The Oxford Dictionary has 273,000 headwords, including the 171,476 words in current use, 47,156 obsolete words, and around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries, (A headword is a word that begins a separate entry in a dictionary or other reference work.) I have learned a great deal of respect for words since I took up writing novels in 2007. There is a great deal of power in words, just look at the preamble to the US Constitution. It is indeed a terrible shame that these words are being trampled into the mud these days.

Trying to use words to express my displeasure as to how my elected representatives are ignoring the prospect of modern governmental Fascism, I have recently written my congressman and our newly elected senator, I got back a form letter from the senator but nothing from my representative. So I will break down what my senator has said, and it was not encouraging. I wrote to express my distress at a large number of attacks on Social Security as I am relying on it to help our household finances in my retirement, and especially since the elected officials said it would not be changed or cut. But of course, in these terrible times it is being attacked and changed on a daily basis. Certain extremely rich people have called it a Ponzi scheme and that senior citizens receiving it are parasites. (Talk about how words are being used). After going on, (predictably), how important Social Security is, (was), the letter turned to the massive federal debt, implying that we seniors are to blame for all of these problems because we are living longer. Near the end of the letter, the most telling words were, “I can say with confidence that we don’t have to fear spending discipline—we must embrace it.”

Of course he was talking about cutting Social Security and Medicare, and the greedy seniors who receive funding from what they have put into these programs throughout all of our working lives didn’t matter. Musk and his minions are now rewriting all of the computer code that makes Social Security work, not perfectly, but it does work, and like all new coding there will be problems and of course delays and even a breakdown of the system as a whole. Oops, our bad. Perhaps in a couple of months you will get a deposit or maybe not. And now we will have to privatize it in order to make it work, but that will cost a good chunk of your monthly amount and we are terribly sorry about that. But you understand, I’m sure. We are doing this for your best interests, (you poor stupid parasitical sheep and your dammed Ponzi scheme to rob the federal government). If you think I am exaggerating, just wait for a few more months. I am now desperately making plans to survive with little or no Social Security money, wish me and the rest of us sheep lots of luck, we are really going to need it.

(Some of the very best words ever set down on paper occurred nearly 250 years as the US Constitution. Words that sadly do not have much meaning to some people these days. And it also doesn’t say, We the White People, or We the Rich People, it says simply, in very large letters, We the People.)