glands) as nourishment for their young. From time immemorial humans have drank animal milk as a source of nutrition, and it even came to be used as a symbol of richness and paradise (the Bible calls the promised land a land “flowing with milk and honey”). Now we call a very poor imitation of that luscious lactated liquid by the same name. I use this as an example of what is happening in general with our language and our culture - referring to things by words that do not truly apply.

We live in an age of tortured terminology. Orwell’s idea of Newspeak is being implemented on a scale he could only imagine. That so many fall in line with this fictionalization is almost as stupefying as the perversion of parlance itself. Consider that oft-uttered phrase “Safe & Effective™” you’ve heard over the past two years. The shots to which the phrase refers were anything but safe, and they certainly were not effective by any objective measure. No matter how many recipients of the jabs were infected in spite of taking the needle, nor how many  died suddenly or were seemingly injured, advocates repeated the Safe & Effective™ mantra as if simply denying reality would create an alternate reality in which their words rang true. Though the shots did not manage to shrink the risk of infection or death, it did serve to engorge the wallets of big pharma and to ostensibly extend the power of government.

Family-friendly drag shows have garnered quite a bit of attention over the past year or so. Drag-shows are historically (and notoriously) sexual - they are comprised of (typically) men dressed as women performing in a sexualized manner usually in a setting like a bar or nightclub. Under most circumstances, they require ID to enter because it is considered adult entertainment. Therefore, by definition, they are not “family-friendly.” As if to put a fine point on it, there have been many videos circulated of these “family-friendly drag shows” revealing scantily-clad drag queens dancing in a very suggestive manner right in front of children (I genuinely question the psychological fitness of parents who tote their tots to such events). These shows raise quite a bit of money, much of it through sponsorship, and it gives these prurient people a perverted (feeling of) power over children. 

Though perhaps well-intentioned by many, the use of African-American is another such ill-used idiom. Most people to whom the term is applied were not born in Africa nor have they even set foot in Africa; many may not even be able to trace their descent to that continent. Likewise, the term would not by the same people be used to describe someone who actually was born and raised in Africa then migrated to America if that person’s skin does not contain a sufficient level of melanin (Elon Musk anyone?). Yet no amount of repetition can make someone who did not come from Africa “African-American,” just like no lack thereof can make someone from Africa anything otherwise. The term gets bandied about nonetheless, why? Much like it’s newest incarnation, melanated (which literally means having melanin - a term that applies to anyone other than albinos), it is used because it gives politicians and activists power over those to whom they apply the misnomer, and it is quite the force for fund-raising (think BLM). Notice a pattern developing here?

One might not realize it, but even the word democracy falls into this category. Ask the founding fathers what they established when writing the Constitution, and they would answer resoundingly, “a republic.” It is why the Constitution says that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4). Nowhere in our founding documents will you find the word “democracy” or “democratic” because we do not live in a democracy. James Madison went to great lengths to distinguish between a democracy and a republic when writing in the Federalist papers (specifically numbers 10, 14, 48, and 58). As an example, Madison wrote in the Federalist #48:

In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency, to start up in the same quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.

Why then do we hear constant outcry from elected officials and media moguls about someone or some legislation being a “threat to our democracy?” Such fear-mongering allows them to manipulate the masses. It endows them with power (and it generally doesn’t hurt their party’s campaign coffers either).

The last one(s) I will mention (I’m sure you’ve already thought of many others not covered here) are the words man and woman. That people are now unable (more like unwilling) to define what a woman is to me, frankly, is a matter of mass psychosis. Never in my youth (or even until maybe ten years ago) would I have imagined that the definition of “man” and “woman” could come into question. Nevertheless, here we are. We are now told that these are not objective terms constrained by biological science, but that they are cultural constructs ingrained by upbringing and society. The word “woman” is used to describe a men who claim to not be men or to not feel like men, and the word “man” is likewise applied to women who claim to be of the masculine “gender.” That a neutered male dog is still a male dog should plainly bring to light the lunacy of these claims. Yet again, gender affirming surgery (don’t get me started on the cognitive dissonance involved in even using that term) is big business, to the tune of billions, and like the other fallacious expressions I’ve discussed, gives some people power over others.

That some believe their words can bend reality is akin to believing themselves gods, calling “things which be not as though they were,” as if their use of certain words can create or alter reality. Make no mistake, many do fancy themselves gods deserving of power over the rest of us peons. For others, the use of this terminology is merely a matter of money and manipulation. That people seek such money and power is nothing new.  Unfortunately, there are many dupes deceived and deluded into believing this desecration of our dictionary. Whatever tormented terms twisted tongues may utter, we should all be able to spot this type of lexical contortion quickly and easily. Just remember, milk comes from mammary glands, not macadamias.