For the better part of the past twenty-odd years, I’ve begun most of my classes with a prompted freewrite. A statement by 20th-century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is not only a go-to prompt but an oh-so-apt declaration for our times: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Wittgenstein’s words stress how language defines what we can and can’t think, tantamount to shaping our reality. And the man should know, as he lived during the Third Reich, a regime that achieved its cruel success in no small part by controlling German discourse.

The American regime in power for a precipitous second reign is working overtime to not only disappear words but to pervert their meaning—no less than a hallmark of authoritarian rule.

Within the first 100 days of that rule, MAGA

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