Politics is Corrupting Language, Monkeypox Failures & Trump in Final Form

In this episode, Alex rants about a midterm strategy that could backfire on the Democrats.  Then he discusses how a man traveling to Indonesia was fined almost $2000 for “smuggling” a McMuffin in his luggage and did not declare. Alex then discusses Trump’s return to D.C. in which he has reached his final form of hate, fear, and grievance. He also had some wild ideas about how to deal with the drug crisis and homelessness. Also, the next big fire in California has its own weather and is a harbinger of things to come. For the remainder of the episode, Alex discusses how the Monkeypox virus has created a crisis in the United States and the public health system seems to be worse off than it was before COVID-19. Alex also discusses how while the WHO has declared this a health emergency, many in the United States are struggling with how to communicate its risks to the public. The Atlantic discusses how “As monkeypox cases rise in the U.S., public officials are scrambling to balance concerns about stigmatization with the fact that the disease is largely affecting gay and bisexual men.” Alex argues that it is more important to actually call the issue what it is and focus resources and messaging on the actual people that are getting impacted by the virus. He turns this into a bigger issue of how public officials are more concerned with terminology than action. He relates this back to Politics and the English Language by George Orwell. Orwell notes that language can be used by politicians or opportunists to mean whatever you want it to. He discusses how if thought can corrupt language, language can also corrupt thought.