“But if every statement is absolutely false how can we use language to say anything true, or even useful?”

You think the bits being flipped in your CPU need to have objective reference? The computer has no need of that hypothesis, it just computes. It doesn’t need the truth, it just is the truth.

Moreover this is equally true of the assertion of the falsity of aforesaid assertion.

As Nagarjuna and Candrakriti say at length, the conditional arising of beings without intrinsic natures is identical to the unconditional nonarising of beings with intrinsic natures. Where you find causality is precisely where you do not find real substances and vice versa.

The medieval metaphysicians were only taking the implicit logic of mundane speech to its limits, and if they are fools then so are we if we take grammatical convention as a guide to truth. It is not hard to prove by analysis that reality is not made of discrete mutually external entities. Basta!

It is also functionally identical to the medieval idea, which we all smile at now, that degree of reality of a thing is equal to the range of qualities that can be truly attributed to that thing (it’s “perfection”, as they called it).

This is about as naive as thinking you can build a ladder to the sun by piling up chairs: reality is of a fundamentally different order, and this approach to coping with it will disappoint you every time.

And on top of that, this is cause for great joy: it is the root of your ability to perceive, imagine, think and desire at all.

This kind of phenomenon is one of the best entry points I know of into the contemplation of emptiness: reflect on this phenomenon and then understand that your entire mind is made of nothing else but this. It is all lability all the way down because you are impermanence in the flesh.

The thought‘s objective reference is the same and yet its entire interpretation, its motivational and affective sequelae, its valuation and follow-up thoughts, have radically changed because of a bunch of subtle shifts in mood that one normally pays zero attention to.

Nothing external has changed, I have barely changed locations, the content of the thought hasn’t perceptibly changed, and yet the whole valence of the thought has inverted in the space of ten minutes of humdrum routine. This sort of thing happens every day, but we don‘t track it.

It is a locus classicus because it is a pithy statement of the core message of the sutras on transcendental wisdom — and that statement is inadequate, therefore the message of those sutras is inadequate. Not wrong as such, but not the complete view.

One of my favorite frescoes in Verona (I think in the Sant’ Anastasia?) is where one the Scaligeri (I think Cangrande?) is drawn as very tiny next to the giant Jesus. Not subtle.

That and memento mori. During the „Triumph“ (victory parade) in Rome, as a counterpoint to the cheering crowds, a victorious general would have a servant riding behind him whispering to him at intervals „… and you will die“. (Contrast with the modern longevity cult.)

This is why Tibetan Buddhism has found such an audience among westerners people in exactly this position. It has more rituals than you can possibly fit in one life and more deities than you can shake a stick at, each of whom is ultimately an avatar of emptiness as primordial self-arising wisdom.

Why?

Because they think that‘s what everyone is always trying to do and they are anxious and scared about losing advantage. They equate kindness with weakness and want to be strong, which is also why kindness and benevolence and generosity doesn‘t have equal place in their rhetoric with „freedom“.

They might sometimes say or do a nice thing for tactical reasons or because they forgot themselves for a moment, but the point of their advocacy is that they want to always hold in reserve the play-room to be a bastard to other people and license to violate the golden rule with impunity.

So when you see or hear someone rhetorically appealing to freedom, the first thing you should ask is — does this person seem motivated by kindness? Generosity? Benevolence? Responsibility?

If not, then for them „freedom“ means the freedom to be mean, greedy, malevolent, irresponsible.

Another side of this is that Israel is showing governments elsewhere what is possible. If Natanyahu can lead a government openly engaged in genocide and still be a welcome guest in Washington, London, Berlin, that's a very clear lesson to everyone else in power.

There is a fairly short and straight line, it seems to me, between defending the existence of concentration camps in Palestine, and ending up with concentration camps in the United States.