ON THE WATER
NEELS BLOM: Power of conflation is a threat to the separation of powers
An entry in the language blog TheBetterEditor reveals the darkening soul of an originally innocuous term: to conflate. It is now a device with which to sow confusion and to exploit innate prejudices. The blog, written by Christopher Daly, was the top result of my Googling of the phrase "conflating the issues", which arose because of a straw-man trick played by just about everyone with a podium and an axe to grind. The trick is performed by beginning an oratory with an emotive issue — say, land — and then conflating it with a straw man of one’s choosing so duplicitously as to modify the meaning of the first term. Thus, when SA’s land issue is argued, farmers who see themselves as vulnerable to land reform will roll out food security as though food, and not land, is the issue under discussion. Others might evoke "the economy" or "rights" or any number of things to match the podium thumper’s agenda. To conflate, writes Daly, is not the neologism. The Oxford English Dictionary cites an ...
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