Category Archives: emerging memes

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, innuendos, and metanarratives in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 19-25, 2014

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arcane dogmatics: (see below, “ideological screeds”). What counts as evidence in liberal policy analysis, especially climate change “science”.

crushing:mandatory modifier for “regulation”.

greens as the new reds: the reign of terror of “radical environmentalist” Commissars, with their “diktats”, sense of privilege, and elitist snoberies.

ideological screed: any liberal speech, policy analysis, op-ed piece or research. See below, “nostrum,” “overheated”.

minimum-wage laws: creeping socialism

nostrum: any Dem rallying cry, policy position, or slogan–e.g., “afflict the rich”. Republicans are said to have reasonable, market-driven  ideas, not overheated nostrums or screeds.

overheated: mandatory modifier for any principled or impassioned Dem speech or analysis.

“poverty”: increasingly being undermined with fright quotes, indicating that, as some commentators have put it, the term itself is relative, and that even poor people have indoor plumbing. Poverty is only in the eyes of the statistician.

race, endless fixation on: the Tea Party’s fixation with the Dem’s so-called fixation. Just bringing up the subject now is either evidence of a “fixation” or of “playing the race card”.

regulation, litigation, political consensus: the DNA of liberal politics; the opposite of efficiency.

sluggish and lackluster: automatic modifiers for any improvement in economic recovery numbers in the Obama administration.

statism: pejorative term for government regulation.

tax breaks: cronyism at its worst, these bonanzas are always said to be “carved out”. When the GOP does it, they’re called “tax relief,” and offered as a public service rather than a “carve out”.

war: a force that gives Republicans meaning, thus their constant need for enemies: Obama, Putin, the Clintons, Iran, etc.

welfarism: a noted “Negro” lifestyle, according to new Tea Party icon Cliven Bundy. Apparently he thinks the “slavery” lifestyle was a better deal.

 

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 12-18, 2014

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comes for: black helicopter talk for any assertion of federal power, as in the Bundy Ranch brouhaha. They’re a-comin’ for ya!

envy vs. opportunity: one of those stark, apparently inevitable, yet ultimately false, dichotomies at the heart of Tea Party logic, along with “live free or die” and “liberty vs, collectivity”.

failure:  by definition a given, an inevitability when it comes to any Obama policy, especially the ACA. This circular logic is based on the assumption that the policy can’t work, under any circumstances.

grievances: pejorative for any Dem claims to justice, or, really, any Dem criticism of the status quo.

hysterics: any liberal defense of social justice, redistributionism, the social safety net, or opposition to war or invasion.

identity politics: pejorative used to describe any liberal political alliance, cause or faction. On the other hand, when the Tea Party, for example, comes together to oppose, say, taxes, it’s just plain “politics” (a term that in itself can be a pejorative, as in “playing politics” with an issue).

imperiously: the adverb of choice when referring to any Obama administration response or policy announcement.

ingrates: welfare queens, said to be the victims of the poverty Pentagon and race hustlers.

liberal bias: any statement of fact (e.g., overwhelming consensus on climate science) inconvenient to Tea Party dogma.

missing information:  a catch-all loophole word to explain away ant Obama policy success, or to prolong any “scandal”. A kind of perpetual motion machine, because some piece of “information” will always be “missing”.

phalanx: e.g., the liberal “media phalanx” that always supports he Obama administration. Implies an unstoppable, conspiratorial social movement.

the politics of personal destruction: the argument against ANY disclosure of political donations. A kind of shield law for big donors, removing any trace of transparency in the democratic system. Just revealing donors’ names, let alone criticizing them, is now being framed as “personal destruction”. Disclosure as a hate crime!

questions remain : insidious way of undermining any Dem success, by suggesting that “questions remain”. This “questions remain” ploy is in current heavy rotation in relation to Obamacare, which (see “failure,” above), which, despite mounting signs of its success, is always portrayed as an abysmal failure because “questions remain”.  In Benghazi Derangement Syndrome, of course, questions will “remain” unto eternity. (see also, “missing information”).

Snowden’s accomplices: anyone opposed to secret data-gathering on US citizens.

unnecessary: any policy or regulation the Tea Party opposes. Apparently any court decisions, such as Citizens United, they support is “necessary”–another act of purely circular logic. (see above, “failure”)

 

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 27-April 3, 2014

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abdication: any regulatory retreat by the Obama administration on an issue important to the GOP. Even though government and regulation are routinely demonized, they sometimes come in handy–most recently when it comes to internet registration.

“affordable housing”:  now always put in fright quotes, to denote the hypocrisy and nefariousness of anyone  supporting such a position. The “affordable housing crowd” is of course still being blamed for the financial meltdown.

broadened opportunity: prosperity for the few, by reducing opportunity for the many. See also, “upward mobility”).

creative destructionism: outsourcing, corporate takeovers, globalization.

crowd: any Dem interest group, however broadly defined. Not exactly a mob–more like a suspect group, with parochial self interests. A good recent example is  “the affordable housing crowd” (see above).

devolution: an oldie-but-a-goodie from the Thatcher era. The kissin’ cousin of privatization, its latest avatar is one of the centerpieces of the latest Ryan budget (aka, the race to adversity): devolving all safety net programs to the states, in the form of a lump sum payment. (David Cameron is also trying this one on for size in Britain).

disrespecting the citizens:apparently, according to Charles Koch, any form of government regulation. Government regulation, in the Koch Brothers’ universe, is nothing but a form of “collectivization,” always a pejorative term. In simple Kochean terms, “more government equals less liberty”. Why bother, then, to have any government at all?

effective safety net: as in the latest Paul Ryan budget, the only acceptable funding levels for social services presume draconian cuts in current budgets. “Effectiveness,” like its cousin, “efficiency,” is not defined by human well-being but by how little the government ends up doing or providing.

elites:educated, critical thinkers. (Thanks for that definition to Mike Lofgren, in his book “The Party Is Over”).

expeditions:semantically related to “fishing trip”, these are Dem forays into policy issues or initiatives, always with a hidden agenda.

fidelity to the law: what Obama, as Imperial President, is said to lack.

improving access to college: turning colleges and universities into voc tech institutes.

introducing competition and innovation into Medicare:a key element of the new Ryan budget. “Competition” in this case of course means privatization.”Innovation” (sometimes called “modernization”) in this case of course means new ways to get seniors off the federal budget. “Competition and innovation” together are the black hole at the center of the GOP political economy: they suck every human service into their vortex, never to be seen again as federal expenditures.

markets and merit: the only definition of, and way to, any concept of prosperity and well-being. Only made possible by “competition” and “choice” (though this is NOT a “pro-choice” position).

modernizing health care:  privatizing and deregulating.

one-sixth of the economy: an epithet, or mantra, for the Affordable Care Act. Most commonly used in the phrase “trying to transform one-sixth of the economy”, as if the very idea of trying to do so is laughable.

real world president: obviously not the space alien incumbent we have in the White House. of course, the last “real world” President we had got us involved in two “real” unwinable wars in the Middle East and supported po0licies that directly lead to a “real” financial meltdown.

restoring the value of work: assumes right off the bat that “some” Americans (Paul Ryan can tell you which ones), are lazy freeloaders and need to be “restored” to the American Dream.

state power: in the Tea Party world, it’s almost always better to let the “laboratories of democracy” decide national issues, except when it isn’t. For example, the Republican mantra of making it possible to sell insurance across state lines, thus taking insurance regulation out of the hands of the state. Of course, when you think about it, if the states can’t do and the feds shouldn’t do it, then maybe there won’t be any regulation at all! A pure experiment in Social Darwinism!

a straightforward matter of statutory construction: any legal position held by the GOP/Tea Party.

upward mobility: Ok for those who’ve got it. Made ever more impossible by Tea Party economic policies.

worker flexibility: if corporations are people, my friend, why not let Walmart run the Department of Labor? Then we’ll see just how “flexible” and Gumby-like US workers can be.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 21-26, 2014

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Bambi: Obama, over matched by Putin. Aka, wimp, eunuch, Neville Chamberlain, a “shrinking violet”.

cakes for gay weddings:just the start of Obama’s state-sponsored coercion and terrorism aimed at the religious right.

culture of license:what elite America has been fighting since the Mayflower; the essential licentiousness that threatens to undo American resolve and hard work. Also linked to the hippies in the 1960s; part of the general theory that the advent of the birth control pill hijacked rock-ribbed Republican America. We are now said to be entirely given over to “the political-sexual whims of those who hold power”.

hordes:never a good thing–always has a kind if “barbarians at the gates” feel to it. The latest manifestation is Paul Ryan’s obsession with hordes of black youth just hanging around, aka “a culture of license”.

innovation and entrepreneurship: the animal spirits of capitalism. Terms reserved for the kinds of business and industries the GOP approves of. When it comes to alternative energy startups for example, the “innovation” becomes “hoodwinking” and “entrepreneurship” becomes “crony capitalism,” and a “boondoggle”.

mandate for social justice:non-existent in the US Constitution, yet wrongly assumed to be a fundamental driving force in government, at least in Obamaland. The rallyoing cry of “the noble deserving”. (see below)

the noble deserving:always used ironically to describe the “takers,” the sanctified poor who, as beneficiaries of redistribution policies, are to blame for the financial/housing bubble, Benghazi, Crimea, and probably even Flight 370.

overweening:mandatory modifier for “state”; in Obamaland,  all government actions and policies are by definition smug, presumptuous, arrogant, and excessive.

 property rights: the bedrock American rights. Always said to be “freedom-advancing”.

prosperity by trade and contract: what the government exists to guarantee. The business of America is business.

the supposedly benevolent state:maybe they’ll just start using “supposedly” instead of air quotes to establish irony.

willful:(see also “overweening,” above): any principled stand or policy of the Obama administration. The alternative to being “willful” is capitulation, aka, “putting aside partisan political bickering”.

 

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

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analysis paralysis: Obama as Hamlet–unable to act, lost in the labyrinths of his thoughts and ideals. (see also, “humiliation”).

civilization standards–always in decline. “Norms and habits” are said to be in a “moral decline”. (see also: “tearing down mores”).

eradication of biological parenthood: the ultimate outcome and agenda of gay rights.

humiliation: the result of “analysis paralysis”.

the poor are better off than ever: every day in every way being poor gets better and better.

real world solutions: (aka, “common sense solutions”). For women, NOT equal pay for equal work, day care, or reproductive health. Apparently the only “real” world is the market. Anyone who complains about its outcomes is a “whiner”.

revanchism: one of several archaic terms taken out of the Cold War archives and dusted off to beat Obama over the head about Putin and the Ukraine, joining such other oldies-but-goodies as satrap, atavistic, and vassal state.

tearing down mores: the Obama administration’s ultimate affect and agenda. Moral catastrophe looms.

thugs: spelled EPA, IRS.

tyrant: Obama, though he might be a sissy instead.

unchecked: a mandatory modifier for any “power” exercised by the Obama administration. (see also “tyrant” and “thug”)

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, March 2-8, 2014

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bullying: what Obama does when he “plays” various moral cards: the “race card,” the “class warfare” card, the “inequality” card. Morality is thus characterized as a preening, elitist Democratic power grab.

Carterized: the sad, inevitable fate of Obama’s foreign policy. Turning the US into a “pitiful, helpless giant.” (see below under “feckless, etc.)

dark money: any unregulated Dem campaign funding. On the other hand, Koch Brothers’ money is called “free speech. and even granted personhood.

faculty lounges: the Devil’s spawning ground.

feckless: a Carerized White House foreign policy. Aka, “flat-footed,” “deer-in-the-headlights,” “dithering”, “clueless” and “flaccid.”

jackbooted bureaucracy: mandatory modifier when referring to the IRS.

market-ready: the primary, proper, and very circumscribed role of government is to make the poor “market ready”– that is, make them even more subject to the forces that have made and kept them poor over the centuries.

neutering: what the “Carterized” Obama does to our military.

oppression envy: what gay rights activists suffer from, wishing they had suffered more “systematic, Jim-Crow-style oppression.”

organized homosexuality: the proper name for gay rights activism.

payola: any government funding o green technology initiatives. In fact, the entire alternative energy sector has been reduced to the buzzword Solyndra.

restricting good citizenship: any opposition to GOP state electoral reforms and voting rights limitations.

revanchism: one of several archaic terms taken out of the Cold War archives and dusted off to beat Obama over the head about Putin and the Ukraine. other oldies-but-goodies that have emerged included satrap, atavistic, and vassal state.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 23-March 1, 2014

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asset bubble: what a market rally is called when there’s a democratic President.

climate alarmism: the Chicken Littleization of the climate change “debate”.

cultural pressure and insistence:  the Obama admin’s relentless war on traditional, middle-class values. A fancy label for “political correctness”.

dithering: a mandatory modifier for any Dem foreign policy.

decay: the general malaise Obama has mired America in; the result of “cultural pressue and insistence” (see above).  The slow moral rot of the US.

disquisitions: scolding, grandiose Obamaseque pomposities. Lately, the target has been “disquisitions on inequality”.

gender complementarian norm: a fancy-sounding name for marriage between a man and a woman.

host: new GOP synonym for a pregnant woman.

hounding: what any government agency–especially the IRS–does when it enforces regulations, especially against Republicans.

hysteria and misinformation: the by-product of “cultural pressure and insistence” (see above). Whatever arguments and facts Dems muster in any given “debate,” such as this week’s Arizona brouhaha over “religious liberty”.

matriarchal leviathan: the intensifying modifier gives birth to a new monster: Big Mother rather than Big Brother

mischief: the overall effect of Obama’s policies and reforms (aka, “fiats”). All regulations and taxes are seen as “mischief,” as if Obama is Dennis The Menace.

privilege: mistakenly confused for accomplishment by liberals.

sacramentalizing sodomy: GOPspeak for any sex except for missionary-position hetero.

socialism: the secret creed of the Obama administration, closely allied to fascism.

trampling: what liberals always seem to do to religious freedom, especially in the recent Arizona fracas. Inevitably leads to “hysteria and misinformation”–see above.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 15-22, 2014

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bitter seeds of anger and mistrust: any talk of race, economic inequality or social justice (see also0 “race hustler,” below)

costly (or “gold-platted) medical coverage benefits: mandatory modifier for any ACA-mandated coverage or standards. The ACA must always be called either “costly” or “gold-plated”.

dignity, standards, and judgement: all the qualities lacking in Obama.A perfect trifecta of character defects.

diversion: the Dem’s’ “war on the rich”. Just as discussion of race become “playing the race card,” any discussion of wealth inequality becomes diversionary “class warfare”. The irony of course is that the GOP use of these prophylactic terms becomes a speech act embodying and encouraging the very thing it is accusing the Democrats of promulgating: racism and classism.

entreprenurial federalism: the latest euphemism for playing desperate state governments against in another as a way of wringing out concessions on taxes, regulations, labor laws, pensions, etc. The Democrats call this “the race to the bottom”.

holocaust denial: the new false equivalency for “climate change denial”.

market uncertainty: the mere threat of new taxes or regulations supposedly spooks the business community more than anything else, and stops them from investing in new products, factories, or hiring. “Market certainty” is a kind of imaginary equilibrium, almost surely one of those chimeras, utopias or phantoms of the mind, such as “perfect socialism” or “unfettered free markets” or perptetual motion machines.

the Miles Per Gallon Illusion: “when consumers don’t realize that increasing fuel economy for 15 mpg to 20 mpg saves much more than going from 45-to-50 mpg because the former increase represents a much larger percentage”. Of course, going from 20-50-mpg would be an even bigger percentage.

morass of consequences: the wreckage caused by any Dem policy or law.

powerful: mandatory modifier for  “teachers’ union”.

race-hustler: any Democrat who talks about racial inequality, discrimination, voting rights, or the criminal justice system. The mere act of bringing up race is now called “playing the race card,” but also calling Eric Holder a “race hustler” connotes criminality and deception.

retreat: any Obama foreign policy initiative that doesn’t immediately threaten invasion, coup, meddling or sanctions.

the “so-called” rich: Anyone worth less than $5 million. They also call it envy, but we should actually pity these people because they are so mislabeled as they struggle to pay for their second homes or cruises.

statist: what the GOP calls the Democrats, as in Big Brother. A stand-in word for dictatorial or authoritarian.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendoes in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 8-14, 2014.

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artiste in search of his muse: (aka, “the butterfly guy”) Krauthammerspeak for anyone with a new health care policy who thus can finally give up a hated job and pursue other paths. Overnight, having an ACA health insurance policy became, in GOP talk, a scarlet badge of shame, a ripoff of America. People with health insurance are suddenly a new generation of Obamacare “poverty pimps”.

assault: (see also “runaway,” below): any Democratic policy initiative, as in “Bill Blassio’s assault on so-called ‘progressive’ unions”.

the dignity of work: Ryanspeak for relegating people to non-living-wage jobs with no benefits, day care, consistent hours or workplace safety enforcement. The hope for a decent human life, in other words, gets turned into what is sneeringly referred to as an “entitlement” (now transmuted from what is due someone based on their human dignity to a “handout” to “the takers”).

dynamism: can only be nurtured by free markets, deregulation, lower taxes, the end of environmental protection laws, etc.

industrial-age unions: the new epithet/slur for unions, akin to “trial lawyers”.

the new opportunity society: a nation of Obamacare-enabled freeloaders (aka, “parasites”).

“Progressivism”:  the emerging rhetorical strategy seems to be to always cloak this word in fright quotes as shorthand for saying that old-fashioned Progressives are really regressive, and are launching all the “wars” (see below) on progress.

runaway: any Dem policy initiative, such as “runaway regulatory reform”. Anything the GOP can’t stop.

teachers’ unions: now directly being blamed for poverty and inequality because of their “war” (see below) on charter schools and education reform.

war on….: a war on jobs, a war on small business, a war on the health care system, a war on America’s international influence and prestige, a war on economic recovery, a war on energy independence, a war on the Constitution, a war on educational reform, and a war on minorities. The mother of all wars is The War on Truth.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendoes in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 4–7, 2014.

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abortion: now rhetorically relabeled as an iniquitous “inequality”.

assortative mating: one of the reasons the poor stay poor, and why redistributionists are now called antimarriagists.

bonanzas: free trade pacts, Keystone, etc. Always treated as if there are no downsides, externalities, trade-offs, etc. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

“capitalists”: having some to see that this is now a pejorative term, GOPers are now starting to put it in scare quotes, as if to say, we aren’t mean old unfeeling capitalists, we’re just warm and fuzzy “job creators”.

cocoon: previously known as that benign, benighted thing called “the social safety net”, but now seen as a refuge for ne’re do-wells.

envy: the bedrock emotion underlying any calls for social justice or redistribution.

flake socialist: the new mandatory description of Mayor De Blassio.

the grown-ups in the room: in Congress, anyone opposing Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. The “grown-ups” are the only people you can “trust”.

“losing your job”: exactly what the CBO appendix in their Obamacare report did NOT say people were doing. On the contrary, people are giving up some or all of their jobs in some instances because health care (or, rather, the fear of losing health insurance),  no longer has the power make cowards of us all.

the New Class: rich and highly-educated people who didn’t vote Republican.

Obamafascism: No wonder they’re engaging in Perkins’ version of Krystallnacht. Also refers to the “mobs” who are giving Wall Street “the pitchfork treatment”.

parasitic and malignant: bureaucrats, who are also always modified by the adjective “stifling”.

political pluralism: the kind of inclusive, consensus building that the Obama admin supposedly has by-passed in all of its “imperial” hauteur. When the GOP says pluralism, though, they mean just always getting their way–their way to “compromise”.

wealth-shaming: see “envy”, above.

the workers’ party: the latest laughable GOP effort at re-branding. This time they align themselves with the workers because they want to do away with Obamacare, workplace safety, environmental regulation, financial reform and union rights–all of which are, of course, “job-killers”.