I Think, Therefore I Am Not

listening to reports about the pro-illegal immigrant march/rally the other day, i was hit by a particularly pithy slogan: "i am not a criminal!"

assuming this placard was carried by an immigrant of the non-legal variety (which it must have been, or else, why bother?), i am left with the question: if a person who does an action which is not legal and is, in fact, a crime, is not a criminal, then who is?

being a blond who was substandardly educated in a failing quasi-suburban school system, i decided to consult my favorite navy blue dictionary. it does, in fact, define a criminal as someone who- hold on for this shocker- has committed a crime. woooooooooooooooooa...

so, here's the math: sneaking across our border in the dead of night, or when the border agent's back is turned, or paying someone to smuggle you in their trunk or oil tanker or flower delivery van, or whatever, which is ILLEGAL= breaking a law= committing a crime=you are a criminal. am i missing something here?

why do people get to redefine words that were perfectly clear in the first place, just to further their own agenda? and why doesn't anyone catch on? if i held up a sign that said i was a 7'1 black man, would i get drafted to the NBA and offered 67 gazillion dollars a season? i had a friend from africa (parents were missionaries) who happened to be white. when he put "african-american" on his financial aid forms, he was screamed at, ridiculed and threatened, even though HE WAS AFRICAN-AMERICAN!! and he was told by the befuddled financial aid officer something like, "you might indeed be african-american in a certain sense, but that is not who this financial aid money is for..." huh? so african-american means only black people who have never ever in any generation they have known, even been to africa? oooooooooooooooooooooh, beg pardon...

okay, in this whole p.c. culture i get that a baby is a fetus if it is not wanted, and a baby if it is. discrimination based on race is affirmative action if you are for it, and discrimination if you are against it. temperature fluctuations are global warming if you believe the hype, and normal seasonal variations if you have been alive longer than 10 minutes. but why doesn;t anyone seem to notice? is this a case of "you can fool most of the people most of the time"? where is the line between use of language to spin an issue and just outright wrongness that flies in the face of reason?

if this man had said i don't want to be thought of as a criminal, i get that. if he had said it is not fair to make me a criminal (even though he made himself a criminal, but whatever...), okay- i hear it. if they were marching around saying decriminalize immigration- fine. but saying that he really is a criminal is not, in my humble opinion, any different than saying that i have hair on my head. it is an unbiased non-judgemental statement of fact. if i don't like that fact, i can certainly do something to change it, but I HAVE NOT CHANGED THE REALITY MERELY BY CLAIMING THAT IT IS NOT WHAT IT IS.

so, why do so many latch on to these slogans when they are objectively false? and why can't i just say, "i'm so thin" and fit into a size 2? i think i'll go shave my head for inspiration...