Category Archives: rhetoric

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Dec. 3-8, 2016

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reversion to the norm

rhetorical claim: that the pro-growth, pro-business moderation of Trump is a reversion to the historical norm of American political life, and a rebuke to the ahistorical multiculturalists, sexual deviants, economic freeloaders and social justice warriors. The American Left simply can’t stand the fact that they are not the vanguard of American beliefs and practices.

rhetorical effect: labels any criticism of the Trump administration as socially deviant and extreme. This is all part of the demonization and criminalization of dissent, as well as part of the effort to normalize Trump’s racism, sexism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, and political repression.

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finishing a war

rhetorical claim: that Dems don;t know how to win a war, as evidenced in Iraq and Afghanistan. James Mattis will see to it that Trump gets as many troops as he needs to win a war.

rhetorical effect: normalizes a massive military buildup and reinforces the myth that wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were winnable.

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disciplining health care costs

rhetorical claim: Obamacare should have included consumer involvement in disciplining health care costs, rather than unlimited amounts of health care

rhetorical effect: ultimately will shift the blame for rising health care costs for inadequate insurance from the insurance companies or government to consumers.  This blame-the-victim approach, ostensibly based on personal responsibility, will penalize consumers for any outcomes or behaviors that “discipline” corporate profits.

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America haters

rhetorical claim: the George Soros-funded  ant-Trump “protestors” can’t stand Trump’s success and are damaging America.

rhetorical effect: political protest itself gets branded as damaging rather than protecting America. In this rhetorical climate, dissent becomes politically toxic  because it is stripped of any moral underpinnings and only seen as an existential threat to America.

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Trump tantrum

rhetorical claim: mainstream media criticism of Trump is a kneejerk response to badly-needed social, political,  and economic change. Instead of automatically undercutting Trump when he saves jobs or stand up to china, the lamestream media should be supporting him and not making up fake news stories or criticisms.

rhetorical effect: again, dissent is treated as unpatriotic, unthinking, and unprincipled. Every opposition stance or statement is rendered childish, like a “tantrum.”

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repealing Obamacare

rhetorical claim: repealing Obamacare will immediately lead to more competition, more choice, and cost awareness.  Here’s a vision of the promised land:

If much of ObamaCare is repealed, there will be room for more choice, competition and cost awareness. We can see a return of catastrophic health insurance with lower tax-deductible premiums, high deductibles and more payment up front, with government-run clinics for those who lack insurance.

 Those with pre-existing conditions or at the greatest risk of getting sick can pay a higher price for a more-comprehensive plan or use government-subsidized high-risk pools. Tort reform, including doctor-review panels to block frivolous suits, will put the brakes on doctors overtesting and overtreating patients.

rhetorical effect: the new norm will be high-deductible, high-cost, high advance payment policies, inadequate barebones catastrophic coverage, or restrictively expensive coverage for pre-existing conditions. The only remaining government program will be a high-risk pool for the sickest people, and it will offer almost no coverage at all. Note the ominous and telltale buzzwords: competition, cost awareness, catastrophic coverage, high deductibles, high payments up front, government-run clinics, much higher premiums for patients with pre-existing conditions, major tort reform limiting malpractice suits, etc. This is a veritable Christmas tree full of long wished-for GOP health care reforms. Don’t say we haven’t been warned about what’s coming.

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 limited sue-and-settle practices

rhetorical claim: federal building and land use regulations have strangled the economy and need to be streamlined and repealed to unleash market forces. (Repealing Davis Bacon would be a good start.) Limiting liability awards and frivolous lawsuits will be a key factor in this streamlining.

rhetorical effect: paves the way for “fast track” permitting, with little legal recourse. Could potentially lead to a massive infrastructure spending spree with unprecedented avoidance of all environmental laws. Any “green” lawsuits are said to kill economic development.

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right-to-work laws

rhetorical claim: Labor unions are the primary obstacle in the way of worker freedom. Right-to-work laws are the wedge issue to  increase workers’ rights.

rhetorical effect: justifies the destruction of labor unions. Portrays them as the worst thing ever to happen to workers.

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ending the peace

rhetorical claim: Obama did not “end the war” in Iraq but ended the peace.The surge worked and won the war for us, but Obama lost it by bot sticking it out–just as lost our resolve in Vietnam.

rhetorical effect: paves the way for a re-invasion of Iraq, so we can once again engage in a perpetual war.

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hate speech

rhetorical claim: liberals call all Trump supporters extremists, and accuse them of hate speech, whereas the actual hate speech comes from the liberal-progressives’ open hostility to Christianity, traditional marriage, Republicans, conservatives, white people, and the police.

rhetorical effect: bigots, homophobes, mysoginists, and neo-Nazis are feeling emboldened to step out of the shadows and openly spew their bile. This doublespeak maneuver allows them to claim that they are the victims whenever anyone criticizes them.

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free markets

rhetorical claim: Mike Pence has already said that Trump is opposed to the free market, and this is evident in the opening “managerialist” maneuvers of the new administration, according to the National Review:

Trump may be culturally attached to the Right — or, more precisely, the Right may be culturally attached to Trump — but everything he has said and done thus far points to his being a progressive in the ancient mold of Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and, yes, George Wallace and Theodore Bilbo. He means to put trade, and probably much more than trade, under political discipline. He means to stand between buyers and sellers with his hand out, making demands. He has expressed a longing for Keynesian stimulus projects, mercantilism, income redistribution, Bismarckian welfare-statism, and the consolidation of political power within the executive. He may talk like Archie Bunker, but politically he is Barack Obama rebranded for talk radio.

rhetorical effect: maintains the split between traditional conservatives and Trumpians, but also serves to make Trump sound like a Progressive.

 

 

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2016

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consumer protection

rhetorical claim: Borrowers need and want payday lenders, and the federal government should completely deregulate the industry,  and eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  (editorial: “Consumer Financial Protection Rewrite”).

rhetorical effect: the belief that consumer “protection” distorts the free market and only protects the vested interests of progressives. Consumers are best protected by no protection laws whatsoever, since the market always sorts things out.

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Castro

rhetorical claim: to the Dems, a liberator for the ages. Actually, a brutal dictator who killed millions. Dems consider Gitmo the ultimate symbol of moral barbarity, but what Castro was doing in the rest of Cuba was far worse.

rhetorical effect: relativizes the torture and mass violation of human rights going on at Gitmo.

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privatization

rhetorical claim: the Dems’ all-purpose pejorative for everything bad.

rhetorical effect: excuses any private sector, for-profit public works. Pull up a chair and watch how fast the US economy gets privatized, Thatcher style. Roads, bridges, Medicare, prisons, water supplies, etc. will all be run by private companies. Government oversight will be minimal.

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power grab

rhetorical claim: any progressive law or regulation based on theories of global warming, inequality, racism, etc. In the name of these fabricated boogie men, Dems use the law to exercise power, while all the while claiming the moral high ground.

rhetorical effect: undermines any moral authority for progressive causes, reducing them all to hypocrisy or an insatiable will to power. Dems are said to “grab” power, whereas the Tea Party/GOP  is said the exercise the will of the voters.

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 collective bargaining

rhetorical claim: mandatory collective bargaining makes the government the unions’ automatic dues collector. In right-to-work states,  where collective bargaining has been all but eliminated, economies are thriving. Unions, especially public workers’ unions,  are the worst thing that ever happened to workers, state finances, educational quality, and economic growth. Cutting back public unions also guarantees that state taxes won’t rise every year. There is a nexus of of public-union donations and government officials.

rhetorical effect: demonizes public unions by making them sound as if their ultimate aim is to cripple the economy and bankrupt the states. This rhetoric never mentions union members’ benefits, and the tremendous gains unions have made for workers’ rights over the decades. This rhetorical technique is akin to only discussing the cost of environmental regulations without considering the benefits, such as health and safety. It’s a form of reductio ad absurdum argument.

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meddling

rhetorical claim: as with school choice and vouchers, any top-down, government control over the choice of the people leads to disaster. Any coercive public policy that runs counter to the will of the people is a form of meddling.

rhetorical effect: attempts to unionize teachers, give more support to public schools, avoid the privatization of education, or set educational standards is now defined as meddling.  How long before policies based on principles of equity, justice, and social responsibility are themselves characterized as meddling?

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social justice warriors

rhetorical claim: liberals, aka social justice warriors, champion tolerance and open-mindedness, yet are among the most intolerant of Americans, especially towards Christians.  They ostracize and demonize Christians; replace right and wrong with healthy and unhealthy; steadfastly maintain that the state, not God, defines marriage;  and consider faith to be worse than racism. As memorably explained by David French in the National Review:

With their trademark combination of arrogance and stunning ignorance, they’ll tear down your faith and replace it with a philosophical dumpster fire, a belief system that’s four parts emotional and physical impulse, two parts junk psychology, and one part corrupted intellect. It’s about desire and ambition only partially modulated and limited by consent. Do what you want with your body and your life, so long as you’re not harming anyone else and have the consent of your partners. Wait, that’s not entirely right. You can harm and kill your unborn child. You can rip your family to pieces pursuing your heart’s desires. You can leave spouses in the dust and children in their cribs if you decide you love a different person — especially if that person is of the same sex. Then you’re brave and courageous. At the end of the day, I suppose, the Left believes there’s really only one relevant rule of sexual conduct: Don’t rape.

rhetorical effects: legitimizes  religious intolerance of LGBT; assumes Christians are morally superior to non-believers; makes all progressives seem soulless and morally dissolute, caring only about desire and ambition; assumes social justice is inherently immoral and unchristian, and renews all the culture wars–abortion, gay marriage, even divorce and birth control–as once again fair game for social control rather than settled law or custom.

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banning Islamic refugees

rhetorical claim: immigrants from”jihadi states” should ber banned from the US because of the risk of their being terrorists. Otherwise, you are arguing that the inevitable human death toll in America is the price we have to pay for compassion toward immigrants. Immigrants from jihadi states should have to prove that they are not terrorists.

rhetorical effect: demonizes all immigrants as terrorists-in-waiting, and places all Muslims in America under suspicion and scrutiny.

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regulatory clarity and predictability

 rhetorical claim: infrastructure spending will be unleashed if there is regulatory clarity and predictability. The private sector will only take the investment risk if the government gets off their back

rhetorical effect: the overall strategy of privatizing public works and turning everything into a concession (toll roads, airport fees, etc.) depends on massive tax credits to lure the private sector. In order to loosen the reigns, government agencies are going to have to overlook or abrogate environmental, land use, and equity considerations when granting permits, as well as relinquish all oversight. “Regulatory clarity and predictability” has always been GOP shorthand for doing away with government regulation.

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banking regulation

 rhetorical claim: Dodd-Frank turned banks into public utilities.It needs to be repealed to unleash the “animal spirits” of the market.

rhetorical effect: Making this exaggerated claim  requires the belief that any regulation of the financial sector is destructive and robs banks of any choice or agency. Consumer protection is just another form of socialism.

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a functioning marketplace

rhetorical claim: American health care is teetering because it relies too much on government coercion. A functioning marketplace can deliver high-quality care at lower cost.

rhetorical effect: a “fully functioning market” presumes a fully dysfunctional government and regulatory apparatus. “Fully functioning” means fully unregulated.

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 school vouchers

rhetorical claim: a market-based approach to improving the schools, give parents the choice over their own children’s school, and make public school teachers actually teach.

rhetorical effect: undermines teachers’ unions; guarantees the continual decline of public schools via underfunding; privatizes the education system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 23-27, 2016

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alt-right:

rhetorical claim: “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Universalism, globalism, redistributionism, and egalitarianism are the common enemy, as represented by Beltway insiders, academics, social scientists, media pundits, entertainment elites, and policy professionals. Traditional conservatism, with its beliefs in liberty, freedom, free markets and capitalism, is an  inadequate response to today’s hyper-racialized world, which is eating away at America’s moral core.

rhetorical effect: euphemism for neo-Nazism, justifying racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, xenophobia, and white nationalism. Messianism wrapped up with Manifest Destiny.

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activist-connivers

rhetorical claim: critics who will, in knee-jerk fashion,charge Trump with conflicts of interest. They connive, via conspiracy and ideological dogma, to demonize Trump no matter what.

rhetorical effect:  Renders any criticism of Trump as conspiratorial and self-serving. Invites the question: in the eyes of the alt-right, is there any ethical way to criticize Trump?

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orthodoxy

rhetorical claim: any conventional form of tax, regulatory, and welfare policies is inherently self-defeating and thus doomed. Trump will “drain the swamp” and shatter all post-war orthodoxies. All that is solid melts into air.

rhetorical effect:  undermines any current shared assumptions about the rule of law, economic justice, human and civil rights, government regulation, women’s rights, etc. Characterizing these prevailing assumptions as inherently self-defeating is itself to argue for natural rights (and, of course, the inevitability of free markets).

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zeroing-out the greens:

rhetorical claim: getting out from under Obama’s crushing environmental rules will end the take-no-prisoners reign of terror of the greens and ultra-liberal environmentalist elites. We need to compete with other energy-rich nations in taking advantage of our natural energy abundance, while still maintaining clean air and water.

rhetorical effect: makes any opposition to canceling Obama era environmental regulations, treaty agreements, clean-energy subsidies, bans on drilling or mining, building pipelines, etc. seem unpatriotic and economy-crushing. In actuality, zeroing out the greens means zeroing-out the environment. The claim that unlimited drilling can be done while maintaining environmental quality is fanciful at best, and dangerously misleading at worst. Trump’s zero-sum politics–his us-vs-them approach–guarantees a Total War on the environment, a scorched earth policy.

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moralizing

rhetorical claim:  Obama energy policies that protect the environment at the expense of energy production are already outdated, and will be quickly erased in the new Trump administration. Imposing any bans on energy exploration and production turns out to be nothing more than a form of moralizing by preening and self-satisfied green elites. In a realistic world, as understood by the Russians and Chinese, there is no room for moralizing.

rhetorical effect: neuters any moral defense of climate change mitigation, reducing the subject to a matter of opinion, with the reality to be determined by whomever is in power. Thus any kind of environmental regulation is a “politicization” of a supposedly neutral, “natural” process. In this world of outcomes, there is nothing more naive and impotent than idealism.

More broadly, the whole charge of moralizing covers over the moralizing assumptions behind the Tea Party’s nationalist, populist, statist,  law and order identity, their defense of cultural traditions not shared by everyone.

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civility

rhetorical claim: anti-Trump protestors intolerant sore losers who have nothing but scorn for Trump defenders.  Their disruptive protests undermine the common good and are inherently uncivilized.

rhetorical effect: One key step toward criminalizing dissent and defending censorship. The irony is that it was the Fox News hate machine that long ago destroyed civility in American political discourse. As Sofia MccLennen argues in Salon,

 Calls for civility are often a cover for censorship. While we don’t want to give up on the idea of civil society, we should recognize that it is often those in power who use the idea of civility to threaten the very idea of civil society itself.

It gets even messier. We also live in an era of mass-mediated manufactured anger. Trump couldn’t have come to power without tapping into the legacy of the Fox News hate machine. What used to pass for news is now just a bunch of angry vitriol that alternates between scaring viewers and getting them riled up.

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repeal and replace

rhetorical claim: Obamacare will be replaced with a totally privatized insurance market relying on tax credits, savings accounts, competition, and caps on liability payouts.

rhetorical effect: covers over the fact that the new Ryancare (or Trumpcare) will offer restrictive, watered-down policies that will leave millions in bankruptcy or with no coverage at all. Just because the ACA has been replaced doesn’t mean it’s been improved.

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patriotism

rhetorical claim: to the progressives, the very idea of borders and national interests is reactionary and inherently racist. The New Globalization will lead to the eclipse of America.

rhetorical effect: renders any criticism of American power unpatriotic. This is the way the Tea Party/GOP  takes ownership of the word.

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cosmopolitan broad-mindedness:

rhetorical claim: the identity politics of the contemporary Left is counterproductive, standing in the way of a genuine liberalism of principle and cosmopolitan broad-mindedness. Their implacable intolerance, all in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism, is steadily marginalizing the Dems

rhetorical effect: Makes any progressive moral stance on equity, tolerance, and justice seem unprincipled and self-serving. Thus, he only way progressives can prove their “cosmopolitan broad-mindedness” is to accede to Tea Party policies and principles.

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polarizing and divisive

rhetorical claim: when educators and commentators  call the election “polarizing” and “divisive,” they are masking their contempt for Donald Trump. The Dems are the ones polarizing the country with identity politics.

rhetorical effect: cuts any criticism of the Trump administration off at the source by equating dissent with subverting the nation. Rhetorically, another step toward criminalizing dissent.

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undocumented immigrant

rhetorical claim: really means “illegal alien.” Dems refuse to use honest, clear words such as “illegal” and “alien” out of fear of offense.

rhetorical effect: “others” all immigrants as illegal and “alien”. A major step toward regarding all migrants as criminals and as permanently “alien”–as if they are from a different planet.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 18-21, 2016

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making America great again

rhetorical claim: Donald Trump has a green light to restore American pride and dominance, unimpeded by progressives, activist judges, and lifer bureaucrats.

rhetorical effect: Creates the expectation (probably really just a self-fulfilling prophecy) that Trump will waive his magic wand and transform America overnight.In reality, of course, as The Economist points out, Trump will be faced with daunting obstacles, restraints, precedents, complexities, and least-bad-choice decisions:

Take his policies first. After the sugar rush, populist policies eventually collapse under their own contradictions. Mr Trump has pledged to scrap the hated Obamacare. But that threatens to deprive over 20m hard-up Americans of health insurance. His tax cuts would chiefly benefit the rich and they would be financed by deficits that would increase debt-to-GDP by 25 percentage points by 2026. Even if he does not actually deport illegal immigrants, he will foment the divisive politics of race. Mr Trump has demanded trade concessions from China, Mexico and Canada on threat of tariffs and the scrapping of the North American Free Trade Agreement. His protectionism would further impoverish poor Americans, who gain more as consumers from cheap imports than they would as producers from suppressed competition. If he caused a trade war, the fragile global economy could tip into a recession. With interest rates near zero, policymakers would struggle to respond.

Abroad Mr Trump says he hates the deal freezing Iran’s nuclear programme. If it fails, he would have to choose between attacking Iran’s nuclear sites and seeing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East (see article). He wants to reverse the Paris agreement on climate change; apart from harming the planet, that would undermine America as a negotiating partner. Above all, he would erode America’s alliances—its greatest strength. Mr Trump has demanded that other countries pay more towards their security or he will walk away. His bargaining would weaken NATO, leaving front-line eastern European states vulnerable to Russia. It would encourage Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. Japan and South Korea may be tempted to arm themselves with nuclear weapons.

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economic nationalism

rhetorical claims: “America First” when it comes to trade pacts, currency  controls, fiscal policy, and tariffs. America’s greatness is best measured by economic prosperity.

rhetorical effect: normalizes the hard-edged  (Manifest Destiny, Lebensraum, etc) concept of nationalism  a fraught concept–far more threatening than “patriotism,” and, with the ascension of Stephen Bannon, linked to “white nationalism.” So making it innocently mean only economic autonomy is a way of laundering it.

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Islam

rhetorical claim: Islam is a malignant cancer, according to General Michael Flynn, who has also claimed that Sharia law is about to overtake the country.

rhetorical effect: literally demonizing the very name of a religion is a bedrock Goebbels rhetorical maneuver.  This accomplishes two goals: 1) delegitimizes Obama’s reluctance to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” out of fear of needlessly antagonizing and alienating Muslims worldwide, and, 2) paves the way for mandatory registries for Muslims, and eventually detention camps, especially if there is another terrorist attack in America.

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media hysteria

rhetorical claim: mainstream media attacks on Trump are “fake news” and amount to hysteria over his election. Most Americans are jubilant about it, but don’t demonstrate in the streets or break windows to prove it. Any lamestream media critique of Trump amounts to hysterical overreaction, scaremongering, crying wolf, etc.

rhetorical effect: paves the way for new libel laws, widespread media suppression, and, eventually, the criminalization of free political speech. If Trump critics are, by definition, hysterical,  they should be ignored and put away for their own good, just as women used to be.

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onerous fuel mileage  standards:

rhetorical claim: federal fuel mileage standards cripple the auto industry and thus cost jobs, effectively serving as a politicized, domestic tariff on car makers. The market will determine what mileage standards the American public can live with.

rhetorical effect: makes any mileage standard sound unreasonable and only existing as a political payoff to the “greens.” Undercuts any attempts at clean air regulation or environmental planning. Any regulation, in fact, is at bottom “onerous” because undue and punishing. Also makes it easier to argue for making higher-profit SUVs rather than smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.  Also makes profitability the sole criterion for measuring prosperity, ignoring the costs of dirty air.

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individual ratings

rhetorical claim: that individual health care rates will be the ultimate expression of a free health care market, with quality, patient-centered, affordable health care.

rhetorical effect: leaves patients at the mercy of insurance companies. The myth is that a pure free-market approach to health care is reasonable, fair, and transparent, whereas the truth is that such an approach cannot succeed because the market will squeeze out low income patients and anyone with pre-existing conditions.  Vouchers will only go so far, and subsidies will be necessary in order to offer everyone affordable insurance. Thus the “repeal and replace” ploy will only lead to either a soaring rate of uninsured or to re-inventing the Obamacare wheel, several years henceforth.

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patient responsibility

rhetorical claim: health care costs will come down only when working families take responsibility for rationing and paying for health care. Until then, they live heedless of health outcomes because they assume that their employers are paying the bill.

rhetorical effect: Blames individual patients for their medical conditions, and will inevitably lead to rationing, which is  inevitable in any insurance scheme because everyone can’t be covered for everything. In Ryancare (or Trumpcare), individuals will get the blame for unaffordable insurance rates. Anyone not healthy will be labeled “irresponsible”.

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boorish and self-c0ngratulatory demonstrators

 rhetorical claim: bringing up issues of diversity and equality , as the cast of Hamilton recently did to Mike Pence, is rude and condescending. Tolerant and decent Americans don’t need lectures from race-baiters.

rhetorical effect: even bringing up race and redistribution will become politically toxic. Racism and bigotry will become so normalized that they will either disappear as concepts or become their opposites.

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political violence

rhetorical claim: that anti-Trump activists are thuggish brownshirts, anarchists, and hypocrites as they indulge in the same behavior they chastised Trump for when he as a candidate.

rhetorical effect: potentially criminalizes dissent by calling it violence, a tactic right out of the Nixon playbook

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fast-track drug approval

 rhetorical claims: drug approval by the FDA should be based  on safety and efficacy, not long-term outcomes. The Internet of Things will make sure that consumers and physicians can make their own decisions about long-term effects  because the market is always the most efficient source of informationt puts the public

rhetorical effects:makes it seem perfectly reasonable and even advantageous to get drugs to market as quickly as possible, regardless of long-term effects. This inevitable outcome of insufficient proofs of efficacy puts the public at  risk while all the while increasing drug company profits.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 15-18, 2016

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anti-discrimination laws: ironically named because they most often discriminate against religious liberty, and the freedoms of speech and action. The real victims are those conscientious objectors who want to live out their faith in the marketplace without fear of prosecution for doing so.

arming yourself: being morally serious because you take others’ welfare into account. The innocent and law-abiding should be armed.

bigots: demonstrators now out in the streets protesting Trump. They are the haters.

Black Lives Matter: cop haters.

Common Core math: always favors the progressives; book-cooked.

Confederacy: a patriotic and idealistic cause, according to Steve Bannon.

democracy export: the progressives squishes’ recipe for American foreign policy weakness; a fatal and debilitating idealism. President Trump has already shown he can do business with the world’s strongest leaders,and our improved relations with Russia, China, Turkey, etc. will make America great again.

Instead of exporting democratic ideals, Trump will export xenophobia, nationalism, racial animus, suppression of free speech and the media, and a natural bias toward propaganda and outright lies.

detainees: what he Dems call terrorists in Gitmo. Right up there with calling terrorist attacks “workplace violence” and refusing to identify terrorist as radical Muslims.

the economy: to progressives, the daily life of work, profit, and loss that sends them revenue they can then redistribute to their constituents via bureaucratic rules and laws. Some might call it redistribution.

green gravy train: taxpayer funded indulgence so condescending, smug climate crusaders can feed their moral vanity.

law school liberalism: the inbred creed of the Ivy League-tinged  bi-coastal elites who so disdain  the citizens of “flyover country.”

protestors: undemocratic, out-of-control hooligans.

rule of law: law and order and stop and frisk.

In the case of Hillary, guilty until proven innocent. The Trump administration, in its headlong rush to obliterate the Obama legacy,  will attempt to repeal the rule of law by ignoring statutes, regulations, and precedents.

safety pin generation: like to wear government-issued diapers.

sexism: calling women who voted for Trump sexist.

slacker mandate: The ACA provision that employer-based health plans cover employees’ children until they turn 26 years old. Another piece of cradle-to-grave candy; another unfunded mandate.

terrorists: Obama’s biggest supporters.

treachery: working with Democrats.

Trumponomics: the new order of a market economy unleashed from regulation and the “oversight” of lifer bureaucrats.

In reality, as Matthew Yglesias argues in Vox:

The larger risk, however, is that Trump’s lack of grounding in ideological principles or party networks will create a systemically corrupt government. Such governments, Wallis writes, “are rent creating, not rent seeking, governments” that operate by “limiting access to markets and resources in order to create rents that bind the interests of the ruling coalition together.”

This is how Vladimir Putin governs Russia, and how the Mubarak/Sisi regime rules Egypt. To be a successful businessman in a systemically corrupt regime and to be a close supporter of the regime are one and the same thing.

Those who support the regime will receive favorable treatment from regulators, and those who oppose it will not. Because businesses do business with each other, the network becomes self-reinforcing. Regime-friendly banks receive a light regulatory touch while their rivals are crushed. In exchange, they offer friendly lending terms to regime-friendly businesses while choking capital to rivals. Such a system, once in place, is extremely difficult to dislodge precisely because, unlike a fascist or communist regime, it is glued together by no ideology beyond basic human greed, insecurity, and love of family.

 

 

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 12-15, 2016

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bank deregulation:  Freeing up the “animal spirits” of the market, especially in terms of loosening mortgage lending regulations.

Trump’s first move to support the common man!

big government: the opposite of the Constitution. Constitutional law will be great again, which means making it once again resonate with this nation’s heritage—not abstract principles divorced from our lived experience and accumulated wisdom as a people.

consumer-directed health arrangements: at the heart of the “replace” part of repealing and replacing Obamacare. Innovations such as health saving accounts and tax credits will replace Obamacare’s byzantine maze of subsidies, mandates, and penalties. The newly-freed market will drive prices down as consumers get more choices.

This is Orwellian-speak for insurance industry-driven health care policy. Consumers will be forced to do anything except “direct” the health care market, since there will be no price controls, lowered state regulation, a slow drowning  of Medicaid via state block grants, and, if Paul Ryan gets his way with “premium support” (aka, vouchers), the privatization of Medicare. The only thing re-formed will be consumers’ soaring net health care expenditures, as the vouchers and tax credits are inevitably unable to keep pace with rising health care and insurance prices. Calling it premium support, not premium reimbursement means that it will be at best partial.

defenders of freedom: Trump supporters. Trump haters would take away freedom of speech and thought.

European-Americans: the single most discriminated against group in the recent )and now past) “pc” era of American history. Note: does not include jews.

fear: a good thing, according to Steve Bannon. As he put it in 2010, “Fear is going to lead you to take action.”

feeling good: the liberal-progressive, baby boomers’ mantra. How eclipsed by  Trumpism, with its return to morality, responsibility, patriotism, social mores, and discipline.

feminism:  a needy, demanding, touchy-feely form of attention-seeking.

justice: to progressives, Hillary somehow winning the election.

the multicultural raj: the pc crowd that was voted out Nov. 8. Multiethnic is good because it doesn’t engage in victimhood-mongering and balkanization. Progressives need to get over multiculturalism because there is only one culture: the American culture.

popular vote advantage: Clintonistas’ form of denial of the election of Donald Trump.

progressive agenda:  having the government govern the people, as opposed to the people governing the government.

snowflakes: media slime and feinting-couch progressives calling in sick and hovering in safe places under their beds — the dopes marching in the streets demanding civility as they shout threats to grab Trump by his genitals.

Steven Bannon: a controversial figure who ran a provocative website. Also a patriot who only wants what’s best for America.

Also a misogynist, xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic bomb-thrower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 8-12, 2016

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Barack Obama: the ultimate free-lunch politician, handing out new entitlements like candy.

Clinton Foundation: a bribe pump. Hillary is the Godmother.

deserving: the feeling that those Hillary called the “deplorables” aren’t getting what they deserve, whereas lots of other Americans, especially urbanites, are getting what they don’t deserve.

diversity: apartheid, American-style.

fuel standards: economically unjustifiable nanny state regulations

free (as in free tuition): paid for by others.

opportunity inequality: the new equality challenge: overcome the leveling and crippling stranglehold of teachers’ unions so children can learn 21st century skills in charter and private schools. We need to create a new creative class because you can’t redisribute your way to economic growth or progress.

Paris climate drum circle: the draconian anti-carbon cabal of wealthy environmentalists and self-righteous “green” elites.

political correctness: deference to “victims”: women, minorities, LGBT, etc. We are captives to historical shame that is no longer relevant. Eventually, someone is going to have to tell those “porch  niggers” to find a job. Every deferential gesture–the war on poverty, affirmative action, Obamacare, every kind of “diversity” scheme–only weakens the recipients.

trigger warnings: weaponized offense-taking.

winners and losers: the 2016 election’s winners: Donald Trump, the American people, the US Constitution, Constitutional originalist judges, frackers,  the Keystone Pipeline, the free market, growing the economy instead of growing entitlements, etc.  America is going to win so much it will get sick of winning.

Losers: Hillary Clinton , media, cultural, academic and  green elites,  smug liberals who look down on working people, “climate change”,  LGBT perverts, Black Lives Matter activists, feminazis,  political correctness, progressivism, social engineering,  identity politics, terrorists everywhere, Obamacare, activist judges, free traders and globalists, baby killers, “Pocohantas” Warren, Iran, China, Mexico, arrogant entitlement,

The real winners: corporations, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, bankers and Wall Street, racists, vulgarians, misogynists, nativists and xenophobes,, authoritarians, white supremacists, lobbyists, bullies, the alt-right, coal, fascism, greed, Citizens United,

The real losers:  vanity, hate, arrogance,  recklessness, decency, equity, fairness, moderation, compromise, respect and dignity, the planet Earth, scientific fact, democratic norms, marriage equality, reproductive rights, the rule of law, fuel standards

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Nov. 4-8, 2016

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business: to the Dems, another arm of the state, rather than being driven by the free market. (see “public service,”below)

fact-checking: to the Dems, a vehicle to do partisan politics.

Hillary supporters: Inside-the-Beltway, trust-funded supercilious snots from third-tier Ivy League wannabe schools who, as Victor Davis Hanson put it, “sound quite clever without being especially bright, attuned to social justice without character. Their religion is not so much progressivism as appearing cool and hip and ‘right’ on the issues … . Well-connected and mediocre … . They write and sound off about the buffoon Trump and preen in sanctimonious moral outrage … .”

market distortions: public safety, public health, financial regulation rules and laws, welfare, environmental regulation–all the ways the Dems distort the free market’s natural outcomes.

As Karl Polanyi argued,  the “Market Society” substitutes utility and self-interest for reciprocity and redistribution. Economic policy decisions intended to ameliorate the Darwinian/Hobbesian aspects of the “free” market actually are the free market, not distortions of it. Without them, there is no market.

minimum wage increase: Teenage Job Elimination Act

the press never talks about it: the rising murder rate, global cooling, immigrant murderers and rapists, the Clinton Foundation’s shakedown schemes, Hillary’s lying about her Benghazi coverup or her e-mails, the millions of immigrants pouring over our borders, etc.

The press never talks about these things because they aren’t true.

public schools: Dem dropout factories. By protecting the teachers’ unions, the Dems are sentencing millions of black kids to academic failure.

public service: to the Dems, deferred compensation, as they move to the meeting place of government and business.

redistribution: Dem buzzword/smokescreen for redistributing political power–to the Dems!

rigged system the insider elites who control Washington and “rig” the system so the free market is never set free.

As Paul Krugman, paraphrasing Robert Reich, argues, the opposite is actually true: the elites make sure the playing field is always “predistributed” to tilt in their favor:

there’s a feedback loop between political and market power. Rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence, via campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door. Political influence in turn is used to rewrite the rules of the game—antitrust laws, deregulation, changes in contract law, union-busting—in a way that reinforces income concentration. The result is a sort of spiral, a vicious circle of oligarchy.

The Tea Party/GOP’s faux populism is intended to cover over, and perpetuate, this “vicious circle of oligarchy.” Donald Trump, of course, has been at the center of this circle for his entire life. The system has actually been “rigged” for him via tax breaks, write-offs, lawsuits over property and contract rules, cheap foreign labor, free publicity, etc. He’s right-the system is rigged–but he’s done the rigging, and his phony populism–“the blue collar billionaire” meme– shouldn’t fool anyone.

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, October 29-Nov. 3, 2016

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authenticity and authority: Donald Trump is succeeding because voters think that everything he says is “real” and unvarnished. He does not hypocritically say one thing and believe another. He “tells it like it is,” even if the pc crown and corrupt media don’t like what he says.

Trump’s “authority” is really authoritarianism. He doesn’t say things because they’re right, or command an action because it’s good. Rather, what he says is right just because he says it, even if it’s clearly a lie or distortion, and what he commands is good, even if it is morally heinous (torturing, banning Muslims, seeing Mexicans as murderers and rapists, punishing women for abortions, etc.). The only shared meanings in Trumpland are meanings he creates. Even authoritarianism is preferable to liberalism.

Election Day: Judgment Day, when the lib-Dems get their comeuppance.

ending a war: what the Dems confuse with walking way from a war.

go-between governing: the Obama/Clinton usurpation of representative government via unaccountable executive orders, bureaucracies, various “czars” , and the courts. This workaround solution to avoiding direct tyranny.

governing: in Hillary’s mind, complicating Americans’ lives with more rules, more legal pitfalls for citizens, and more mandates for business. Her regulatory model is to destroy businesses while doling out favors to political constituents, billing the taxpayer all the while.

lamestream media: inbred, conflicted, morally-challenged. Loyal lapdogs of Clinton, Inc.

lost American jobs: due to affirmative action, government regulation,  immigrants, China and Mexico, etc.

mutual respect: Kumbaya political correctness.

pollution: the sacrifice we make for capitalism.

Along with premature death, environmental destruction, gaping inequality, etc.

sympathy fatigue: Being sick of pc culture: the feeling that the liberals love everyone but you, including criminal immigrants, Afro-Americans on welfare, shorebirds, college students with “trigger” issues, transsexuals, etc.

welfare: theft from the American people.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, October 25-28, 2016

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Clinton administration: in a Hillary reign, Americans will have two choices: salute the new federal overlords or be prepared to be sued by federal lawyers and called a racist or misogynist.

defense: when Donald Trump is forced to attack others because they have said something negative about him

It’s never Trump’s fault, and, like Putin, he frames his scurrilous attacks on others, like the wife-beater who says “don’t make me hit you again.”

facts: to the Dems, a means of social control. They manufacture so-called “facts” that are really just assertion–theories– global warming, Trump as sexual predator, the reliability of polls, evolution, etc.

The Tea Party/GOP pushes out story lines or narratives which combine to give a feeling of no reliable facts, thus making it impossible to arrive at any agreed-upon truth. For example, it’s impossible to prove Hillary isn’t a criminal, even though she has never been formally charged with a crime.

First Amendment: to the crooked and discredited lamestream media, an excuse to bloviate and slander.

horse-and-buggy regulations: any Obama admin rule or regulation that hinders the free market is outdated in the coming post-regulation era, when the market will be set free from the shackles of the past. Government will become passe.

legalized corruption: the hallmark of a Hillary administration.

NATO allies: chiselers unwilling to pay their fair share for their own defense.

patronage: what the US provides for ISIS. This sponsorship grows out of Iran’s bamboozling of the West. Obama and Clinton created, sponsor, and sustain ISIS.

post-freedom America: starts the day after Hillary is sworn in , when all the guns are confiscated.

racist cops: an urban myth. Everyone talks about them but no one has ever met one.

the System: the criminal conspiracy of the politicians, lamestream media, international banking community, federal bureaucrats, Hollywood, labor unions, school teachers and college professors, etc. The System’s failure is what will finally drive the People to take over their own government.

Garry Wills answers this rant best:

Hillary Clinton is the end product of the System (whatever that is). Donald Trump is outside the System (whatever that means). The System has failed (at something, or everything). To escape the System, we must vote for Trump (or anyone) outside it. What do we have to lose?

Everything, probably.

tradition: what corrupts the political system. Tradition, synonyms with convention and the status, is what prevents political change.

In the thoroughgoing disdain they hold for the GOP’s Burkean roots–the heart of conservatism, of preserving tradition– the Trumpkins are innocent of any sense of moral aspiration. When you nominate an arsonist to ‘”burn the house down” ,  you don’t have much to build on after the fire.