Not
saying what we mean
I dislike euphemisms.
They’re not only evasive, lazy, and distasteful but I also believe
they’re dangerous. When we stop calling
things what they really are I think we’re in trouble.
If we engage in out-sourcing, for
example, our gross national product suffers, our trade deficit grows, we lose
American jobs and expertise, and we make our economic competitors wealthy.
If we go off on an armed intervention, we risk
committing collateral damage to innocent humans while attempting to neutralize
insurgents and some of our own young troops might even become casualties
due to friendly fire.
When our politicians no longer lie to us, but rather simply misspeak,
when illegal aliens become merely undocumented, when hospitals and rest
homes have negative patient care outcomes, when life jackets become personal
flotation devices, when gambling with the rent money becomes innocuous gaming,
when abortion is only family planning, when a workforce
is simply downsized–well, I could go on until the full-figured lady
sings–when embracing convenient euphemisms becomes habitual in our society, I
believe something is fundamentally wrong.
To me, one of the most reprehensible euphemisms to crop up in recent
years is transitioning. There
have always been many euphemisms for dying but most have been benign, intended
simply to ease the grief of those left behind.
Pass away is a good innocent example. At the other end of that
spectrum, brutally doling out death has been euphemized as ethnic cleansing, which
can be accomplished with everything from old-fashioned machetes to ingenious anti-personnel
devices.
Transitioning sounds so
peaceful and innocent. But if we can say
grandmother transitioned recently, is it so great a leap to claim Adolph Hitler
only facilitated
the transitioning of six million Jews?
He also efficiently transitioned the mentally
challenged and the differently abled and the politically
incorrect. You might even say he
was one of the first equal-opportunity transitioners.
I think I’ll write a short story about a character with much more modest
aspirations than what drove the likes of Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. My new character only effectuates the transitioning
of one soul at a time, sometimes for remuneration, but often
just for personal fulfillment.
I’ll call him Transition Man.
Phil
