Can a language barrier between deplorables and progressives be bridged?

by Lev Tsitrin

Finally, I seem to have figured out why MSM journalists can’t understand me when I try to talk to them about judicial fraud: their concept of legality is so completely different from mine that they simply cannot understand me. To them, I talk gibberish.

Which is strange, given that I use the words “legal” and “illegal” as defined by dictionary.com — namely, “illegal” meaning “forbidden by law or statute” while “legal” is “permitted by law; lawful.”

But this is not how MSMers understand those words — as became clear to me when I listened to NPR’s On the Media episode titled “What the Media Misses by Focusing on the Southern Border” in which the host, Brooke Gladstone, interviewed Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker. In discussing the historical context of the laws governing immigration (starting at 4:56), Brooke interjects at 8:50, saying that Clinton “drew a distinct line between legal immigrants, seen as upstanding, and illegal immigrants, treated as unworthy.”

This lit a light bulb in my head. Brooke’s definition shifts the issue of legality away from law and towards morals, the difference between “legal” and “illegal” becoming that between “upstanding” and “unworthy” — the line that (as all moral categories are), is subjective and blurred, rather than razor-sharp, when drawn by the language of law.

This made crystal-clear why I hit a stone wall every time I try to make Brooke (and other MSMers) understand that judicial sua spontism is a problem worthy of reporting. If it is merely illegal (and judges replacing parties’ argument with the bogus argument concocted to fit their predetermined conclusion is obviously illegal, if “due process of the law” is a law — in fact, to address its illegality, judges had to legalize it in Pierson v Ray by declaring that judges have the broad right to act from the bench “maliciously and corruptly”), and the difference between the legal and the illegal behavior is merely that between “upstanding” and “unworthy,” than what about it? People behave unworthily all the time. What’s the big deal? If, when it comes to immigration, illegality should not count, why should it count when it comes to judging?

This position is perfectly logical — and the discrepancy in perceptions that it causes is rooted in the very meaning of words. What to me is glaringly, fundamentally wrong because “illegal” means “beyond the pale,” to Brooke is but a potentially minor nuisance — if a nuisance at all. Why bother talking about it?

That’s where the disconnect really is. Because the word “illegal” means totally different things to “progressives” (to whom it means nothing — unless it comes to Trump, of course!), and to “deplorables,” and Brooke, and other MSMers are “progressive” — how can I, a “deplorable,” make MSMers understand that illegal judging is wrong — given that to them, illegality isn’t wrong, but at worst is “unworthy”?

That’s a tough one. It is now clear to me that, even during my one-minute encounter with Brooke when we actually talked, I and she talked past each other, unaware of the fact. We spoke two completely different, foreign languages. I used the dictionary.com’s language of the “deplorables,” while Brooke and her fellow-MSMers spoke the language of the “progressives” — and in those two languages the words “legal” and “illegal,” while spelled and pronounced exactly the same, mean totally different things.  No wonder Brooke refuses to talk to me

So can I hope to be a guest on “What the Media Misses by Not Focusing on How Federal Judges Adjudicate Cases” episode of NPR’s On the Media one day? After all, I am just as knowledgeable about the way federal courts operate as Mr. Blitzer is about the border issues — but the gaping disconnect between the dictionary, and the media definition of the terms “legal” and “illegal” blocks the way — both when it comes to common understanding of immigration by the “deplarables” and the “progressives,” and in understanding the need to bring to public’s attention the illegal and fraudulent “sua sponte” judging.

Lev Tsitrin is the author of “Why Do Judges Act as Lawyers?: A Guide to What’s Wrong with American Law“