Goebbels would be proud.

But I can't just flatly reject the dictionary. Using it as a reactionary cudgel to freeze the language, sure I reject that. And I think dictionaries deserve to be kept up to date, so I would have to respond that an up-to-date dictionary really is a proper arbiter of meaning.

A lot of what ails us now is several decades of a concerted effort to redefine the language in favor of conservatism, from the fanciful mythology of "trickle-down economics" with its happy-sappy imagery of pretty boats rising on a tide, to redefining financiers as "job creators". The propagandists of the right really poisoned the well; they didn't just destroy the minds of their own followers, they got us all confused. I feel like I'm waking up from a bad dream when I remember that I'm proud to be a liberal, or a progressive, or hell, frankly things have gotten so bad I'm comfortable calling myself a "socialist" (as Bernie says, in the mold of that evil old radical Dwight Eisenhower with his communistical spending on highways and education and the damfool like).