I remember in college English class, thinking that all this post-modern talk of words & language reflecting power & hierarchical social structures to be academic mental masturbation. But having lived in the "real" world for more than a decade after college, I now see that language & words actually do have tremendous influence in shaping events, ideas, people, and public policy. "Compassionate Conservatism" is a great example of 2 words that did wonders to mask almost a decade of public policy doing exactly the opposite....

@iSSUE,

Nice post. But, ok, why stop the insight there? Perhaps the word 'human' is a farce term-miffication for an aggregately named anatomical and semi-cerebral individual, like, say, you, or me, or anybody. Doesn't every word play the same 'what's in a name' game...?

Yeah, so it's just rhetorical training at issue here. Political niceties that use targeted 'guided missiles' called words, repeated ad nauseaum, to crowd control the many perceptions that could far better explain those gaping wounds and ulcers and dead - and indeed worse, deliberately maim, 'shock and awe' any contrary memory/history surrounding those experiences.

Alas, 'issues' are termed thus for efficiency. Said gobbledegook at least gets a an 'A+' for practical political resolution - albeit not necessary a good answer at all, of course. But hey, that's politics. Give me a pill, spiritual retreat, hot bath, a new app, condo, commission, war, revolution, embargo, tariff, sex change, mag and martini, please...

Meanwhile, to what landmark have we to swim in an ocean of experience? Pin the tail on who's asinine donkey?

Eating complexity for the sake of simplicity or vice versa is the way of the word. The alpha-beta of life...

So best choose the 'issue' that suits best your own political pragmatic ideals/agenda. Accident, mistake, genocide, conspiracy? Neither/nor, both/and, either/or...?

Or just a mere tragedy staged for comic relief to describe hopeful disillusionment at best as civilization attempts to tame the leviathan or beast within. Ha! Between thought and action lies the how-to (policy) manual... at issue!

I wonder whether Socrates willingly drank the hemlock as would any do-good suicidal martyr to stop those curious voices of basic inquiry in his head, upon which Plato felt obliged to share in print so we can all read in enduring pathos, hereafter - to learn a lesson of history, perchance?

In summa, did he provoke literary insight into Platonic ideas against those ever sincere well-intentioned democratic mobs that still must judge the just, however imperfect the idle chatter.

Knowledge thus is the willingness to collect (imperfect) information. And, I'd suppose, acting with wisdom simply means you know it's imperfect but tried to be 'fair' within your own terms of endearment - meaning, whatever people let you get away with and who didn't bother to sufficiently re-define the terms.

Maybe calling it an 'issue' is just provisional speak, just general enough to prevent scope creep of the seven headed hydra that often fogs and fetters the fairy-land of "other issues" between so-called clear thinking and doing. Anyway, that's the stance of this pathological optimist.

Words are the weapons of wonder for our social imagination that inevitably define the terms and issues of happenstance governance for our ruling civilization - and, oddly enough, all words derive from the alphabet - a code where each letter is at once manifestly material/physiological and metaphysical/symbolic.

Meanwhile,'All kites Observed'. Sweet - depending on open skies.