Monthly Archives: March 2016

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 24-28, 2016

Posted on by
Reply

America First: America no longer “leading from behind,” and “losing internationally, but, instead, dictating the terms of trade deals, bullying foes into submission through overwhelming military force and torture, and blackmailing nations into submitting to US will. Another Superpower delusion.

Cheerleader-in-Chief: Trump’s version of Presidential leadership.

Cuban opening: Obama’s dorm-room enthusiasm for Che turned into American foreign policy. Coddling the tyrants.

faith-based justice: Ted Cruz’s legal framework. 

As this website points out,:

No one on the council represented any non-Christian religions nor any of the LGBT-inclusive or even more moderate Christian denominations. With Ted Cruz as president, it seems the only religion that will have any liberty is his particular conservative brand of evangelical Christianity.

It’s fascinating how a supposedly “objective” bedrock principle such as Constitutional Law can be based on faith, an unproven, wholly interpretive concept. (see also, “fear and loathing,” below).

fear and loathing: the core Trumpinista emotions. Explains their black and white dichotomies: winning/losing, us/them; telling it like it is/political correctness; making/taking, etc.

Herself: HRC.

“I don’t necessarily agree with his position on….”: How Trumpinistas frequently qualify their endorsement of Trump. This is usually followed by “but I know he won’t back down and he’ll fight for me.”

inner-city poverty: caused by the lack of “spirit” in “the Blacks,” according to the Donald.

Islamophobia: a junk term, akin to “climate change”, the female wage gap, or “evolution”. These are all Lib-Dem fairy tales.

life: a zero-sum game, with winners and losers (aka, “discards”) and no one in between. In The Donald’s  cruel black and white Darwinian world, success is defined in terms of money and power, and always comes at someone else’s expense. This is why he can’t just disagree with people but has to insult them. This is why he must smugly dominate every political issue. This is why he can lie and twist the facts. Life as total war, and Trump as the ultimate alpha male.

political correctness:  the Lib Dem’s free-floating world of ignorance and moral narcissism.

respect: respect the Trumpinistas’ anxiety; submit to their taxonomy of hatred, division, and animosity; cater to their fears and desperate need to feel protected from imaginary evils, enemies, and anarchic forces hellbent on defeating the US.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 17-23, 2016

Posted on by
Reply

Alinski playground: what the American streets will turn into this summer as Trump gets nominated. Bill Ayers will be rumored to showing up everywhere.

“bad things would happen” and “there would be riots”: Trump’s thinly-veiled threats to unleash his attack dogs if he doesn’t get the GOP nomination. A brilliant rhetorical move, speaking in the third person and passive voice, while all the while saying he himself wouldn’t condone any such violence. Like Henry II asking “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”,  or Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, washing his hands of the very violence he is inciting. These rhetorical moves are a variant on his earlier threat to ban all Muslims from entering the US “until we know what’s going on”: simultaneously open-ended, justificatory and direly threatening.

hacks: any Obama administration official, especially in the Justice Department– ultra-partisans, by definition.

justice: getting even with those responsible for the malaise, for America “always losing.” What to do with the people with whom something needed to be done? Justice/revenge as the sees of brutality and supremacism.

overwhelming force: the Trump Doctrine. Crush all “enemies” with violent militarism, torture, and intimidation. Thus violence becomes not a means to an end but an end in itself–as seen on TV.

political correctness: the primary cause of terrorist attacks.

the pc glass ceiling: the schoolmarms’ restraints on free speech that Donald Trump has shattered. The end of moral relativism. Everyone is now entitled to be as offensive and racist as they wish.

populism: the driving force behind Trumpism. The voice of the will of the people. This glib characterization effectively glosses over the fact that most of Trump’s positions—across-the-board tax cuts for corporations, small businesses and individuals,  reducing the capital gains tax, , hamstringing the IRS, gutting federal regulatory oversight, ending state regulation of the insurance industry, etc– will only help the very wealthy. Call it pluto-populism: popular with the plutocracy.

protests: at Trump rallies, criminal acts perpetuated by Marxist agitators/ISIS sympathizers and anarchists.

white working class: the most reviled and disadvantaged Americans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 5-16, 2016

Posted on by
Reply

antics: any Dem/liberal behavior at public meetings or rallies. When Tea Party supporters voice their opinions, it’s called free speech, not “antics”.

the big lie: that Americans (“clingers”) are racists with no right to defend their national borders.

civility: what the Libs/Dems have “cheapened” in American political discourse.

creating voters: what the Dems are doing with immigration politics. As usual, the Tea Party ascribes the basest motives to any Dem policy.

critical theory: academic PC logic: use scholarship to change society, not study it. The equivalent is politically-active judges, legislating from the bench.

government: a disease, masquerading as its own cure.

Islam hates us: they’re all fair game

Islamification of the homeland: Barack & Hillary’s America.

liberal fascists: any anti-Trump protesters. As per usual, this is a deployment of the Rove Principle: call everything its opposite and turn any label your opponents use against you back onto them. So the angry mobs that Trump encourages are really all liberals or fomented by liberals; the Dems are the racists; Obamacare has ruined  the American health care system even thought it’s added coverage for 15 million people, job growth is really job loss, etc.

nuance: political correctness

personal responsibility: what the takers (aka, losers) lack. GOP code language for the lack of any social responsibility  or obligation.

protestors and Democrats: America haters.

transnational collectives: What the entities formally known as nation states are turned into by globalization and trade agreements.

Trump opponents: anyone not 100% behind him is 1000% against him.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 28-March 4, 2016

Posted on by
Reply

abortion exceptionalism: when women are denied access to abortion clinics because the clinics don’t meet health standards. Even if abortion clinics are far less likely to cause medical problems than, say, colonoscopy centers, they are being forced to meet higher health standards, thus placing an “undue burden” on women.

common American culture: Christian American culture.

freedom: to hate. As Chris Hedges, characterizing Trumpists, puts it:

These Americans want a kind of freedom—a freedom to hate. They want the freedom to use words like “nigger,” “kike,” “spic,” “chink,” “raghead” and “fag.” They want the freedom to idealize violence and the gun culture. They want the freedom to have enemies, to physically assault Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals and anyone who dares criticize their cryptofascism. They want the freedom to celebrate historical movements and figures that the college-educated elites condemn, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederacy. They want the freedom to ridicule and dismiss intellectuals, ideas, science and culture. They want the freedom to silence those who have been telling them how to behave. And they want the freedom to revel in hypermasculinity, racism, sexism and white patriarchy. These are the core sentiments of fascism. These sentiments are engendered by the collapse of the liberal state.

freedom of religion: letting Christians be Christians. “Freedom of religion” in this case clearly does not mean “freedom of religions, ” but freedom of only Christianity.

hate speech: criticism of Trump or the Tea Party. Libs’ self-righteousness makes them inherently and unfailingly intolerant.

immigrants: invaders.

individual responsibility: the cornerstone of the Social Darwinism that lies at the heart of Tea Party ideology. Dems tend to believe in social responsibility instead.

police abuse: abuse of the police, not by the police.

natural-born American citizens: the group of “legitimate” Americans most under threat from foreign “invaders”. Also chronically- unemployed or underemployed.

unelected judges: Tea Party criticism of any Supreme Court decision they don’t like: that it was the verdict of at least five unelected judges. When the decision goes their way, the judges are called “strict constructionists” instead.