How the Democrats win political battles by changing the language

Nearly two weeks after the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that might overturn Roe v. Wade, Dem leaders know that their party members--depressed by inflation and a president beset by many mental stumbles--are highly motivated by the fear that overturning Roe will make abortion illegal nationwide, so they're doing everything possible to stoke those fears.

By contrast, Republican pols have assumed a defensive crouch.  They know they going to be asked about their stance on overturning Roe, and see no way to answer without losing support.

Dem strategists are eager to exploit that, as detailed in "messaging materials" Dem leaders have given to House members of their party.  That guidance urges Democrats to win the issue by...changing the language.

For example, the very term "abortion" is disfavored.  Instead the Dem want their members (and the Media) to substitute "reproductive health-care."

The caucus has changed Bill Clinton's phrase that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” instead substituting “safe, legal, and accessible.”  

Dem leaders saw Republicans trying to insert so-called “conscience clause" provisions in federal bills, allowing doctors who opposed abortion to decline to perform it.  The Dems didn't want any doctor to be able to make that choice so they've termed that “refusal of care/denial of care” and want it to be a crime.

As the Democrat leaders have defined the language, they call all opposition to unrestricted abortion “criminalizing healthcare.”  After all, who could support “criminalizing healthcare,” eh?  Of course to make that work they have to get people to accept that abortion is "reproductive health-care."  And as noted above, they're close to getting that win.

For decades the Left has known that they can win political wars by simply substituting fluffy, anodyne terms for what their policies really do.  In effect they baffle gullible voters by changing the language.  And time after time, they've succeeded.  

Take, for example, "infrastructure."  For decades Americans recognized this as highways, bridges, airports, railroads and the like.  But when biden*harris were installed, suddenly the new "infrastructure bill" included hundreds of billions of dollars for something the Democrats called "social infrastructure."

If that term isn't familiar to you it's because the Dems just invented it last year.  As one particularly obnoxious Dem senator defined it, “Paid leave is infrastructure.  Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” They simply redefined the word to support what they wanted to get taxpayers to fund.

Democrats have also been going all-out trying to outlaw words that contain some form of the word "man." Universities are banning the use of “mankind” in research papers and dissertations.  Professors have banned “right-hand man” and “gentleman’s agreement,” because such bans attract lots of self-obsessed feminists.

Democrats still haven't gotten people to use “peoplekind,” "fireperson" or "policeperson" but they're working on it.  They have yet to find a word to substitute for "mistress" so they're trying to ban it altogether, as they did with "actress."  A lot of folks have a hard time understanding why "actresses" wanted to junk the female suffix (spoiler: real actresses didn't; it was the womyns' studies departments that demanded this.)

Dems found that most Americans opposed giving ten-year-olds hormone-blocking drugs, then sex hormones for the opposite sex, and finally cutting off perfectly good body parts.  So the Dems found their solution: from now on all those things were to be called (and defined as) “gender-affirming care.”  The phrase "sex-change operation" too clearly described what was being proposed, so they decided to call it "gender-affirming surgery."  Much better!

When polls showed that most Americans opposed allowing biological males to compete against females in sports, the Democrats discovered that opposition dropped dramatically if they claimed opponents of their policy were actually "preventing students from participating in school sports."  Because that would be mean, eh?  Oh wait, males could compete in any sport--against other males.  Of course being "prevented from participating in school sports" was never the issue, but phrasing it that way garnered much more support.

And of course both the Obama and biden regimes banned government agencies from writing or uttering the term “illegal aliens,” demanding that “temporarily undocumented Americans” be used instead.

Requiring voters to show photo ID was called "suppression of minority votes," as it was apparently too hard for minorities to obtain photo ID even if it was offered for free.  Apparently none of the oppressed minorities fly on commercial airlines or rent apartments, both of which require photo ID.
 
Democrats have found that if you don't like a bill, you can stoke opposition by giving it a catchy fake name, knowing the Mainstream Media will push it endlessly.  Example: Most Democrats believe Florida's bill barring state teachers from discussing sex with their students before the 4th grade really was titled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

So what happens if the Dems give something a catchy name, but later events show that name to be a joke?

Not to worry!  Just change the now-ridiculed name.  Thus what was once called “global warming” (allegedly caused by "greenhouse gases" like CO2) became ridiculed after a string of record-cold winters.  The Dems knew that if they changed the name of the alleged "crisis" to "global cooling" everyone would see the scam, so they went to “climate change” almost overnight.  That way whatever happens they get to claim a win.

Interestingly, CO2 is still called a "greenhouse gas," and the Dems are shrieking that it's gonna kill all life on Earth in ten years, so it looks like they're still betting on "warming."  Not sure what they'll do if the globe actually cools.

In any case they're now pressuring their media friends to close off that possible embarrassment by just calling it a  “climate crisis”--though they're also pushing "climate emergency" after focus groups found it got more reaction.

The Democrats also know how to deal with people who don't buy the scam: they're derided as "not believing the Science."  Of course that lost its punch when PhDs in atmospheric physics began to voice doubts about global warming, so the Left neatly switched to "climate denier."

That sticks, because even dumb people realize that yes, there *is* a climate, so anyone who denied that could obviously be ignored.

The beauty of re-defining terms is that it enables Democrats to avoid having to debate issues--and indeed, to prevent other groups from even having seminars to discuss those issues--by getting mobs of thugs to scream the catchy new terms in unison.  If your policies are disastrous, far better to shout down your opponents than to debate 'em.