Language and what we each perceive as Reality reflect one another. When our perceptions and understanding of Reality are turned upside down, language accommodates to reflect that. The reverse is just as true. We get expressions such as “alternative facts” from such inversions. Language can be used to create warped Realities in which the meanings of events and arguments get bent, spindled, twisted, and mutilated.
This occurred to me earlier this evening as I watched a clip of Rep. Eric Swalwell questioning anti-abortion activist Catherine Glenn Foster. He asked her whether an intervention to end the pregnancy of a 10-year-old rape victim was an abortion. Ms. Foster replied that it would not be an abortion because of blah, blah, blah.
I’m watching this nonsense trying to understand what she means with her absurd answer, and that’s when I suddenly realize. That procedure in a 10-year-old child wouldn’t be an abortion because it is a Banana or possibly a Hotdog. No wait! It would probably be a Turtle.
Sometimes a cigar, Sigmund Freud is said to have quipped, is “Just a (fucking) cigar.”