I think this also explains some of our political climate. Everything the current administration says sounds like gibberish and equivocation to me, but to its intended audience it is a clear communication about wielding power and grift.
Conversely, when someone talks about "decolonizing" a curriculum or "centering" marginalized voices, to me it's a clear statement about who gets to define meaning and whose history counts, but to my Boomer uncle it's incoherent, if not an outright attack.
You are correct. These types of jargon are signaling specific ideologies which if explained fully would be rejected by rational people. Both sides do this but currently the left is doing it more (was different in the past).
For example, the current energy policies are more environmentally friendly than under previous administrations. This is because of previous admins objections to nuclear power. The environmental movement's pushed energy polices are a bit like trying to trim your monthly expenses by changing to a type of tea that is 5% cheaper but not refinancing your mortgage. This only makes sense to the scientifically literate (in this specific domain), not the wider population (which is why you don't understand it). Yet this position is clearly correct and backed up by a mountain of numbers, data and evidence.
PS This doesn't mean your Boomer uncle has any insight, a broken watch is right 2x a day. It is a sign of just how extreme some parts of the left have become that it seems that way.
Well, I'm glad that only people who agree with you are rational.
> to my Boomer uncle it's incoherent, if not an outright attack.
These are separate things. If he's interpreting it as an outright attack, he _is_ hearing it correctly. But incoherence would imply he's _not_ hearing the coded language in it's true meaning.
> The Russian language has two different words for what most European languages would describe as lies. One is lozh (ложь), best translated into what we consider to be a lie; something that is the opposite of the truth. There is also vranyo (враньё). Vranyo is more than a simple lie. It is described as: ‘You know I’m lying, and I know that you know, and you know that I know that you know, but I go ahead with a straight face, and you nod seriously and take notes.’
Trump is taking a lesson from Putin. Social media makes this extra easy, as you can bury criticism with a hoard of what-aboutism-bots, redirected arguments, and straight up BS.
see also: https://militairespectator.nl/artikelen/vranyo
Yes I too have seen the 2022 Perun video where an Australian Youtuber gives a lesson on Russian linguisics, but I'm not certain he's right.
English also has more than one words for lies - lies, falsehoods, fibs, bs, prevarication.
Yeah sometimes we know stuff is a load of crap at work, but we gotta humour the process. Maybe it's 10x as bad in Russia. But I've seen little independent evidence those words Perun used mean completely different things, I think he's just accidently exhaggerating a possible bit of nuance.
My first language is Russian. I’m not young, so I remember a bit of the Soviet era and many of the paper books I read as a child. I perceive lozh and vranyo as nearly synonymous, depending on the context. The only difference I notice is that vranyo can occur without ill intent, while lozh is told deliberately to deceive.
I found the source of this new alternative interpretation https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-vranyo-russian-for-w...
I call it BS.
> "decolonizing" a curriculum or "centering" marginalized voices
Can you expand on this?
Those are just examples of academic/progressive jargon that I hear often in the Bay Area and in progressive circles. "Decolonizing," could mean for instance changing world history curriculum to cover non-western civilizations. "Centering" seems like maybe it just means focusing on, but there is a whole academic apparatus for designing curriculum around say, indigenous practices, and centering is the word used for that entire concept, which includes specific techniques.
I think to get the full meaning of both, you'd need to be fairly steeped in a world that uses those words all the time AND it is often used to identify people who "get it" from those who don't.
What you write is true but it is also a bit dishonest. You are culling the questionable ideas being signaled out of your explanation. Really no different from MAGA folks who claim Trump is playing 4D chess or people who defended Hans Reiser because he wrote a really great filesystem. People don't tend to believe things that they don't want to be true (even if they are). Specifically, the fact that people who use this jargon actively oppose meritocracy (and thus aren't actually liberals) but instead want a demographically based quota system for all jobs and positions. This is why they abuse statistics and reasoning so badly in their analysis.
If these people weren't able to influence local governmental policies, then it would be fine to leave out the details. However, they are and so leaving out the bad parts of the policies they push is just dishonest and why the other side's propaganda is working so well right now. The biggest problem with that is that it makes politics more extreme (in both directions) and this is generally bad for the rest of us. So next time, don't leave out the actual practical effects of this type of politics and its messaging.