Molaskes: Paving and Leading the Way

Everybody who has some say in politics or in the media, has a more or less thorough education in rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech, and has so learned how to use language to manipulate people, especially the vast majority who do not have any rhetoric education, and that this is what you just do. Being able to manipulate others is power, and power corrupts. Always. For who does who they're good at, experiences success. To which our brain responds with hormones that automatize our behavior and push towards intensifying the success behavior. Many in the media and in politics are pretty much hooked on manipulating people. At least as long as those do not catch up on rhetoric. And that the vast majority will not do right that, because they do not undertand it as being as important today as being able to read and write, or because they think it's just nothing meant for them, or finally because they're not able to make time for such learning, in short, that people do not have motivation nor time, that's something the media and politics ensure. To take a quiet moment to reflect on these words thoroughly and by yourself, would be a very good start. A quick note hastily written just right now can work wonders in transforming intention into action. So far for the introduction, now let's talk about "Corona deniers"! No, not about the people so labeled, but about the word itself. "Denier" and "to deny" are entirely manipulative words from the arsenal of eristic, the most spiteful section of rhetoric, comprised of all the dirtiest tricks. All words have what linguistics, the scientific study of language calls a denotation, the basic meaning the word refers to. Many words also have a so-called connotation, an often complex set of things the word implies when used. The word "denier" denotes a person who does not believe something the speaker believes. What it conotes is that the speaker's belief was the absolute and undisputable truth and that the other person was cognitively and/or morally defective and of inferior value. The word comes from the realm of the dogmatic-religious, and always bears this air, it also expresses deep contempt towards the other person, and it implies Social Darwinist fantasies. As things are as they are now, I suggest a word for the defence. Not only against physical violence self-defence is in order, and verbal violence all too easily can lead to physical violence, too. An act of self-defence always has to be as hard as is necessary to minimize the harm for oneself, and at the same time as soft as possible, in order to minimize the harm for the assailer as well, in particular to not exceed the harm over what the attack intended. Thus a defence normally is marked by considerably less brutality than the assault, yet it must be adequate to its force. If you do not defend yourself or your defence is too weak, the violence will reach its sinister goal; if your defence is excessive, the violence also keeps going or will even escalate ever further. The goal is calming down the situation and a return to normality. With this in mind, I suggest that everyone who gets labeled a "Corona denier" responds to that by calling themselves a "Corona realist". This word is appropriate, it is indeed also manipulative and eristic, but only as strong as is needed for the defence in the current situation. And that should suffice, in particular one should not take to returning insults towards those who believe the media and politics, which of course would be easily possible, mirroring the "Corona denier" word scheme. Want some examples? Still relatively harmless but certainly condescending would be the word "Corona sheep" or "Corona sheeple". A more aggressive variant of that would be "Corona zombie". Almost on the level of "Corona denier" would be ""Corona hysteric", "Corona psychotic" or "Corona fanatic". And finally really at its level would be "Corona fool", "Corona imbecile" and the like, or with a political flavor: "Corona fascist", "Corona nazi" or alternatively "Corona Stalinist". All of these would not calm down the situation and lead to a civilized discussion about the facts. "No, I'm just a Corona realist!" THAT is the most appropriate defence against the eristic assault by the media, by politics, and by all those who just parrot after them because they still do not know better, because they're not yet aware of the true power of rhetoric. To summarize: Who gets labeled as a "Corona denier" should call themselves a "Corona realist" in response and REFRAIN from giving the other person "Corona names" in turn. THIS WAY we are most likely to get to a calm and fruitful discussion about the actual facts. Addendum: I wrote above text in the summer of 2020. By now, one could certainly also conter with the construction "PLANdemic denier", provided one does not misunderstand the word PLANdemic as a planned actual virus pandemic, but understands it as the, considering the many compelling indications, almost certainly planned mass-crime that constitutes the Corona Crisis.