Language – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Meaning. It means so much. So do the words that deliver it to us. But remember, there was meaning before we constructed words into language. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading comes on the final day of a weird and wacky 4th of July weekend in the U.S when an often mean Mother Nature reminded us who is really in control no matter which words we choose or manipulate to pretend we are. It was kinda fun to watch. There’s also a few interesting pieces about America’s founding, and the myths and the meaning behind it all.

Kicking it off is a short piece from JA Westenberg asking Remember When Words Had Meaning? What comes first the distortion of language or the devaluing of the culture that employs them?

Speaking of meaning, Jack Loftus gives us The U.S. Constitution Is For Simple Folk Still Burdened By The Belief That Words Have Meaning. You can argue it was always thus, but we sure do spend an awful amount of time, energy and money arguing the opposite.

In this age of WTF, it has become an accelerating trend to see pieces disemboweling many of the myths we assign to the founding of America around the 4th of July. We used to share common myths more than we did a common history, but now even the myths get mangled. So it’s no surprise when the powers that currently be toil to rewrite both. Noah Berlatsky‘s The Constitution Sucks is a good example of how we can forever flip the coin looking for the right result, ignoring the edge.

T.H. Breen takes a look at some of the too often un-heralded folks and local movements during America’s revolutionary war period in It Wasn’t Just The Founders.

John Warner offers up For The Fourth, 9 Books For Your Sense Of Patriotism, saying “I’ve come to (personally) understand patriotism as a not a fan-like allegiance to a team, but a responsibility to understand the country’s history, warts and all as we pursue the illusive promise of life, liberty and happiness for all from the Declaration.” The key is knowing we all “come” to understanding.

Will Frivolous Charges Be Brought Against Future Ex-POTUSes? That’s Okay Too by Josh Marshall offers up an excellent piece on how we can twist and morph words in a legal context that shift the ground under most mythical mountains like “no man is above the law. “

Speaking of words and meaning, the bad guys seeking to survive a legal onslaught ahead of what they fear is a political tsunami coming for them are trying to rekindle old fears about communism and socialism as their latest talking points. Not sure those old saws will cut the same way they used to, but it demonstrates just how limited the dictionary is. David Todd McCarty takes a look behind the hooting and hollering in Democratic Socialism: Keeping The Great American Experiment Alive.

And in a quasi-hysterical look at shifting meanings and changing words, Rogé Karma is wondering Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Universal Basic Capital’. The quasi-hysterical part is that it’s coming from the AI market masters and a few politicians substituting the word “capital” for “income” following the words “universal basic.” Language is hard. When you can say anything to get what you want.

And in another word substitution, Doc Searls suggests we shift from an “attention economy” to an “intention economy.” Check out The First Source Of Personal Intent. I’m not sure the meaning changes with the substitution.

(Image from Alexandra on Unsplash)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affiliate links.

It’s only business they say. Nothing personal. That’s the way the world works. Well, what I share each week in Sunday Morning Reading always comes from a place of personal interest. That may not be how the world works, but it works for me and I hope it does for you. Call it a small act.

In the wake of the continuing and confounding ICE occupation of Chicago comes a terrific piece by Kyle Kingsbury called I Want You To Understand Chicago.

Follow that up with a ProPublica piece by Melissa Sanches, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella and Mariam Elba about the nighttime raid on a Chicago apartment building that featured men rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters, and all of the residents emptied on to the streets with many of their belongings. The punchline is in the article’s title, “I Lost Everything”; Venezuelans Were Rounded Up In A Dramatic Midnight Raid But Never Charged With A Crime.

A Nation of Heroes, A Senate Of Cowards by Will Bunch calls it like it is and much the way I see things after last weekend’s actions in the U.S. Senate.

Growing up, I never understood the cliché, “it’s nothing personal, it’s only business.” Frankly I still don’t. It excuses too much that I find wrong about the way the world works. Charles Broskoski examines the personal side in Personal Business.

And speaking of the way the world works (or doesn’t) in the midst of the Epstein fever I don’t think we’ll ever shake, Sarah Lyons points out that the violence in his and others’ actions is something we all live with in This Is How The World Works. It shouldn’t be.

Corbin Trent says We Didn’t Kill American Manufacturing—We Let It Die. He’s spot on.

Mark Jacob tells us How News Coverage Eases Us Into Tyranny. However this saga we’re living through ends up, one thing is for certain. The media has killed any chance of returning to what it once was.

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t read of some nefarious business practice spilling out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. Turns out Meta is knowingly leeching off of scammers to the tune of about 10 percent of its revenue. I guess that makes Meta and Zuckerberg a scammer too. Cath Virginia has the writeup with Meta Must Rein In Scammers — Or Face Consequences. I doubt they will.

The Internet Archive is under attack in the same way libraries, media organizations, and text book publishing is. It shouldn’t be. Mathew Ingram has the lowdown in The Internet Archive Should Be Protected Not Attacked.

On a more positive note, Jeff Veen tells us how Small Acts Build Great Cultures. Boy, do we need lots of small acts these days.

To close out, did you ever wonder where collective nouns like “a watch of nightingales” or “an ostentation of peacocks” come from? For many years it was assumed that the anonymous author of this collection of collective nouns was the work of a “gentleman of excellent gifts” written down in one of the first books printed after the invention of The Gutenberg Press, The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blazing of Arms. Turns out the author was a woman named Juliana Barnes. Maria Popova has the story in A Parliament of Owls And A Murder Of Crows: How Groups Of Birds Got Their Names, With Wondrous Vintage Illustrations By Brian Wordsmith.

(Image form Ganesh Narahanan on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.