Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, August 12-19, 2016

calumny: lamestream media attacks on Trump. The self-satisfied, self-congratulatory uptown media elites are about to get their heads handed to them in the general election. aka, “smear.”

collective responsibility: why all American Muslims are complicit in any act of domestic terrorism.

diversity: perversity

extreme vetting: making it much more difficult for immigrants to come into the US. In essence, a revival of fortress America. When does “vetting” become “extreme?” Is it like
“enhanced interrogation?” Doesn’t “extreme”imply going too far?

historic amnesia: what the Dems practice when they ignore the damage Obama/Clinton  have done in Iraq. Syria, Russia and Libya

the fate of the USA as we know it: what’s at stake in the general election. This apocalyptic language is used in every election, but has special significance this time around because of the Trumpians’ “clash of civilizations” drumbeat. They see this election as a catastrophic event, the extinction of their values and America’s identity and honor.

frenzied: liberal attacks on Trump. The innuendo here is that the Dems are panicking because they’re ahead in the polls and Trump has a secret army of voters just over the hill that he will deploy come election time.

hyperliteralism: what the lamestream media reverts to when reporting on Donald Trump’s campaign statements. Whereas Trump is either joking, or being sarcastic or deliberately provocative, the media take on an almost autistic interpretive limitation in holding him to the literal sense of his words.

language: according to Trump, in his Hugh Hewitt interview, what he says is what becomes reality because the public accepts his meaning of words, as in calling Obama and Clinton the “co-founders of Isis.”  Reminiscent of what the Mad Hatter tells Alice about language:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

nuisance flooding: natural and temporary changes in sea level. Liberals call it “man-made climate change,” but it’s really just nature acting natural. This term actually was coined in 2015 by Florida Governor Rick Scott, who forbade mention of climate change.

teeing up the cops: what Obama/Clinton do when they talk about “police violence” or praise Black Lives Matter. In practice, every criticism of the police is now being framed as undermining law and order and justice, and turning the police into the victims.

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