“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me” – a comforting wee rhyme to hear from your parents when you were a child, but it wasn’t true then and it certainly isn’t now. Even at a tender age, we could only ever believe it for that specific time when our loved ones were doing their best to protect us from some childhood cruelty, making us momentarily feel better and, in a way, teaching us that we had to toughen up our emotions to defend ourselves against the hurtful words and deeds of others.
But words are important, they carry meaning, even in this era of “fake news” or “post-truth” – aka “lying” – as demonstrated on a daily basis by our expensively (under) educated establishment “masters”. I’m thinking particularly, though not exclusively, here of the oleaginous Gove, the obsolete Rees-Mogg, and all the other over-promoted right-wing lackies serving under whoever it is that actually controls the sock-puppet (current) British Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson… Since it’s unlikely that any of those charlatans are going to change their behaviour any time soon – and why would they since they’re getting away with it unchallenged? – it’s down to all of us to consider their words carefully. Two clichés or truisms immediately spring to mind: “Question – How do you know if a politician is lying?