Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Political Semantics

"Damn Yankees!"
"Damn car!"
"Damn internet!"
"Damn computer!"
"Damn foreigners!"

We curse a lot of things that frustrate us. Literally, we're wishing these annoyances would die (i.e. go away).

Occasionally you'll hear news reports about Iran and the popular chants of "Death to America!" There's been articles too from people who've traveled there that Iranians say "Death to traffic!" and "Death to bicycles!"

Doesn't "damn..." equal "death to..."? But we seem to treat their chants as different from our harangues. Double standard or bias?

It's sort of like executives who create a policy then take exception in their own violations because that's "not what we meant when we created it". As someone once argued, "It's all semantics."

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