Category Archives: glossary

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, dog-whistles, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 3-June 10, -2015

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bait and switch: Tea Party characterization of all social science research. The conceit is that most social science research is “cooked”–inherently biased and fraudulent. Political assertion masquearding as empiricism. Such fraudulence enables liberals claiming research as objective science, and then substitute it for “reality”.

crackpot: anything to the left of Ted Cruz. Bernie Saunders could call for the universal right to access to food and water and he’d still be labeled a crackpot. Anything from a cracked pot is suspect.

cynical: any of Hillary’s policy positions or statements, which are all considered to be calculated. The more effective her campaign, the more cynical it is characterized as being. (see “overheated,” below)

flexibiity: the Tea Party defense of “block grants,” an insidious budgeting device which just transfers the pains of making cuts down to the local level. The only flexibility involved in block grants  is what to cut, and by how much.

left wing: any talk of human rights or income inequality. As Bill Moyers and Michael Winship point out:

The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract America out to the US Chamber of Commerce the National Association of Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.

At their core, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs were aimed at assuring every child of a decent education, every worker a decent wage, and every senior a decent retirement; if that’s extreme, so are the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.

massive expansion: any new EPA regulatory action.

Normative America: Normative America prized hard work, personal responsibility, individual merit, delayed gratification, and social mobility–all values that the Tea Partiers say have been supplanted by the liberal redistributionist state.

overheated: any successful Hillary policy or rhetorical thrust.

phony issue: any of the leading Dem positions: the war on women, voting rights (see below), climate change, racial justice, inequality, etc. The Tea Party always tries to undercut any Dem position first by claiming that it is largely fictional, and second, by claiming that the Dems are making it up because they are cynically manipulating the dumb Americans who keep electing them President.

“real live experiment”:   Sam Brownback’s characterization of his radical economic and social policies in Kansas, which have resulted in drastic tax cuts, leading to massive cuts in medical coverage (especially Medicaid), higher poverty rates, lower economic growth rates, higher jobless rates, and a downgrade in the state’s credit rating. Voodoo economics unleashed!

relitigate: any attempt to examine and even judge the root causes of the financial crisis or the Iraq War. Even if few of the key actors in either scandal were ever prosecuted (due to being “too big to fail” or  legal immunity), the presumption is that these issues were already “litigated.” Hardly the “Truth and reconciliation Commission” to approach to culpability and owning up to the past.

supine, flaccid and impotent: Obama’s foreign policy, especially towards Iran. Obama just can’t get it up for America. On the other hand, Rand Paul seems To be the only Tea Party candidate not panting for full penetration into the Middle East.

voting rights: one of the “phoniest of issues”–a phantom menace. Like counterfeit money, it looks like the real thing but has no value. Thus any claims about its mere existence are dismissed out of hand. For example, the fact that there have only been a handful of documented voter fraud cases is only because the Dems have been in charge of the investigations (Sort of like flyer saucer wackos who claim the government is suppressing the evidence.) Likewise, any claim of racism or the targeting of minorities is itself called racist.

wild and unsubtantiated: any successful Hillary claim about the effects of Tea Party policy or governance.

the world’s only superpower: Is it Fortress America, or what was known in the mid-60’s as a “pitiful, helpless giant”? You have to wonder where this anachronistic (not to say hubristic) term even came from in the first place. Comic books? Uncle Sam in a Caped Crusader leotard?

runaway government: basically, any government. or at least anything that entails any increase in taxes, redistribution, or regulation. This bedrock Tea Party definition of government guarantees Congressional gridlock.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, dog-whistles, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, May 19-24

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drama feminists: any feminists who speak out in public.

hiding behind her own skirts: what Hillary is accused of whenever she invokes women’s’ rights. Aka, “playing the gender card.”

incentive to be moral: what the takers ( aka the Dem base) seem to lack, and thus need from Republicans because the takers lack a moral sense. Part of the rhetoric of sub-humanizing Blacks.  Thus, the Tea Partiers are always calling for incentives and vouchers, as if the poor, the minorities, the “low information voter” and other core components of the Dem base need bribes to exercise a moral sense, act “responsibly,” be “self-reliant,” and show initiative. Otherwise, Blacks are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, perceived as lacking character, reason, values, and culture.

innocence: total Dem naivete when it comes to foreign policy. Assuming the worst about politics in the Middle East and Russia, this meme makes any attempt at multilateral negotiation or political compromise seem foolhardy and dangerous. Bring back gun boat diplomacy! Dems simply can’t win in this characterization war because they lack backbone and an appreciation of reality (aka, “the facts on the ground”). Reduces Dems to being children.

menagerie: Hillary’s staffers; aka, henchmen.

moral superiority:  what Dems are accused of when they aren’t being accused of “innocence” or of lacking morals altogether (see above). “Superiority” here refers to the Dems’ arrogance of believing that they are right on key political issues, and having no notion of thir own possible moral shortcomings. The only alternative to this smug righteousness is to acknowledge that the Tea Party moral positions are superior. Reduces Dems to being moralistic prigs.

normal: the new deviancy. One of those “the world has been turned upside down” memes. Micro aggressions abound, parents are forced to supply their kids with condoms, popular culture is degenerate and traditional religion is mocked.

riot: any demonstration or public gathering by people of color where police lose control; when whites do it, it’s called a “shootout” or “disturbance.” Riots are always caused by “thugs,” “disturbances by “troubled youth” or “gang members.” Black people are inherently criminal, so it’s never a surprise when they act criminally.

surprisingly close: what either party says about lost elections if they even get within hailing distance.

tut-tutting: what Hillary is said to do in her peevish way every time she answers a question. She has been framed as the Queen Bitch, so she reveals her scorn every time she opens her mouth.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, dog whistles, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other Grand Old Tea Party language factories, May 4-May 11, 2015

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broken-windows policing: often held out as a panacea for overcoming the “unrest” (see below) in black neighborhoods. As if maintaining the outward appearance of social orderliness can make us overlook the bottom-line fact that blacks are poorer, sicker, and falling further behind than ever before.

constraint: the inevitable outcome of government regulation. People, like markets, “want to be free”, so constraint is always interpreted negatively, synonymous with being shackled.

destroying wealth: any economic policy centered on cooperation and equality rather than competition and inequality, Tax increases for the wealthy–in fact, almost any government regulation–is thus described as wealth destroying.

enemies of America: gay marriage supporters, according to Ben Carson.

hate speech: any speech that questions Christianity, especially when Christianity discriminates against sexual or ethnic minorities.

“I’m not a scientist”: as Elizabeth Kolbert points out in The New Yorker, this is the standard Tea Party preface/apologia to draconian cuts in federal spending on scientific research. Astonishingly enough, claiming that they don’t know anything about a subject somehow rhetorically gives them license to legislate against it. Any researcher whose work runs counter to Tea Party ideology is now a “scientist”–like Obama, basically a fraud. The ultimate aim is to render all of blue America somehow illegitimate.

routine investigative steps: chasing and arresting unarmed people without probable cause; subjecting detainees to “rough rides”; assuming black people are acting suspiciously.

run amok: any regulatory or taxing apparatus

social justice warriors: Lefties who are out for the scalps of “everyday Americans.”

tut-tutting: derisive term for any Dem moral argument. Akin to when Obama is said to get on his “high horse. or complaint about social, economic or political realities.

ugly aside: any Obama remark that directly calls out the Tea Partiers on issues of inequality, social justice, or poverty. When Obama isn’t said to be being just plain “ugly,” he’s called by Peggy Noonan’s favorite scold term: ungracious.

unrest: a euphemism for what Jelanie Cobb calls “a symbol of an entire web of failed social policies, on education, employment, health, and housing.”

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, dog whistles, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOTP language factories, April 26-May 2, 2015

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anti-family pathologies: black “thug” culture in America. Part of a whole rhetorical word family that portrays blacks as immoral social leeches, likening them to animals, vermin, and disease. Makes the poor wholly responsible for their own poverty.

black anger: when Obama tells the truth, or else all that the Baltimore “thugs” are about. As a dog whistle term, this subliminally means “they’d kill all of us whites if they got the chance”.

bromides: any liberal ideas or solutions to pressing political, social, or economic issues.

conservative populism: anti-immigrant nativism, disguised as the vox populi. This is a tricky issue because big business actually opposes limited immigration–one of the few times that tea party sentiment diverges from that of big business, despite the Tea Party’s ostensibly populist rhetorical claim to represent Main street rather than Wall Street.

consumer choice: in Tea Party parlance, the net effect of deregulation. In their mind, the opposite of “consumer choice” is “government regulation”, especially any government regulation protecting or increasing consumer choice. Another example of the Tea Party Rhetorical Hall of Mirrors.

the Cult of Sexual Autonomy: includes anyone supporting marriage equality or gray rights. aka, “The American Jacobins.”

“explanations aren’t excuses”: when Tea Partiers are too ashamed to overtly state their animus against black demonstrators, they are forced to fall back on some version of the “root causes argument,” though they always undercut the argument entirely, as seen in this classic example from Jonah Goldberg in The National Review:

First of all, it’s not only plausible, but obviously true, that many of these punks had rough starts in life. Unlike the largely bogus claim that poverty and powerlessness is what creates terrorists, the root-causes argument has explanatory power for street criminals. No serious conservative disputes that poverty, joblessness, crime, family breakdown, crappy schools, etc. help explain why young men make bad choices.

But explanations aren’t excuses, even if they overlap at the margins from time to time. Bad choices are still choices, and if we don’t judge people by their choices we can’t judge people at all.

If a sane man rapes and kills a little girl but, when caught, explains how terrible his own childhood was, the civilized response of the criminal justice system must be “we don’t care.” Some crimes are moral gray areas — the man who steals bread to feed his starving family, etc. But, other crimes aren’t.

Nonetheless, a society that refuses to distinguish between people who behave criminally and people who don’t won’t be a society for very long.

And by the way, how exactly it helps the black community to say that th*gs cannot be singled out from the rest of the black community completely mystifies me. I thought the antidote to racism was judging people individually, based upon their behavior. I don’t discriminate against people because of the color of their skin, but I will freely admit I discriminate against people who burn down senior centers. But that’s just me.

Equating political demonstrators with child murderers is just an everyday version of the casual toxicity of Tea party rhetoric.

the Gaystopo. See “liberal fascism,” below.

get-out-of-jail-free card: being black and poor, at least according to Tea Party rhetoric that equates racial equality with increasing crime rates. Part of the Tea party effort to criminalize equality-seekers, and stigmatize them for a “lack of personal responsibility.” Or, as Bill O’Reilly put it this week, “With all due respect, the government cannot create opportunities for young people who are uneducated, disrespectful and unmotivated.” aka, “thugs”.

grandstand and demagogue: nouns turned into verbs to villify any public figures who come out forcefully for civil rights, human rights, economic equality, or racial justice.

hectoring: what Obama does any time he issues a moral injunction or expresses an ideal or principle. (When he does so, he’s also said to be on his “high horse”). When the Tea party does so, it’s called “defense of traditional American values”.

liberal fascism: according to Ted Cruz, any Dem defense of marriage equality or gay rights is the equivalent of fascism; any call for tolerance an injunction to intolerance and social control. Aka, the “Gaystopo”.

no antitrust problem: because Time Warner and Comcast don’t compete in any specific market, the argument was that their proposed (but now abandoned) merger would pose no antitrust problem.  This is an example of the usual conundrum of Tea Party political theory that an increase in the concentration of power axiomatically leads to keener competition because the pie expands. Never mind that such proposed monopolies scare off all potential competitors, so there’s no one else left to eat the pie. (See “consumer choice,” above)

racist bogeymen: always said to be “lurking around every corner”. This is the Tea Party denigration of anyone claiming racial injustice or bigotry in America. A variant on the “there are no racists left in America except the blacks” meme.

real marriage: the diametrical opposite of gay marriage.

religious persecution: the enforcement of any anti-discrimination law against a church or religious institution. Apparently they don’t feel obligated to either pay taxes or follow the law.

Robin-Hoodism: sneering denigration of redistributionist political and economic policies.

root causes argument: see “explanations are not excuses,” above.

self-denying lifestyle: recycling, reducing water usage and waste, sustainability

“violence will not be tolerated”: except violence against black people in the form of harassment, discrimination, incarceration, and stigmatization, what N.D.B. Connolly calls “the daily violence of poverty”. or, as Ta-Nehisi Coates put it:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is “correct” or “wise,” any more than a forest fire can be “correct” or “wise.” Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

voting rights protection: in the continuing “logic” of Bush v. Gore, this argument claims that various voter suppression tactics are designed to “protect” the rights of white voters.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, phrases, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOTP language factories, April 20-25, 2015

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abundance: Tea Partier argument that the “free ” market always knows right and should be left unregulated because it is the goose that lays the golden eggs.  This argument is especially used in complaining against any antitrust rulings, most currently in the context of net neutrality debates and the collapse of the Comcast-Time Warner merger. In the latter case, “abundance” is deemed the opposite of “scarcity,” as if it’s always an either-or choice, similar to the argument that you can only have one dominant economic policy principle: either growth or redistribution. False dichotomies are rhetorical cornerstones.

the American Value Set: entirely congruent with the Tea Partiers’ values and positions.

Bill of Rights: part of the “Constitution worship” of the Tea Party, at least when it suits their policies. The fact that the Bill of Rights emphasizes processes and procedures rather than morals or principles is crucial to their ideology because it serves as a way to filter out considerations of justice, sympathy, common sense, empathy, charity, or public service.

conscience: the ultimate Tea Party  trump card, at least when it comes to such “friendly” issues as abortion, school prayer or denial of gay rights. Conscience is one of those “trump card” absolutes, like “honor,” “service,” or patriotism.

cowardice: any left-wing policy or position, since the Left (aka, “the social justice jihadis”, or the “rainbow-colored mob”) is fatally plagued and cowed  by political correctness. Lefties are afraid to face the truth.

the game: any Dem attempt to overturn Citizens United, as if Citizens United was itself not part of an elaborate “game” to end-run campaign finance regulation. (see “issue speech,” below)

hard left: any Dem policy advocating environmental regulation, increased minimum wage, paid medical leave/Obamacare, taxes on capital gains, social safety net protection, closing corporate tax loopholes, or regulation of the financial sector. It’s the “hard left” that is fighting the “class war” against “real Americans.” Supporting any “hard left” doctrine is considered an act of “cowardice”, or an act of “goodthink”.

hard truths: whatever the Tea Partiers believe . Dem policies and beliefs, on the other hand, are “soft” and “calculated”, and bear no relation to “truth,” which the Tea Partiers think they have cornered the market on.

hysterical public assaults: any Dem criticism of Tea Partier policies or positions, especially in controversies over religious liberty, reproductive and women’srights, and race bias.

issue speech: political advocacy; somehow to be kept separate from campaign finance regulation. This doctrine relies on the deceptively naive view that “speaking” about “issues” is an innocent activity, in no way “coordinated” a political campaign.

leftist sexual orthodoxy: reproductive rights, birth control, marriage equality, sex outside of marriage: you know, anything south of abstinence.

liberal dogooderie: any act of charity, welfare, social justice or human rights.

politicized: any Dem policy or regulatory action. When Tea Partiers are in power, they call it “common sense” or unobtrusive government. Another rhetorical term of art assuming a false innocence of “as if”: as if the Tea Party never decides on public policy (or, indeed, judicial decisions) based on political calculations and beliefs; as if the “free” market isn’t propped up by tax breaks, subsidies and, favorable laws protecting investments and squeezing out lawsuits, competition, and liability; as if so-called “religious liberty” doesn’t infringe on the liberties of other people, or as if all government policy is unbiased, objective, and non=political.

the rule of law: what the Tea Partiers say Obama and Holder are in “utter contempt” of. As in the case of the Bill of Rights or Constitution, the Tea Partiers assume they have full custody rights over what constitutes “the rule of law,” as if they owned gravity. The only “rule of law”in politics is the rule that you use the law anyway you can to prevail.

social justice jihadi: a mocking term for anyone harboring concepts of justice, equality, peace, or sustainability. The Dems are the real terrorists, out to “take America down,” as Dick Cheney recently explained.

viewpoint-neutral legislation: euphemism for “religious liberty” laws under a different guise. This innocuous-sounding, unobjectionable label serves to mask any moral or ethical dimension lurking beneath the creation of state or local laws; in ostensibly seeming to protect free speech, it will actually serve to deny it to minorities by removing all moral opprobrium from discrimination  due to its supposed “neutrality”.

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, phrases, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOTP language factories, April 12-17, 2015

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anti-human: any environmental regulation, or policy mentioning such terms as “sustainability” or “environmental justice.”  An ultimate reductio ad absurdum, equating human well-being with employment statistics. Any use of the word “sustainability” is thus stigmatized as anti-human. (used interchangeably with “job-killing” as a modifier of environmental regulation.)
baby talk; all feminist blather about gender equality, glass ceilings, etc.

the federal maw: aka, Leviathan, the “bloated state,” the force that aims to “do away with individual liberty.”. Hyperbole, anyone?
bread and condoms: what the Tea Partiers say are all that matters to Obama supporters.
free trade:  as represented in the Trans Pacific Partnership, the new world economic order this treaty would enshrine is hardly free and has everything to do with corporate profit. By the same token, it hardly has to do with trade, and in commerce and tariffs, but has a lot to do with relaxed environmental, labor, and reporting standards. As Senator Bernie Sanders put it this week:

government power.  Typical Tea Partier statement: The Left wants this controversy (police shootings of unarmed suspects, inequality, racist remarks, etc.–fill in the blanks) to be about racism, but it is in fact about the nature of government power. Any race-related issue is always caused by government, and government is always part of the problem and not part of the solution because

hyperventilating: what Dems are said to be doing when they either criticize Tea Partiers’ policies or talk about morals and ideals. Morality talk is always characterized as either dissembling and self serving, total fantasy, or a hysterical reaction (especially when it comes from women).

the Pantsuit Posse: Hillary’s supporters (see also above, “baby talk”)

preemptive capitulation: the Dems’ foreign policy doctrine. Any negotiation or strategic concession is always characterized as a “capitulation,” as if foreign policy is a zero-sum game in which we get everything or nothing

the proverbial “people”: any time the word “people” is put in fright quotes, you know it’s being mocked or belittled. In this case, not only is the very concept of populism dismissed as only “proverbial,” but so are  any claims Dems make to representing the powerless.

worth: as Robert Reich points out, the notion that people are “paid what they’re worth” is a “meritocratic tautology” because the political and legal institutions that define the market “rig” the market in favor of the rich, so the moral claim that people are paid “what they deserve” is based on an immoral market, and naively separates definitions and possibilities of “worth” from the realities of power. The “market” doesn’t speak; rather, it is a ventriloquist’s dummy, manipulated by Wall Street and the banks.