You'd have to be nuts to call me 'anti-vax'
As someone who has had all the classics jabs: polio, TB, MMR et cetera, I don't view myself as an 'anti-vaxxer'. Yet, according to the modern usage, I am.
If you're ever in some kind of conflict and I'm on your side, the odds are that you'll lose. It's not that I'm a pessimist. It's just that when I survey the grand wars of history and I imagine – utterly anachronistically, I admit – which side I would have fought on, I quickly realise that the odds of me, and my side, coming away from it all without sustaining some serious damage are about nil.
For many years I wondered whether I would have been a Cavalier or Roundhead. I now am certain I would have been a Cavalier. Although Charles had some cheek and, without too much difficulty, could have stopped his head from being lopped off, I feel compelled to stand in the way of priggish progressive Whigs and their tedious teleological concept of history wherever possible. The stylish headwear also appeals.
The same for the Russian Revolution. The Whites never really stood a chance, but still I'd choose to be sitting in their desperate holdouts wondering when the whole bad dream would come to an end. I doubt I would have been overly happy with the answer 'in the 1990s'.
The reason for conservatives' losing streak isn't their physical prowess, however. As studies have shown, right wingers tend to be Giga-Chads with greater upper body strength, especially when compared to their Cheesestring-armed adversaries.
Instead, it is on the battlefield of language where conservatism meets its maker. It's a problem that conservatives have had since around the time when Rousseau put his pie-in-the-sky musings down on paper in the rare moments of free time he had between abandoning his various children (it's not 'society' that corrupts people, Mr Rousseau: it's gits like you).
Nevertheless, time and time again conservatives stumble clumsily onto the linguistic field of battle, whereupon they rapidly concede defeat without realising that a contest of arms had even been pitched. It is for this reason that our lexicon is continually bloated with the ever-inflating word salad of progressivism.
It's why you'll hear alleged conservatives happily talking about gender non-binaries and the hardships of the trans-platypus community. Whereas self-identifying (see!) conservatives would once have held 'God, family, and country' as their watchwords, more often than not they will today proclaim 'all faiths are equal, love is blind, and globalism'.
A more recent example of this shunted itself into the news recently, after months of Tory grandees belching out ‘build back better and preaching about our NHS.
Al Johnson ('Boris' to the unwashed masses), was recorded buying wholesale into the latest dishonest misshaping of our lexicon: that of the 'anti-vaxxer'. Speaking to a nurse, he happily called them 'nuts'.
The definition of the word 'anti-vax' has evolved rapidly in the last few months. Once it was reserved for those opposed to all vaccines. Now it is applied to anyone who is sceptical about vaccines specifically for Covid-19.
As someone who has had all the classics jabs: polio, TB, MMR et cetera, I don't view myself as an 'anti-vaxxer'. Yet, according to the modern usage, I am. It's like calling someone who doesn't like pears, but happily eats everything else on the fruit aisle, 'anti-fruit'. Because I have some reservations about this particular jab, I am tarred with the same dishonest brush.
Were it from the same old screechy leftists, high on their own misconceived moral righteousness, I might not care so much. That it is from the entirety of the nominally 'conservative' government, however, means I am, in fact, a tad alarmed.
If conservatives want to stop losing so many battles, its time they stop unquestioningly using the vocabulary of their ideological opponents. Trapped in a linguistic straitjacket, you can't swing any punches at all.
As for Mr Johnson: hopefully this 'nuts' remark will come back to haunt him like Cameron's infamous 'fruitcakes and loonies' comment. After all, it was these same loony fruitcakes who were ultimately his undoing.
