Word Smiths

American political system revolves around public perception. Anyone who could sculpt perception the way one wants is the winner. Political parties employ such people (who are good at changing public perception) to edit interviews, speeches, behavior and even dressing to drive their political philosophy. Usual techniques involve merging their philosophy with things that are already popular with public, creating public sympathy, canvassing using heroic or charismatic figures etc. There is one technique however I found really intriguing, not sure if there is a term for that, I call the people who do that as “Word Smiths”. I define word smith as a person who could change public opinion for a particular word. For instance antonym of the word good is bad, a word smith can start using the word “evil” instead of “bad” as an antonym for “good”. So whenever someone says “Not good”, public will think of “Evil” instead of “bad”. You can realize how much of a difference that makes. (Bad policy – Evil policy, Bad system – Evil system or even Bad tool – Evil tool).

One of the words, the word smiths have successfully redefined is “Socialism”. Somehow the word “Socialism” now means “Welfare state”. Socialism as a political system has its share of pros and cons, which can be debated. Word smiths have made people argue about the pros and cons of a welfare state under the name of socialism. What is socialism really??... Let us start with that.

Wikipedia defines socialism as an economic system as the organizational precept of production for use, meaning the production of goods and services to directly satisfy economic demand and human needs where objects are valued based on their use-value or utility, as opposed to being structured upon the accumulation of capital and production for profit. In a socialist economy, coordination, accounting and valuation would be performed in kind using physical quantities, by a common physical magnitude, or by a direct measure of labor-time in place of financial calculation. (To each according to his contribution). Socialist movement includes State Socialism and Libertarian Socialism. State socialism calls for nationalization for the means of production as a strategy while libertarian socialism calls for decentralized means of democracy such as municipals, trade unions, assemblies that calls for anti-authoritarian stance. (Yeah, something Ron Paul talks about!) Other socialist movements include liberalism, environmentalism, feminism etc. The socialistic critique of capitalism is that it concentrates power and wealth within a small segment of society that controls the means of production and derives its wealth through economic exploitation. This creates unequal social relations which fail to provide opportunities for every individual to maximize their potential and after a certain stage of development, fails to utilize available technology and resources to their maximum potential due to restrictive property relations.

We do not see any meaningful conversation beyond what the wordsmiths have already set, so much so that even the basic definition is long forgotten. I now see the same technique being applied to scientific terms too. The scientific term “Theory” is being changed to mean “Hypothesis”. Hypothesis is defined as a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon or prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena, while a Theory can be defined as a well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven hypotheses based on certainty, verification and repeated testing. When you hear the phrase “Theory of Evolution” used in a national conversation, it is used in a way to suggest “The hypothesis of Evolution”, thanks to the word smiths. Same goes for the “theory of global warming”. I wonder if they want to dumb things for their strategy or eliminate a real conversation once for all. Is it a conscious effort to divide people who bother to read and investigate (so called elites) and people who are heavily influenced by the national media? Whatsoever I do think the word smiths are winning.