I received a sardonic email from a friend this morning.  The writer observed that

“the sun is hot, ice cubes are actually made of water, and blueberries tend to be blue.”

Such observations of the nature of reality, until recently uncontroversial, agreed upon without further ado as “common” by everybody except maybe those under medication in a mental health facility–lately are up for grabs by the lights of the rhetoric dispensed by the President, his press secretary, or his communication organ, Fox News.

This is nothing less than a radical attack upon the basis of language.  What is real is accessible to experience by everyone, and nothing but the impact of the external world upon the body qualifies as reality. Counter-rhetoric attempts serve to plunge society into a vertigo of confusion, and by extension into chaos.

Another friend has said more than once that “liberals” (another group subject to suspicion of disloyalty) really want a nation without borders.  Aside from whether there is in fact an organized group of citizens, who do in fact cultivate such a vision…….. what sense could the concept of “a country without borders” mean?  None at all.  A country by definition has geographical, social, legal, and other boundaries (borders).  Without boundary-limits nothing can have integrity of organization.  Has the speaker temporarily lost his mind?  In a manner of speaking, yes.

Upon consideration it seems the language is another way of expressing a fear of being overrun by immigrants approaching from Central America.  These individuals are fleeing homes in countries greatly impoverished, and riven with gang violence.  They come seeking asylum after concluding that death is the alternative.  My friend overlooks what these impoverished people are saying, out of his fear of the other, those who are not native born.  He is unaware that Central America has been an economic colony of the United States for several generations.  The current social conditions are linked to the consequences of long standing American trade policies.

What is to be done?

We must resist this degradation of language, lying by another name, as the incursion of tyranny.  How are we free unless we resist this overture by a despot, a person who disrespects the rule of law, who repudiates norms, and whose scapegoating of minorities gives permission to racists to visit lethal violence upon individuals?  We must resist. The starting place of resistance is the ballot box.

I feel a kinship with old Heraclitus of Ephesus who took issue with his fellow citizens because they did not fight against the incursion of the Persians.  Ephesus sat out the Ionian revolt in 499-93 BCE and accepted a Persian appointed tyrant. That was what the people wanted. By Heraclitus understanding the essential condition for freedom was independence from tyranny.

“The people of a city should fight for their laws as they would for their city walls.” (138, B44)