It is a necessary corollary, moving from the greater to the lesser, that if propositions have no meaning, the central proposition of post-modern epistemology, then the words that make up the proposition also have no meaning. Deconstructionism destructs meaning, leaving us looking at each other with confused faces like the doomed Babel Local Construction Workers Union. Professional educators are insisting that boys can be girls, 2+2 can equal 5 and that logic is white. Is it any wonder that professional politicians would in turn insist that husbands can have husbands and wives wives, that the unvaccinated are a danger to the vaccinated, that multi-trillion dollar budgets cost $0.00?
Which brings us to the President’s 24 hour, all-you-can-eat word salad bar. Some of us are young enough to know this is not normal, but old enough to know it’s not new. Vice-President and Senator Biden was well known for his longstanding intimate relationship with a certain Mrs. Malaprop. That is, he’s been blundering for decades, hopping about the District of Columbia on one foot as he tried to dislodge the other from his gob. He has, however, since running for and winning the office of the presidency taken it to a whole new level. Just about the clearest sentences to come out of his mouth are those where he goes off script, confessing that he’s afraid to offend his handlers by going off script.
I don’t pretend to know the reason behind all this. I’m not arguing that sinister forces chose him in order to enjoy not a Weekend at Bernie’s but 4 Four Years at the White House. I’m not even arguing that he is seriously cognitively challenged. What I am arguing is that his senseless talk makes perfect sense in a world without sense. To put it another way, he’s actually speaking our language. It is those who insist on explaining with words that words have no meaning that are incoherent. It is those who insist that words have no meaning, and who want to legislate against them, or bar them from social media that are confused, blithering fools.
From the creation to Babel, from Babel to the birth of the Word, from the birth of the Word to Pentecost, from Pentecost to today, language is so much more than a mere tool of communication. It is power and glory. It is death and life. It unites and divides. Assaulting language isn’t just bad philosophy but bad theology, because it is an attack on the Word Himself. The President of these United States, much like those who have gone before him, has embraced and championed not just lies but the wicked lie that there is no truth. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, as He has done before, just may be letting the President become like the idols he worships. Our King speaks, and reality happens. The leader of the city of men, on the other hand, denies reality and can no longer speak.