Monthly Archives: June 2014

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, innuendos, and metanarratives in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 21-28, 2014

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basic American principles:   (see “God-ordained spheres”, below)

blank check: any Dem spending priority. By definition, all Dem spending is profligate, wasteful and boundless.

constitutional balance: when the GOP Congress gets its way.

cosmopolitanism: sneering characterization of Obama’s foreign policy. Meant ironically, especially when coupled with “enlightened”.

God-ordained spheres: the family, the church, the NRA.

heavy-handed: mandatory modifier of “government regulation”.

hypersensitivity: staged emotion on a phony issue, designed to rally the pc crowd. For example, college women and college administrators are now routinely characterized as being “hypersensitive” to sexual abuse charges. Also sometimes known as “playing the race card”.

panic: any Dem social regulation policy or belief. Increasingly used as a mandatory modifier for “climate change”. Aka, hysteria, overreach, hypersensitivity. Any policy Dem policy that the Tea Party opposes is seen as “purposefully, willfully and unnecessarily induced”.

regulatory zeal: any Dem regulation whatsoever. Zeal in this cse is seen as “overreach,” “hubris” or “political agenda”. (see also “heavy-handed,” above)

runaway: any public official, regulatory office, prosecutor or judge making law or public policy that the Tea Party doesn’t like.

unlimited entitlement: a redundancy because all Obama supporters have an unlimited sense of desert, just as all government spending is a “blank check” (see above).

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, innuendos, and metanarratives in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 16-20, 2014

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abdication: all O admin foreign policy, which has conceded all moral and political ground to the jihadists, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and Assad. This charge of pacifism is the binary in the false narrative that our foreign policy must either be muscularly interventionist or isolationist.

control: the only thing “liberals” really want–what the Tea Party incoherently calls “control over our lives.” This “control” is something that can only be “restored” after the Tea Party takes the White House in 2016. (see “restore,” below).

deviancy: the O admin’s determined crusade to make the “normal” seem “deviant” and the “deviant” seem “normal.”

Draconian: any O admin regulation or policy.

greed: the motivating urge of all Gays, who defy nature due to unbridled lust.

hard truths: anything the Tea Party believes in, and, thus by extension, everything the O admin can’t face or even perceive. Part of the GOP’s rhetorical masterplay of fashioning themselves as the “daddy party”.

intrusion: formerly known as “government”.

Munchkin Metternichs: everyone serving in the Obama  State Dept. or foreign policy advisory team.

restore: the Tea Party task after they win the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016: “restore America to itself”. Another doomed search for a lost utopia that never was.

reverse Robin Hood: the O admin’s determined crusade to “make the poor richer and the rich poorer”.

show trials: GOP term for any judicial action against bankers, CEOs, polluters, or Wall Street execs.

squandered freedom: (see “zombie ideas”, below). The entirely fanciful notion that we Obama has “lost” a war that we had “won” in Iraq. See previous incarnations of this meme: “who lost China?”,  “who lost Vietnam?”

world order: interpreted by the GOP as entirely dependent on American power.

zombie ideas: ideas that are are thoroughly discredited, but can’t seem to be killed off. For example, trickle-down economics; “we won the war in Iraq”; “global warming is a hoax”; “our health care system is the envy of the world”, or  “the more unregulated financial markets are, the better they will perform”.

 

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, innuendos, and metanarratives in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 9-15 2014

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anchor of stability (Iraq): nostalgia for a lost world that never was; the fleeting phantom of Middle East peace and stability, rooted in Baghdad

the approved victim scorecard: part of the so-called “victim industry,” this meme is just another version of what used to be sneeringly called “political correctness”. Implies that every liberal position is politically calculated and has no moral center.(See below, “privilege of sexual assault victims”).

crusaders: mocking, belittling term for anyone with a strong belief, taking a principled stand. Thus those who support the free market are said to be taking a common sense, moral stand, but anyone “supporting” (as if it’s a matter of opinion) climate change or inequality, is a crusader. This also implies that such liberals are fighting a holy war.

cronyism: what Dems do when they govern, only “ladling out” (or, see below, “funnel”) benefits to their politically-correct friends. When Republicans do this, it’s just called governing.

frivolity (self-indulgence, silliness):increasingly, almost any policy position or initiative the Obama administration undertakes. Implies that they are amateur and childish.

funneling: what cronys do.

hacks: any Congressional Democrat, administration official, or member of the “lame stream media”.

post-American world: assuming that America has abdicated its position of dominant world power, this is the GOP version of a Hobbesian world where either power or religious fanaticism rule. America as a “pitiful, helpless giant”. This is yet another false GOP binary: either intervene forcefully in Syria, Egypt, Libya, the Ukraine, Iraq, etc. or cravenly disengage. This lack of a middle ground of constructive engagement implies that everyone else in the world is “other”.

privilege (of sexual assault victims): George Will’s particularly vile column suggesting that college women bring sexual assault charges to gain instant social and political prestige and advantage. How long will it be before the GOP starts insinuating that “charges” of slavery are used for political privilege?

trampling: what Dem policies do to democracy, speech, religious freedom, the free market, etc.

 

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, innuendos, and metanarratives in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 1-8, 2014

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American hero: not Bo Bergdahl, who, in Tea Party snap cnsensius opinion, should be summarily executed. Can we please place a moratorium on calling all soldiers “heroes”? After all, if everyone is above average, then being “above average” is just the average. Could we live in a world without “heroes”? Can the media exist in a world where they have to do something rather than either lionize or demonize?

apparatchiks: all government workers and Dem campaign operatives.

Benghazi 2.0: the Bo Bergdahl prisoner release. To the GOP, another smoking gun on the road to impeachment, revealing how Obama is somehow simultaneously  a master plotter, scheming to close Guantanamo, and the most incompetent president ever.

blather and sanctimony:  anything and everything Obama says.

course choice:  euphemism for vouchers

democratization: euphemism for Citizens United & the Koch Brothers’ takeover of the electoral process. In this counter-intuitive argument, unfettered corporate campaign spending translates into greater transparency and more widespread political participation.

domestic politics:  what every one of Obama’s policies and actions “pander” to, as if the GOP is above concern about electability.

extreme regulation: basically, any regulation.

healthcare portability: code language for freeing up insurance companies from state regulation.

gentry liberals: a recycled current version of the old “Chardonnay and brie” label for liberals and Democrats. Implies that the Dems have long since abandoned the working class, and have been captured by the preppy elite. The Tea Partiers describe the lives of these Dem elites with so much intense hatred (and detail), that they seem to be engaged in a form of class envy.

honor: one of the “daddy words” in the moral matrix that the GOP claims ownership of, along with sacrifice, glory, duty, patriot, loyalty, authority, sanctity, etc.

reform: a misnomer and a misdirection, because the GOP doesn’t in any way plan to change anything. A keyword for GOP repositioning and reinvention of the same old principles of market-driven public policy, deregulation, massive tax cuts, and making government small enough to, as Grover Norquist put it,  drown in a bathtub.

usurpations:  any Obama executive order or regulatory policy. Has come to stand for anything he does without Congress.

victory lap: what Obama did in the Bo Bergdahl case. Basically, now used to characterize Obama whenever he takes credit for anything.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, innuendos, and metanarratives in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, May 25-31, 2014

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activist attorneys: like “activist judges”, these lawyers have the audacity to try and change public policy or laws by advocating for social change.

anointed: a mocking term for the self-congratulatory liberal elites, who only hold their positions due to cronyism or political correctness. (aka, “self-appointed”). (see also, “grandees,” below).

forfeited gains:  the rebirth of the “who lost Vietnam?” meme, in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan. The gist is “we had it won, but blew it”. As if.

grandees: liberal elites.

intrusion: what government does, by nature. Implies  that there is no “public” interest, but only “private” freedom, which government intrudes upon, like a home invader. Almost criminalizes the whole concept of government.

isolationist: Obama, except when he’s being a “multilateralist”.  (see below)

level playing field: euphemism for the lowest common denominator–the race to the bottom.  Assumes that regulation should be based on the short-term best interests of those being regulated,  not on that which, from the viewpoint of public interest,  is prudent, reasonable and morally necessary.

multilateralist: Obama, except when he’s being an “isolationist”. “American Exceptionalism” is essentially one-sided.

over-educated (liberal elites): too much of the wrong kinda larning, like them humanities and social sciences.

the muscular successful classes vs. the hyphenated classes: immigrants as losers.

racializing: even mentioning race or putting anything into a racial context. We should all be Colbert-like and not even see race, which would magically make racism disappear.

socialist paradise: sneering characterization of the VA, or any guvment social safety net or redistribution program