“He who controls the language controls the masses.”
Whatever you think of Saul Alinsky, he was on point when he wrote these words in Rules for Radicals (1971). For language is the instrument of thought. What we are forbidden to speak, as well as what we are coerced to speak, influences what we know and believe.
If the goal for conservatives is to maximize individual freedom, as it should be, we must push back hard against language control and thought control. But this is a difficult task. Leftists have dominated the educational institutions, especially college and graduate school, ever since they got thumped by Nixon’s silent majority in 1968 and 1972 and retreated into the academy to continue the long march of the Marxists. They have shaped the lexicon of generations of thought leaders. We must counter-attack with powerful weapons.
Back to Alinsky. Rule 5 of his Rules for Radicals states: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage." This also rings true.
The question is, how do we ridicule the leftist pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook that gets cooked up in academia and handed down to us plebes as the purported truth? Let’s use their own tactic against them and coin a fancy new term: transfactualism. What is transfactualism? On to some definitions.
Transfactualism (noun): the practice of dressing up plainly false or ridiculous assertions as truth.
Transfactual (adjective): plainly false, but dressed up in fancy language, frilly logic or citation to “expert” authority to distract from the truth.
Calling out falsehoods as transfactualisms has the advantage of mocking the most powerful lie perpetrated by the radical left during this season of social disruption. They have told us that gender is a social construct, that a child can choose whether he or she is a man or a woman or nonbinary or gender fluid or whatever. This flies in the face of biology, human nature, and the wisdom of the ancients.
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
So the next time someone claims he was born a man but is transgender and now demands to be called a woman, an appropriate response is to say there is no such thing as transgender, the whole concept is transfactual.
Pushing back against the tyranny of the transgender movement is vitally important because a generation of young people has been indoctrinated to believe they can pick and choose their own gender and, through the miracle of puberty blockers and modern surgical procedures, this fantasy can become fact. What started with seemingly innocuous word games has led to the real world mutilation of young people to advance the cause of destroying long-accepted concepts of gender and the traditional nuclear family.
If you don’t believe this, your information bubble does not include the news about “gender-affirming health care” offered at Boston Children’s Hospital. Why on earth would Boston Children’s Hospital have a Center for Gender Surgery? We really are a society gone mad.
The term transfactual is, of course, applicable in a wide variety of contexts. Whenever a bald-faced lie is pushed as the truth, it can be called out as transfactual. Here are a few examples.
Liberal: The Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation. All those former intelligence agency officials said so.
Conservative: That’s just plain transfactual. Hunter’s lawyer demanded the laptop back, which was an admission that it was his. Even CBS News confirmed it was authentic.
Liberal: You need to get vaccinated even if you had Covid already. It’s the new MRNA technology. Trust the science!
Conservative: C’mon, man, that’s transfactual. I’ve know since I was a kid, you get a virus you develop immunity. It’s better than a vaccine.
So speak out against transfactualism when you encounter falsehoods. And have some fun with it!