Saturday, March 28, 2009
Evil words, by Mario Roy
Montreal proclaiming "zone free of racism," the mayor Gérald Tremblay invites citizens to fight against this scourge by signing a register, hoping to collect 100 000 signatures. How to be against? However, this laudable initiative can be used to identify three trends - and a little disturbing - that occur in our society.
First, make things more difficult, so it remains only to say. This is the first trend: the word is increasingly replacing the gesture.
The classic example is the "act to fight against poverty and social exclusion", adopted by the National Assembly in 2002. It has created an observatory of poverty, an advisory committee on poverty, a requirement to write reports, opinions, recommendations and strategies on poverty ... Why? Because, in fact, fighting poverty is difficult to eliminate completely is impossible. Hence the extraordinary number of words that poverty generates, without effects on reality.
As for the exclusion, it is a word whose meaning has been crushed for the purpose of "stop" the company "excludes", ie who is guilty and should be "condemned." Question, exclude, denounce: we understand the jargon, even if none of these words is used here in its original meaning. This is the second trend: the misuse of words, sometimes to misinterpretation.
In this regard, the media specialists. Advertise in a newspaper said about "taboo" indicates that we fill pages and pages on a phenomenon that everyone is talking about, everywhere, all the time. Denounce (!) A "snapshot" pourfendre is a commonplace that no one uses, or perhaps even knows. The word "media" sensitize "means burial in propaganda to make insensitive. Refer to the "true objectivity" warns the reader that it will be ignored facts.
However, of all evil words, the swelling is most painful is the third trend.
In the light of single words, in fact, it seems clear that our society is the most racist and most misery that mankind has ever known (the most violent and most misogynist too.) However, a Mayor mood officie activist in a country where rampant racism really does not say so: he made the fight, sometimes at risk of losing its skin. And it does not legislate on poverty where the national problem is to be alive the next day.
Beyond a certain critical mass, the words create a virtual universe that has more than a loose connection with the real world.
Thus, in the register of Mayor Tremblay (who, we hope anyway, burdened with the signatures), it would be fair to note a fact without being free from sin, the Montreal-probably among the least racist in the world .
This is already a zone almost free.
mroy@lapresse.ca
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Labels: Hostile races, Mario Roy, Montréal
# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 12:36 PM 
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