Words matter. And terms like "Food Insecurity" are ridiculous and trivialize important issues.

[EEO]

This is the image that has provoked this response:

It's hunger. It's poverty. Let's not drape it in desensitizing terms.

This is the type of word game people use so we don't have to look at ourselves in the mirror objectively. And such tactics are also used to trick people into supporting policies. Let's get rid of the "death tax," despite the fact the vast majority of people don't have to pay it. "Trickle Down Economics" works because the "job creators" aren't greedy bastards who horde their money, but spread the wealth around like little gift giving fairies and make jobs sprout out of the ground like daisies. The Republicans have clearly mastered this game, but liberals play it too and I don't find it clever or helpful.

Both politics and law make me distrustful of language and this is why.

[Warpy]

1. Hunger? Try slow starvation

because that's what starvation wages mean and too many people are earning only enough to starve on.

Even with food stamps, they're starving, especially since the Republicans "sequestered" much of their food stamps into oblivion. Need more food? Get another nonexistent job and give up sleep. Work more! Work harder! You're only hungry because you're so lazy!

"Food insecurity" is one of those Bowdlerized terms that make yuppies in suits a little more distant from the faceless, nameless people who prop them up every day doing the miserable jobs from fast food to retail to cleaning their offices in the middle of the night.

Call it what it is. Call it starvation.

[Dont call me Shirley]

2. How about Nutrient Deficient?

[Hortensis]

3. Reportedly, when the GOP was getting slammed by global warming realities, the GOP coined the term

"climate change" and instructed everyone to use that constantly instead of the alarming "global warming." "Climate" because it evoked pleasant thoughts, instead of heat, and "change" because change is mostly something that just happens, without the connotation of being man-made. They flooded the media with the term, and not only the media but most of the people fighting for action on climate ended up using it as well, i.e., using this GOP tactic to undermine their own message. I'm now back to using "global warming" myself, and no game.

Let's face it, the GOP has managed to use this tactic to reframe virtually all issues from a conservative viewpoint. Or as the right might put it, hunger isn't really about hunger at all (not that they use that word, ever), it's about promoting personal responsibility and stopping the moral decline of our nation by taking a balanced, common sense approach. All code words, well understood by conservatives, for "do nothing." Because it's the right thing to do.