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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Would you draw the same linguistic distinction if I say a man is a thief, when he's accused of embezzling from his employer by having supplies charged to the company but sent to him? Or if I say he's a thief when he convinced a senile old woman he was her son who went MIA in Vietnam and she willingly gave him her savings?

For that matter I have no problem with a fentanyl dealer being charged with murder, as the killer of my neighbor's son is currently being sentenced.

Hmmm, 'thief' is a little more broad, but yeah it does have connotations of stealing an old lady's bag. I'd prefer embezzler or fraudster in both those cases.

I agree we could use more linguistic precision in distinguishing between a violent rapist and one who operates by fraud (either deception or taking advantage of those without the capacity to make choices on their own). But alas, we lack the language.

I have been doing my best to add "whoremonger" to my own vocabulary, as the insult I apply to eg Deshaun Watson when discussions of such come up. "I don't care whether he did it or not, I still wouldn't want my team to spend nine figures on a whoremonger."

The problem here is that sleeping with a 12 year old isn't a central example of anything. Rape, diddling, pedophilia, molestation, predator, there's just not a good term for it.

A quick Google search indicates that "theft" has for many centuries been a generic word that covers larceny of physical items, embezzlement of entrusted funds, and taking of money through false pretenses. Is larceny the central example of theft, so that calling an embezzler or a fraudster a thief is misleading? I'm not sure.

But "killing" someone by consensually selling to him drugs on which he happens to overdose definitely is not a central example of murder.

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