By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s interesting how many times I’ve read the word “big” this week, how many times the most serious buzzwords have taken center stage, attempting to redefine the old, recognize and respond to the new, their linkage still muddy but coming into focus. The fixity of our big energies in Leo and Scorpio, aided by the coming Aquarian Full Moon, give a sense of finality to the moment. The cardinal signs originate, the mutables communicate the process, and the fixed signs complete. There’s nothing new under the sun, of course, just wash, rinse, repeat, but these repeating cycles can plow new territory if we allow, inching us along. Will we simply repeat what is old this time around, or can we initiate something new?
It was ‘big’ when The New York Times editorial board wrote a recent op/ed endorsing the legalization of marijuana. NYT, known to many as the Grey Lady, is the most authoritative of America’s newspapers, even during a period when all news is suspect for being profit-driven and aligned with establishment politics. But it’s worth taking a look at the words we use in even the most renowned publications, because they define our ability to be truthful with ourselves.
What’s in a word, you ask? Well, in advance of the release of CIA records requested by Diane Feinstein* — up in arms over spying on legislators, if not Americans in general — Obama admitted, a BIG admission, it turns out, that the U.S. had “tortured some folks.” That prompted the Grey Lady to announce that from now on it would use the word “torture” when describing interrogation techniques used to purposefully inflict pain on a prisoner in order to get information. Up to this point it had refused to use the word. The words preferred — like “brutal interrogation” — didn’t have quite the same oomph that deliberately putting an adversary in torturous agony provides. Perhaps now AP and Reuters will follow. What’s in a word? Truth.