I often come across articles or texts that I feel no need to make my own; they are already perfect as they were originally conceived.
If Words Count for Nothing
By Michele Serra
(The Amaca column, Thursday 8 May 2025, La Repubblica)
The value of words is a highly relative concept.
Those who work with them—teachers, writers, intellectuals, journalists—tend, as a rule, to respect them.
If they realise they have said something wrong, or untrue, it unsettles them, much like a carpenter discovering that his table wobbles.
In politics, evidently, words are not regarded as professional tools.
They do not carry the same weight.
They are devalued, emptied out.
The dreary routine of television soundbites, party by party, is striking for the poverty of its intentions.
It is as though none of those mini-orators aims to truly say anything; as if words were not a precious raw material, not an opportunity one ought to seize.
When words have neither significance nor substance, it is no surprise that lying is met with near-total impunity.
Falsehood is no longer a scandal, neither for the elected nor for the electorate.
Line up Donald Trump’s statements on the Russia–Ukraine war—starting with his inaugural flourish, “We will have peace in 24 hours”—and you will get a string of whoppers.
Things said for the sake of saying something, rambling remarks unmoored from the reality of events or the grave responsibility of those who speak.
Perhaps it is even wrong to call them lies.
Lies imply some reverence for language—as if the speaker considered words a commitment, a labour, a craft.
These, rather, are background noise, filler, at best a caption beneath a portrait.
There is no Polis without Logos, as classical thought teaches us.
And thus, there can be no real politics without respect for what is said.
The devaluation of Logos, in this sense, is a strategy in the devaluation of politics itself, clearing the way for its replacement by force—which has no need for speech.