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, Feb 7-13, 2018

Posted on February 13, 2018 by suratsweet

squeezed

runaway

rhetorical claim: infrastructure and military spending are being squeezed by runaway discretionary spending.

rhetorical effect: these closely-related terms load the deck in favor of more miitary spending and blame the poor for the declining US infrastructure. Trump never says that military spending is “squeezing” health care provision, nursing home and nutritional subsidies, Medicare and Medicaid and all social safety net programs. Even though the US military is by far the most expensive in the world, it will never be accused of “runaway” spending.

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the dossier saga

rhetorical claim: the whole Steele dossier saga shows that Justice Dept. and FBI to be on rgue missions to undermoine Donald Trump. This ongoing saga is the lowest point in government integrity since Watergate.

rhetorical effect: makes the GOP’s unsubstantiated claims a fait accomplie; calling it a saga gives it the appearance of being a “deep state” conspiracy of epic proportions.

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restoring the credibility of the FBI

rhetorical claim: we need either an independent investigation into the FBI’s and Justice Department’s hijacking of the 2016 Presidential election in order to restore their credibility.

rhetorical effect: Assumes the very thing it wishes to prove and accepts as a given the the Justice Dept. and FBI need to have their credibility “restored.” What most needs restoring is the reputation and integrity of the GOP.

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treasonous

un- American

rhetorical claim: Dems who failed to applaud the President at the State of the Union address were treasonous and un-American.

rhetorical effect: let’s get this straight: refusing to applaud the Trumpster is treasonous, but meeting with Russians to get campaign dirt on Hillary is “just politics.” Trump obviously doesn’t know what constitutes treason, but neither do his core supporters, all of whom would like to “lock her up” or just plain execute her. Also, is it even possible to be un-American if you are an American citizen? Technically, in that case, whatever you do is American. Also, who gets to decide the definition of being an American? As explained by Frank Bruni:

That meandering air masks a considered ploy: As a distraction and deflection, he routinely accuses his adversaries of the very wrongdoing that can more credibly be attributed to him. “Treason” is a word too grand to be thrown around casually, but it applies better to a president who minimizes and denigrates clear evidence that a foreign power meddled in an American election — and makes no real effort to prevent that from happening again — than it does to a bunch of lawmakers who decline to salute him. Their actions are largely theatrical. His are substantively dangerous.

Never has a president been so gifted at projection, the psychological tic by which a person divines in others what’s so deeply embedded in himself. Democrats, he said, were “selfish,” putting their own feelings above the country’s welfare. The man who signed tax legislation that benefits his business empire and spends roughly one of every three days at a Trump-branded property wouldn’t know anything about that.

He doesn’t engage the substance of any opposition to him or investigation of him. He just invalidates the agents of it. That diverts the discussion from facts to name-calling, which is a game that nobody ever wins.

If journalists are documenting his falsehoods, they themselves must be fabulists. If judges rule against him, they must be biased. If federal law enforcement officials have suspicions about him or people who worked for him, they must be corrupt hacks. If Democrats don’t congratulate him for making America great again, they must be traitors.

Soon there is no one to trust but Trump, or no one to trust at all. That’s the point. He’s inoculating himself, and no price — not the reputations of individuals who have behaved honorably, not the viability of institutions that are crucial to the health of our democracy — is too steep to pay.

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a government of laws

rhetorical claim: Robbie Mueller is not following the rule of law because his investigation is based on false pretenses, deception of the FISA court, and the illegal pursuit of a criminal case instead of a national security case, which is the only kind of case he is authorized to pursue.

rhetorical effect: the only “government of laws” that the GOP believes in are the laws that are interpreted the way they like them to be–more broadly than warranted in Hillary’s case, more narrowly than warranted in Trump’s case.

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using our troops as hostages

rhetorical claim: Defense hawks have pushed to bust the military spending caps put in place by sequestration, but more dovish Democrats say they will only go along if there is a corresponding increase in domestic spending. In other words, they want more butter in exchange for more guns. Many tea partiers in the House have been adamant that they won’t accept significant growth in discretionary spending to strengthen the safety net at home, even in exchange for more military money.

“I will remind you that the only reason we do not have a full budget agreement is because Democrats continue to hold funding for our government hostage on an unrelated issue,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters at a news conference yesterday. “They must stop using our troops as pawns in a game of politics!”

rhetorical effect: Hiding behind the troops, or calling them “hostages” are not only outright lies, but appropriate the military as a GOP political prop. Makes any increases in domestic spending contingent on parallel increases in military spending, even though the two don’t necessarily have anything to with one another. As explained by Chuck Schumer: “Democrats have made our position in these negotiations very clear,” “We support an increase in funding for our military and our middle class. The two are not mutually exclusive. We don’t want to do just one and leave the other behind.” Ryan also makes it sound as if only the Dems engage in a “game of politics.”

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inclusionary zoning

rhetorical claim: mandates for low-cost housing, often called inlcusionary zoning, actually make housing less afforable for everyone else.

rhetorical effect: another rhetorical inversion, call it reverse axiomatics: social safety net spending hurts the poor; less government regulation leads to more transparency because the market clears itself and values information; tax cuts for the rich are good for the poor, gun control laws will only lead to more gun violence, etc.

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paymasters

rhetorical claim: the Steele dossier was compiled under the watchful eyes of Christopher Steele’s paymasters–the Clinton mafia. No Clintonistas, no dossier. No dossier, no FISA warrant. Clinton should be the one investigated for collusion with the Russians and for using the criminal justice for a political smear campaign.

rhetorical effect: “Paymasters” haven’t surfaced since the McCarthy era, when all Russian contacts were so identified. Paymasters are illicit and conspiratorial, as opposed to being just plain clients paying for opposition research. Making every piece of Dem opposition research nefarious castes their entire campaign as fraudulent at best, and a criminal conspiracy to tamper with elections at worst.

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ideologues

rhetorical claim: progressive ideologues hae hijacked the Democratic party in he name of moral purity, identity politics, hatred of all TRump voters, and a constant alarmism about Trump as dictator, or something.

rhetorical effect: calling them “ideologues” makes Dems sound inflexible and narrow-minded. The only Republicans called “ideologues” are those who oppose any of Trump’s policies. Standing on principle is now seen as merely being “ideiological”–as if principles are just a form of political expediency.

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Anglo-American heritage of the law

rhetorical claim: Jeff Sessions: “I want to thank every sheriff in America. Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process,” Sessions told members of the National Sheriffs’ Association during their winter conference in Washington.

He added: “The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”

rhetorical effect: more dog-whistle racist politics, conflating common law with white supremacy. Especially pertinent to the Trump administration’s obsession with deporting and limiting immigrants.

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the Man of the People

rhetorical claim: as promised, Donald Trump has delivered foe the working American: lower taxes, an economic boom, low unemployment, cheaper and better health care, increased Medicare and Medicaid,and the end of crony capitalism favoring the wealthy.

rhetorical effect: covers over some inconvenient facts: record deficits, huge cuts to all social safety net programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, huge, permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, and cosmetic, temporary ones for middle and lower class taxpayers, etc. As best expressed by Eugene Robinson:

The idea of Donald Trump as some sort of Man of the People was laughable from the start — a boastful plutocrat who lives in a gold-plated aerie above Fifth Avenue, claiming lunch-bucket solidarity with factory workers and coal miners. He sold it, though, largely by cementing a racial and cultural kinship and shamelessly misrepresenting his intentions.

Trump tells little lies all the time. But this is the Big Lie that must be constantly exposed between now and the November election: Trump is worsening society’s bias in favor of the wealthy — and laughing at the chumps who put him in office.

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, Jan 30-Feb. 6, 2018

Posted on February 6, 2018 by suratsweet

red tape

streamlining

partnering

rhetorical claim: the President’s infrastructure plan will eliminate obstructionist bureaucratic red tape. It’s past time for the government to get out of the way so the private sector can get projects done faster and cheaper. We need to streamline the regulatory process so government can partner with the private sector to make progress.

rhetorical effect: assumes that government regulation only exists to cause problems for noble job creators. Will justify the basic dismantling of the regulatory state. The Center for American Progress explains what kind of “red tape” the administration wants to cast aside:

As detailed in the leaked proposal, the Trump administration’s plan would require fundamental changes to no fewer than 10 bedrock environmental laws that protect the nation’s clean air, clean water, wildlife, and national parks. The plan would hollow out the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the law that requires federal project sponsors to consult with stakeholders who would be affected by new projects and identify ways to reduce their impact on the environment, public health, and cultural resources. The Endangered Species Act is also in the crosshairs, as several provisions would prioritize new development over the protection of wildlife that is on the brink of extinction. The Trump administration proposes significant changes to the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to make it easier for corporations to break ground and avoid inconvenient air and water quality protections. The proposal even includes some mystifying provisions, such as one to give Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke unilateral authority to site natural gas pipelines in national parks.

“Streamlining” seems to mean “ignore the health and safety of the communities where these projects are placed.” And “partnering” means privatizing. As Paul Waldman sums it up in the Washington Post:

So we need a federal infrastructure bill. The problem with this one is that it’s being sold as something it isn’t, it makes it harder for states and localities to afford infrastructure projects, it prioritizes private profits over public needs, and in the end if it passes we’d wind up paying more and getting less. In other words, it’s just about what you’d expect from this president.

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restoring confidence in law enforcement

rhetorical claim: The House memo is not about “attacking the FBI” or “our law enforcement professionals,” as Democrat Adam Schiff insists. This is about restoring confidence in a law enforcement agency that played an unprecedented role in a U.S. presidential election regarding both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

rhetorical effect: Assumes the very thing they proclaim: that “confidence” in the FBI needs to be “restored.” Significantly, they refer to “confidence” in the FBI–a state of mind subject to shifting political winds–not the actual workings of the FBI. The only reason “confidence” is purported to need restoration is that the GOP has launched a year-long effort to undercut the FBI’s reputation. So now they use the success of their undermining as a rationale for further undermining. They’ve learned some lessons from the Russians about how to concoct and carry out disinformation campaigns.

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the global rules-based order

rhetorical claim: In the global rules-based order all countries in the world, bar a few rogue states, deal with each other according to an agreed set of legal, economic and military rules. However, clever foreigners have manipulated the international system, so that America now trades at a massive disadvantage and is forced to accept hostile rulings by international tribunals. When it comes to security, Mr Trump complains that America spends billions giving cheap protection to ungrateful allies. He is demanding change.

rhetorical effect: as Gordon Rachman argues in the Financial Times,

“You break it, you own it,” runs the pottery shop slogan. But when it comes to the global rules-based order, the Trump administration’s view seems to be, “We no longer own it, so we are going to break it.” America is turning against the world it made — and the consequences are unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

The coming year will be a big test of how far the Trump administration is willing to go with the US potentially launching a multi-pronged assault on the international trading system: demanding radical changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, hobbling the World Trade Organization and slapping tariffs on Chinese goods. Tension between the US and South Korea, or within the Nato alliance, could easily surface this year — raising questions about America’s commitment to the rules that govern world security.

Probable effects include increasing US isolation, a revolt of the US business community if NAFTA is overturned but not replaced, a lack of allies when the US tries to organize stepped-up boycotts against Iran or North Korea, and a more or less permanent state of chaos and uncertainty in the international order–in other words, exactly the way Trump plays it domestically. The only “rule” that Trump plays by is to refuse to play by any “rule” that he hasn’t himself created.

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unmatched power

rhetorical claim: America will no longer be taken advantage of, and will use its umatched power to again dominate the world.

rhetorical effect: purposely confuses moral authority with might, persuasion with bullying, and inspiration with intimidation. We used to have “unmatched” influence because we were seen as a beacon of freedom and opportunity. Now we are educed to just having unmatched military power.

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we the people

rhetorical claim: as Trump said in the SOTU “It is we the people who are making America great again.”

rhetorical effect: excludes half the nation from any presidential praise. Apparently immigrants, government workers, anyone advocating consumer or environmental protection etc. do not count as part of the “we.” Fortifies divisiveness and undermines any hopes of bipartisanship. Note also that it’s not at all clear what “we the people” are actually doing to make America great again, since all they seem to be getting is a tax cut. In other words, the rhetorical effect is to praise people for doing nothing but supporting Trump: another self-fulfilling prophecy. By rhetorically claiming itself to be a stunning success, the Trump administration obscures the fact that it has created no new social programs, gutted environmental protections, choked off voting and civil rights, cost millions their health coverage, given huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, and destabilized the entire world. All it has done to date is destroy, nullify and negate, making it the most reactionary administration ever. was the pursuit of “unmatched power” against an ungrateful or hostile world of “unfair trade deals” and would-be migrants destined for murderous gangs.

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the liberal FBI

rhetorical claim: the FBI is corrupted with an ant-Trump virus, and must be purged of holdover Clintonistas and careerist liberals.

rhetorical effect: Obscures the fact that Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, saw fit to apply for this warrant’s renewal. This suggests that one of the most senior figures in Trump’s own Justice Department thought it was credible that Trump had someone compromised by Russia on his campaign. Only in a crazy alternate universe does that exculpate the president.

Unless, that is, you believe that it is illegitimate for intelligence agencies to be watching Trump associates. And to believe that, you have to start with the premise that Trump is innocent and the agencies are corrupt. The controversy around the Nunes memo works to insinuate these assumptions into the public debate. It may also give Trump the very thinnest of pretexts to fire Rosenstein, which would be a first step toward attempting to shut down the Russia investigation.

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that’s politics

rhetorical claim: “that’s politics,” says the President about his son’s meeting with Russians to get dirt on Hillary.

rhetorical effect: opposition research is suddenly put on the same moral plane as collusion with a foreign power, just as when Trump equated obstruction of justice with “fighting back.” Classical inversion and undermining of words, so that they become synonyms for something they aren’t.

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, Jan 23-29, 2018

Posted on January 29, 2018 by suratsweet

closing the deal

rhetorical claim: President Trump’s first year in office has been one of the most successful in the history of the Presidency. His ability close the deal has served notice to China, Iran and North Korea, and America is once again leading from a position of strength.

rhetorical effect: cleverly obscures the obvious fact that Trump is the worst salesman in American history. Domestically, he has, at various times scuttled the tax bill, health care reform and immigration reform, and successful bills bills pass in spite of him, not because of him. Internationally, this lie about his leadership skills is well exposed by Foreign Policy:

Trump is singularly failing to “close the deal” for America abroad. Note that, while it’s within his power to unilaterally end supposedly “bad deals” like the Trans-Pacific Partnership or NAFTA, his promises to conclude “great deals” are utterly hollow. He hasn’t made any appreciable progress on any new trade negotiations, even the bilateral ones that he favors for mysterious reasons over multilateral (and hence more beneficial) accords. Nor, needless to say, has he had any success in renegotiating the Paris climate accord, which he (wrongly) claims is harmful to America. Trump has managed to convince the United Nations Security Council to toughen sanctions on North Korea, but only because Russia and China have no intention of enforcing the resolutions. He had no luck in selling his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or his desire to redo the Iran nuclear deal. Allies simply don’t want to help America, no matter how much Trump blusters and bluffs…

Trump doesn’t seem to realize that a great part of America’s appeal abroad has been its role as a paragon and champion of liberal democratic values. He shows so little appreciation for those principles that Freedom House has just downgraded America in its annual “Freedom in the World” report. The report notes that in 2017, the United States’ “core institutions were attacked by an administration that rejects established norms of ethical conduct across many fields of activity. President Trump himself has mingled the concerns of his business empire with his role as president, appointed family members to his senior staff, filled other high positions with lobbyists and representatives of special interests, and refused to abide by disclosure and transparency practices observed by his predecessors.” Trump even attacks the bedrock principle of freedom of the press, labeling the media as the “enemy of the American people” — rhetoric that, as Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said, is reminiscent of Stalin’s.

Meanwhile, Freedom House notes, the integrity of America’s political system was undermined by “growing evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign and a lack of action by the Trump administration either to condemn or to prevent a reoccurrence of such meddling.” Far from trying to stop the Russian interference, Trump seems intent on stopping any probe of what the Russians were (and are) up to.

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fighting back

rhetorical claim: Trump’s firing of Comey and attempted firing of Mueller are simply instances of a President fighting back against his vicious attackers and fake-news mongerers.

rhetorical effect: Translating from the super-paranoid GOP hive mind: “fake” news is news that makes Trump look bad, and “fighting back” is a euphemism for obstruction of justice. As Bret Stephens warns:

Liberals observing the awful spectacle might be forgiven for taking quiet satisfaction in this G.O.P. bonfire of the sanities. They should take care it doesn’t infect them as well.

The principal lesson of paranoia is the ease with which politically aroused people can mistake errors for deceptions, coincidences for patterns, bumbling for dereliction, and secrecy for treachery. True conspiracies are rare but stupidity is nearly universal. The failure to know the difference, combined with the desire for a particular result, is what accounts for the paranoid style.

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protectionism

rhetorical claim: America needs to protect itself from being taken advantage of by China and others gaming the trading system.

rhetorical effect: as George Will argues, protectionism does not protect Americans at all from higher prices:

Fomenting spurious anxieties about national security is the first refuge of rent-seeking scoundrels who tart up their protectionism as patriotism when they inveigle government into lining their pockets with money extracted from their fellow citizens. Sugar producers are ludicrously protected in the name of “food security.” Most U.S. steel imports come from four important allies: Canada, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. The coming steel tariffs/taxes will mean that defense dollars will buy fewer ships, tanks and armored vehicles, just as the trillion infrastructure dollars the administration talks about will buy fewer bridges and other steel-using projects. As Henry George said, with protectionism a nation does to itself in peacetime what an enemy tries to do to it in war.

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getting your money’s worth out of government

rhetorical claim: the tax reform package goes a long way to making sure we get our money’s worth out of government as it gets more efficient and effective.

rhetorical effect: avoids using the politically-charged term “tax cuts” because the rich are getting the lion’s share of the tax cuts. Turns greed into a matter of efficiency and even principle. In the same vein, tax cuts are said to be a principled defense of property rights, challenging the cult of the omnipotent state.

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self-tax

rhetorical claim: taxes for the rich should be lowered because the rich self-tax in the form of charitable giving.

rhetorical effect: the rich self-tax in the same the chemical industry can be trusted to self-regulate its pollution, lenders can be trusted to self-regulate home loans, and the drug companies can be trusted to self-regulate drug safety.

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the other side of the story

rhetorical claim: Congressional Dems, the FBI, and Ron Rosenstein and other “career” FBI Dem partisans, are doing everything they can to suppress the telling of the other side of the Russian election-tampering story–the side that tells of FBI collusion obstruction and Trump hatred, and of the Dems ginning up the dirty dossier to launch the wholly concocted Mueller inquiry.

rhetorical effect: typical “on the one hand, on the other hand” attempt to relativize all news on the Russian probe as either fake or unknowable. Part of the larger attempt to undermine and dismiss any eventual findings of criminal collusion, obstruction or money-laundering. Note that this meme assumes that the fake GOP counter-theme of FBI malfeasance and deception is a true story, even though it consists largely of blowing things out of context and cherry-picking evidence. It is not in fact “part of the story” but, instead, a “concocted” separate and wholly distracting different story altogether.

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“racism” fatigue

rhetorical claim: Tucker Carlson argues that “The term racism doesn’t work anymore…What was once a devastating attack on a person’s character is now just background noise. When everything is racist from ice cream trucks to Dr. Suess, nothing is. The term has been devalued by reckless overuse. And that’s a shame because it still applies.\There’s still plenty racism in America, maybe more now than in generations.”

rhetorical effect: even though he–generously?–concedes that racism is more prevalent than ever in America, his claim that the term can’t be used any more creates a double-bind: anyone who uses the term is by definition a “race-baiter,” so never talking about it is the best way to counter it. Huh?

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the honor and privilege of citizenship

rhetorical claim: Citizenship determines who shall rule, to what ends, and what life among us shall be.Those who seek to enter America do so for a variety of reasons, and it is incumbent upon our politicians to create a system that prioritizes people who are worthy of the weight, worthy of the honor and privilege of citizenship. Republicans must not let their overriding desire to “fix” this problem gut their party of the last vestiges of principle and common sense.

rhetorical effect: the GOP again claiming sole possession of principle and common sense, even though common sense (in the form of polls, at least), overwhelmingly favors amnesty for DACA kids. Also note the sacred anchor terms of “honor” and “worth,”–again, virtues that the GOP claim the Dems lack altogether. The implication is that immigrants lack honor, worth, common sense and principle, as if they are a lower species that the “real Americans.” Calling anything a privilege instead of a right (as in the health care debate) lays the rhetorical foundation for exclusion.

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Trumpocracy (or MAGA)

rhetorical claim: Trump’s first year has seen a stunning string of successes as America transformed itself into a Trumpocracy and became great again: great in the economy and jobs, great in military might, and great in getting the government out of the people’s way.

rhetorical effect: David Frum argues that

Trumpocracy is the fusion of Trump’s authoritarian instincts with the G.O.P.’s plutocratic instincts in the context of a country trending in very different directions.

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, Jan 19-23, 2018

Posted on January 23, 2018 by suratsweet

a concern for Christian values

rhetorical claim: Trump’s pastor Franklin Graham, responding to the revelation that Trump had a porn star paid off just before the election, said “We certainly don’t hold him up as the pastor of this nation and he is not. But I appreciate the fact that the president does have a concern for Christian values, he does have a concern to protect Christians whether it’s here at home or around the world, and I appreciate the fact that he protects religious liberty and freedom.”

rhetorical effect: “a concern for Christian values” means that the evangelical community has completely capitulated to Trump for political expediency’s sake. Note that they are not saying that Trump represents Christians values, just that he used them to get what he wants. Nor are they saying that Trump in any way believes in Christian values, just that he “has a concern for them.” Trump’s only “concern” for Christian values is his “concern” for the evangelicals’ vote. As Michael Gerson argues in The Washington Post:

The level of cynicism here is startling. Some Christian leaders are surrendering the idea that character matters in public life in direct exchange for political benefits to Christians themselves. It is a political maneuver indistinguishable from those performed by business or union lobbyists every day. Only seedier. You scratch my back, I’ll wink at dehumanization and Stormy Daniels. The gag reflex is entirely gone.

From a purely political perspective, the Trump evangelicals are out of their depth.

The problem, however, runs deeper. Trump’s court evangelicals have become active participants in the moral deregulation of our political life. Never mind whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute. Some evangelicals are busy erasing bright lines and destroying moral landmarks. In the process, they are associating evangelicalism with bigotry, selfishness and deception. They are playing a grubby political game for the highest of stakes: the reputation of their faith.

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“it’s too political

it won’t do anything

it will intensify partisanship

rhetorical claim: a government shutdown is the fault of the Dems, whose intransigence on immigration reform is too political, too partisan, and won’t solve any problems.

rhetorical effect: these all-purpose excuses are trotted out whenever the GOP feels threatened by Dem claims and initiatives: on gun control, health care, immigration reform, the government shutdown or discussions of social justice, racism, and police reform. Jennifer Rubin has deftly anatomized this GOP rhetorical script:

“This would be political.” Yeah, right. The appeal to our founding principles is political, but the defense of a president for violating those principles is not? This is blind partisanship, putting loyalty to the president above fidelity to our Constitution.

“It wouldn’t do anything.” Well, if they’d prefer impeachment, Democrats would gladly oblige. However, this is not an excuse to do nothing. Republicans do have a point though. More compelling actions would be passage of a fix for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which Trump inhumanely ended, and an extension of temporary protected status for Haitians and Salvadorans. Such legislative actions would refute the notion that we do not value immigrants from non white, non-European countries. But of course Republicans don’t want to do this either.

“It would intensify partisanship.” Really? It’s hard to see how things could get much worse. To the contrary, when there is a price to be paid — even a symbolic one — for throwing red meat to the base and waving the bloody shirt, perhaps there will be less of it.

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optimal allocation of resources

rhetorical claim: the free market promotes the optimal allocation of resources ()labor, capital and goods).

rhetorical effect: Rapacity masquerading as Mr. Market at work. The “optimal allocation of resources” seems to include homelessness, the lack of health care insurance, widening inequality, outright racism and the worst divisiveness in the US since the Civil War. And this meme also allows the GOP to claim that the victims of this new Gilded Age are actually its chief beneficiaries.

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Medicaid-induced opioid addiction

rhetorical claim: Medicaid recipients are taking advantage of their free health care by selling their pain pills on the black market, expanding the market for opioids.. In March, Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, argued that “expanded coverage helped cause the opioid crisis. Free pills means more addicts.” A Senate report titled, “Drugs for Dollars: How Medicaid Helps Fuel the Opioid Epidemic” asks, “What if one of the contributing causes is connected to federal spending itself?” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) concludes, “Medicaid has contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic by establishing a series of incentives that make it enormously profitable to abuse and sell dangerous drugs.”

rhetorical effect: As argued in Salon,

Apparently not content with limiting poor peoples’ access to health insurance, it would seem that Republicans are now attempting to pathologize those on Medicaid as drug addled criminals.

“This is a government program-wide phenomenon where American taxpayers are providing well-intentioned funds into some of theses programs and those funds are being utilized to divert drugs, sell them on the open market,” Johnson said during Wednesday’s hearing.

By this logic, the Department of Defense was responsible for the heroin epidemic among returning veterans following the Vietnam War. Cutting the defense budget, it would follow, would have ended that heroin crisis. The Veterans Health Administration still has a huge issue with opioid overprescription, addiction and drug diversion – but Republicans would never dare hold a hearing suggesting that increased funding of the VA is the root cause….Wednesday’s events were among the most troubling indications that ludicrous conservative conspiracy theories have fully taken hold in the halls of Congress.

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being a gentleman

rhetorical claim: Peggy Noonan argues that what America most needs now are gentlemen–men who proceed from good will and are chivalrous, courteous, and honorable. These qualities are all but lost in this narcissistic era where decorum, dignity and self-control have been jettisoned, an era in which, according to another WSJ columnist, Joseph Epstein, “repression is illness, confession the cure, with impulse satisfaction, self-esteem and personal happiness the paramount goals.”

rhetorical effect: lawdy, lawdy, the barabarians are at the gates. The reprise of this perennial American rhetoric about eroding norms and morals is at least as old as te Mayflower days. It rhymes nicely with the grumpy response to sixties’ hippie culture, as if any Americans ever have been especially good at self-control, and as if self-esteem is some sort of sin. Gives conservatives cover for their disapproval of behavior and attitudes they don’t understand.

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dismantling the Obama regulatory machine

rhetorical claim: the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling the draconian regulatory machine of the Obama era. The government once again wants to help consumers, not hurt businesses. This is a necessary and right adjustment, a kind of emancipation for individual choice and freedom. Regulation is not bad in itself, but always abuses its power.

rhetorical effect: just call it the Predators’ Ball. The GOP does everything it can to hamstring regulation just when it starts to get any real power. All regulatory power is thus to be considered abusive.

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the Schumer shutdown stunt

rhetorical claim: the shutdown is a Dem stunt designed to reinforce the total fabrication that Trump is incapable of governing and that political chaos must end by giving the Dems control of one or both house of Congress in November.

rhetorical effect: makes the Dems out to be the true danger, not Trump. A “stunt” is a kind of trick or extraordinary action. Sort of like not confirming a Supreme Cort justice for over a year? Sort of like promising the Dems DACA reform before reneging on that promise?

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judges ignoring the law

rhetorical claim: Federal judges blocking Trump’s travel ban and insisting that DACA must be enforced despite its illegality are legislating from the bench. They are outside the law looking in because they hate Mr. Trump and are part of the “resistance.”

rhetorical effect: any legal decision the GOP doesn’t like is simply dismissed as illegal. Not only is this circular reasoning, but paves the way for a dictatorial state in which the rule of law is simply the rule of the autocratic regime.

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muscular foreign policy (aka, the end of the apology tour)

rhetorical claim: “Peace through strength” and “America First” remain the cornerstones of Trump’s foreign policy. America is no longer “leading from behind,” but, on the contrary, gaining newfound respect for American might from world nations.

rhetorical effect: Militarization, bullying, isolation, the possibility of a limited nuclear war, chaos and the loss of respect worldwide. In the National Security Strategy published in December, the subheading under “Diplomacy and Statecraft” is “Competitive Diplomacy” — not cooperation. Money is apparently no object to ensure “weapons systems that clearly overmatch” in “lethality.” Diplomacy, by contrast, requires “efficient use of limited resources.” The evisceration of the State Department and big increases in military budgets reflect Trump’s mind-set. As Roger Cohen writes in the NYT:

But something terrible, and perhaps irreparable, has happened. The idea of America has been sullied. It has fallen victim to Trump’s untruth, indecency, racism and contempt for the values without which American greatness is inconceivable. The president is at home with despots because he sees himself in them.

Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to Washington, told me: “I cannot explain to my 13-year-old daughter, who was born in the United States, that for her, President Trump should be the symbol of the values we stand for: human dignity, personal freedom and so on. A fundamental anchor has been lost.”

The disarray Trump has engendered reflects the degree to which he has turned the meaning of the word “America” on its head. He has empowered bigots, thugs, bullies, racists, nationalists and nativists the world over.

******

merit

rhetorical claim: immigration should be entirely based on merit, and we should eliminate chain migration.

rhetorical effect: “merit” is now code language for whites and a few Asians, not brown or black people, who, by definition, lack merit. Confuses a sense of desert with a sense of accomplishment: just because you speak a foreign language or have a Ph.D doesn’t mean you deserve to become an American more than someone with minimal skills. Almost none of us would be here today under a “merit-only” policy because our immigrant ancestors would have been excluded.

”

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, Jan 14-18, 2018

Posted on January 18, 2018 by suratsweet

an unwavering commitment to the rule of law

rhetorical claim: when it comes to DACA or any immigration policy, what we need above all is an unwavering commitment to the rule of law, which we haven’t had for decades.

rhetorical effect: their commitment to the rule of law wavers quite a bit when it comes to legal opinions they don’t like, freedom of speech and the press for their critics, federal laws protecting the natural environment, consumer protection and reproductive rights, etc. The entire concept of ‘the rule of law” sounds a lot more fixed and foundational than it really is–sort of like Constitutional originalism. The course and nature of the “rule of law” is really up to its interpreters; and, especially under Trump, all rules can change.

******

chain migration

merit-based immigration

rhetorical claim: we need to end chain migration and move to a merit-based immigration policy. We need more highly-skilled immigrants from countries such as Norway, not a floodtide of losers from loser nations.

rhetorical effect: Trump makes off-hand racist comments, he promotes racist stereotypes and he incites racism as a political strategy, best explored by Eugene Robinson:

That is what the immigration battle is really about. When Trump and his allies say they want to end “chain migration” — in which family members sponsor other family members for entry — they mean they want to halt the influx of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. When Trump says he wants to bar Haitians and Africans, he aims to admit fewer black people. When he pines for more Norwegians, he wants to welcome more white people. (Not that Norwegians, at the moment, are very eager to move to Trump’s America.)

Republicans say they want a “merit-based” system of immigration. That has a nice, neutral sound. Who can argue against merit?

But Trump has made clear that what he means to do is halt or reverse the demographic trends that are making this nation increasingly diverse — trends that are wholly consistent with U.S. history.

A century ago, there were nativists who railed against Irish, Italian and Eastern European immigration, claiming that unwashed hordes from poor countries were “mongrelizing” the nation. We now have a president who rejects American ideals of diversity and inclusion in favor of racial purity.

******

middle class tax cut

rhetorical claim: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that the tax deal was designed to “put more money in more companies so they could compete competitively with international companies.”

rhetorical effect: So much for Republican claims that the Trump tax cuts would help working people or the middle class. It was all a pretty thin short-term con, which is a fair description of the business world today.

*******

salty (or tough) language

letting Donald be Donald

rhetorical claim: Trump’s tweets and rough language are the purest expression of his disruptive political sensibility and his connections to Joe Sixpack. Letting Donald be Donald is the GOP’s best strategy for continuous political domination. His occasional tough or salty language is merely an honest reflection of views held by his followers.

rhetorical effect: best expressed by New Yorker editor David Remnick:

Future scholars will sift through Trump’s digital proclamations the way we now read the chroniclers of Nero’s Rome—to understand how an unhinged emperor can make a mockery of republican institutions, undo the collective nervous system of a country, and degrade the whole of public life.

Or, as Masha Gessen puts it, “The news is not that he’s a racist; it’s that he’s dragging us all down with him.”

******

fake outrage

rhetorical claim: the Dems’ gleeful embrace of moral outrage over Trump’s alleged “shitholes” remark only shows how their political correctness inures them to the truth. As Roger Kimball argues on the website American Greatness:

Everyone, near enough, knows that he was telling a home truth. It was outrageous not because he said something crude that was untrue. Quite the contrary: it was outrageous precisely because it was true but intolerable to progressive sensitivities.

In other words, the potency of taboo is still strong in our superficially rational culture. There are some things—quite a few, actually, and the list keeps growing—about which one cannot speak the truth or, in many cases, even raise as a subject for discussion without violating the unspoken pact of liberal sanctimoniousness.

rhetorical effect: reduces all progressives’ moral principles and political policies to hypocritical posing, political correctness, smug self-serving and sanctimoniousness. Assumes tat liberals have no moral core; they only crave power as their means and end.

**
open borders

rhetorical claim: Open-border advocates in politics and the media vilify those who dare suggest that the laws be changed, and the status quo prevails. This tradition needs to end immediately. “Open borders” is the status quo American immigration policy, and that the diversity visa program is part of it.

rhetorical effect: This claim is completely ridiculous. In 2016, 11.4 million people entered the lottery for 50,000 diversity visas. An authentically “open borders” version of the diversity visa program would admit 100 percent of those applicants, not less than one-half of one percent. The mathematicians among us might note that 50,000 is 11.35 million closer to zero than 11.4 million. The restrictionist tradition of labeling those who favor the almost totally closed immigration policy status quo as “open-borders advocates” is grossly dishonest and “needs to end immediately.”

Perhaps more importantly, practical advocates of a more inclusive and permissive immigration system need to be much clearer about the fact that the real-world political debate takes place within an overwhelming international consensus favoring almost completely closed borders. The liberalizing side of the politically relevant immigration debate is, in fact, plumping for reforms that are slightly less restrictive than the draconian closed-borders status quo.

******

dubious allegations

broken and unfair

rhetorical claim: the Dems continue to make dubious allegations about President Trump: so-called collusion with the Russians, racism, mental instability, unfitness for office, etc. Along the same lines, the mainstream media is producing fake news, the FBI is corrupt and biased against Trump, and the court system is broken and unfair. Presidential reporting is not a medieval morality play in which an irate CNN chooses sinners to be damned to hell and the virtuous to be deified.

rhetorical effect: anything that goes against Trump is demonized; anyone who opposed or thwarts him is subject to vilification of some kind: they are either liars, hypocrites or corrupt., and all allegations against Trump are “dubious” and so automatically dismissed. He uses false conspiratorial narrative framing (including derogatory nicknames) to condemn all critics.

******

victim-focused identity

rhetorical claim: As Shelby Steele argues in the WSJ, the oppression of black people is over with. Black Americans must come to terms with the accountability freedom demands, and not hide behind their victim-focused identity, or the excuse of oppression. No more elaborate narrative excuses for black poverty or underdevelopment: no more talks of “systemic” or “structural” racism, of racist “microaggressions”, “white privilege”, etc.

rhetorical effect: This label tries to make it so that talking about racism–not actual racism– is over with, thus serving as its own taboo. Tries toi make racism into “the r-word,” never to be uttered aloud. This phrase also of course blames the victims for the crime.

******

scare pollution

rhetorical claim: liberals engage in scare pollution with their fake news and fake science about so-called “climate change” or “global warming.” They are like Chicken Little–the sky is always falling.

rhetorical effect: transforms environmental protection concerns into a form of pollution. Ridicules any consequences of man-made climate change as either illusory or scare-mongering. Ridicules any notion of sincere desire to protect the air and water.

******

excellent health

rhetorical claim: Trump is in excellent physical and mental health, dashing the Dems’ hopes of 25th-amendment remedies.

rhetorical effect: excuses Trump’s unhealthy lifestyle and legitimizes authoritarianism as normal, unless of course you count a terrible attention deficit disorder and rampaging narcissism as mental issues.

******

shitholes

rhetorical claim: from PJ Media:

The U.S. is not a charity, forced to take anyone who wants to come here because their need is great. We are a great country, and thriving like none other in the history of this sorry world, but even we can’t give shelter and opportunity to everyone who wants to come here to escape the mess their countries have become.

We get to pick and choose, and while we have traditionally given refuge to those in dire need, economic hardship is not, by itself, dire need. Nor are we, for that matter, forced to give refuge if we think you’ll bring the mess back in your country of origin with you.

Do you want to come to the U.S.? Great. Splendid. Come because you want to be an American, not because you want to defend tooth and nail the sh*thole you left behind. We are not your mommy. We are not your daddy. We want you to leave your parents’ basement and make your own way to American freedom and prosperity. If you can’t do that, go back to the sh*thole.

Fit in or f*ck off.

We don’t care what sh*thole you came from, we just care that you want to be an American.

And if you’re not here, don’t want to come here, and don’t want to be an American but are offended because your country was called names, don’t waste spit defending your pride. Prove us wrong by making your country one that people don’t want to leave in droves. And shut up about it.

rhetorical effect: racism, xenophobia, nativism, manifest destiny, “the white man’s burden.”

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, Jan 5-11, 2018.

Posted on January 11, 2018 by suratsweet

investigative mania

rhetorical claim: the Dems’ Russian obsession has deepened into a desperate pathological mania that will maintain the Mueller inquiry well beyond its shelf life. This Ahab-like obsession will in the end only embarrass the Dems when they have nothing to show. They have created an evidence-free zone of accusation.

rhetorical effect: precludes the inquiry by likening a desire for justice to a “mania”. They not only are trying to demonize the FBI and weaponize Congressional committee tampering with an ongoing investigation, but also are trying to make they very notions of money laundering or collusion into dangerous delusions. The theory behind the strategy seems to be that if you deny something long enough, people start doubting its existence or veracity, even if it right before their eyes and backed up by evidence and legal reasoning. On the other hand, there is talk of reviving Hillary witch hunts over the Clinton Foundation and e-mail servers. Talk about investigative manias!

******

anti-white racism

rhetorical claim: As Tucker Carlson argued recently on Fox News, it is not right-wing media or good-old fashioned racism that’s help fueling white nationalism, but, instead, anti-white propaganda disseminated by progressive, pro-inclusion websites such as Buzzfeed and The Root. Unless people start deciding they’re going to treat one another as individuals, rather than as members of groups, and if The Root doesn’t stop pointing out the ways in which white people discriminate against black people, it could lead to an angry, bifurcated society in which Americans fight against each other.

There’s a basic moral principle that was, for a long time, conventional wisdom in this country, you probably grew up with it,” he said. “It was this: people deserve to be treated as individuals, judged by their own efforts and abilities on the things they can control. Attacking people on the basis of their race is wrong — that was the standard and, for a long time, people believed it.

On the left, it is now acceptable, even encouraged, to attack and discriminate against people solely on the basis of their skin color.

Dressing his message up in the words and notions of the civil rights movement, Note that Carlson was not — not — defending minorities or any actual groups that suffer from systematic oppression here. Instead, his concern was with how some websites were monolithing white people, blaming the whole of the ethnic group for the actions of a guilty few. That, he said, was what created white nationalism.

rhetorical effect: Note that Carlson was not — not — defending minorities or any actual groups that suffer from systematic oppression here. Instead, his concern was with how some websites were monolithing white people, blaming the whole of the ethnic group for the actions of a guilty few.Dressing his message up in the words and notions of the civil rights movement, Carlson was not — not — defending minorities or any actual groups that suffer from systematic oppression here. Instead, his concern was with how some websites were monolithing white people, blaming the whole of the ethnic group for the actions of a guilty few. That, he said, was what created white nationalism.

Turns the victims of racism into the perpetrators; justifies attacking people based on their skin color; falsely and glibly compares what The Root writes to, say, systematic racist efforts such as voter suppression, stop-and-frisk or others. It’s important to always keep in mind in the face of this kind of false argument that white people simply aren’t an at-risk class in this country.

******

conjecture and commentary

rhetorical claim: the liberal mainstream media is a threat top democracy because it has replaced objective reporting with conjecture and commentary. Instead of reporting te facts, it reports mere opinions–Trump/Russia collusion, etc– as facts

rhetorical effect: this is another false fact disguising itself as an immutable truth. The Trump administration, which has absolutely no interest in objectivity or even science has made all facts up for grabs. Calling any reporting you don’t like “conjecture” or “commentary” is but another step in destabilizing the very concept of verifiable facts or reasoned argument. Thus they create their own commentary–the running narrative that the media is incapable of truth.

******

vanity signalling

rhetorical claim: the self-righteous “Me Too” display a the Golden Globes does indeed mark a cultural milestone: when preening replaced principle, when women rebelled against being considered as objects by being judged by how they dressed. The hypocrisy is epic. Many actors expressing such outrage use sexual chemistry to attract the predatory male movie executives they then profess to despise. They habitually wear outfits that leave little to the imagination, split upwards or downwards or utterly transparent. What’s more, many of the movies and TV series in which they appear, some of them having forgotten to put on any clothes at all, have long crossed the line into soft porn. They see themselves as rebels, but are actually slaves to body image.

rhetorical effect: turns the victims of sexual harassment into predators; turns political protest into into an act of self-serving hypocrisy; reduces any statement of moral principle into a cynical act of manipulation; reduces self-worth to vanity.

******

trade crackdown

rhetorical claim: it’s time for an aggressive trade crackdown on China. As candidate Trump put it, “We can’t continue to let China keep raping us and that’s what they’re doing.” The administration’s National Security Strategy makes explicit for the first time the country’s “America first” foreign policy, which defends the country’s sovereignty “without apology”. The US, Mr Trump says, will no longer tolerate economic aggression or unfair trading practices — in a world full of threats, the danger of Chinese economic hegemony ranks among the greatest.

rhetorical effect: weaponizes the language of trade, as described in a recent Financial Times op-ed:

We now talk of enemies and adversaries instead of trade partners; of national interest, instead of opportunities for all; and of protectionism and walls rather than open borders and the end of the nation-state. Gone are the halcyon days of the “everyone’s a winner” version of globalisation that we have become accustomed to over the past 30 years.

******

taxing college endowments

rhetorical claim: it’s time that universities pay their fair share of taxes, and that’s why the tax bill includes a tax on large college endowments.

rhetorical effect: the authoritarian theocratic wing of American politics wants to use the tax code as a bludgeon to advance their cultural agenda. As in the case of ending the SALT deduction, which hits blue states the hardest, the GOP is using fiscal policy to punish people with views they don’t like. In particular, they object to what they see as the “noxious, unflinching left-liberal ideology” promoted by places such as Yale, Princeton, and, apparently, CalTech. (What exactly makes this “ideology” so “noxious” was unspecified but it seems to include the notion that homosexuals should be treated equally under the law.)

******

sneaky

rhetorical claim: Sneaky Diane Feinstein probably broke the law releasing confidential Senate transcripts.

rhetorical effect: silences dissent; sanctions withholding of information; weaponizes laws stifling free speech; turns the Senate into a majoritarian autocracy, eliminating bipartisanship. Why isn’t it “sneaky” that the GOP just passed the largest tax reform bill in thirty years with no hearings, no witnesses and no Democratic support?

******

offshore drilling is good for the earth

rhetorical claim: offshore drilling in Alaska (ANWR) is actually good for the earth because it is so much more environmentally safe than fracking or deepwater drilling. As argued in the WSJ;

As long as the global economy demands hydrocarbons, companies will produce them, even if they must go to great lengths to do so. Scarcity leads to high prices, which makes fracking and high-risk deep-water drilling possible. Boosting the supply of oil from land and shallow-water rigs would reduce these hazards.

Deregulating government-controlled territories like the ANWR and the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf is a step in the right direction. If a freer market can prevent another tragedy like Deepwater Horizon, environmentalists should see it as a win.

rhetorical effect: Classic counter-intuitive GOP inversion: black is white, up is down, offshore drilling is good for the earth, the social safety net actually puts people at risk, guns make people safer, lack of regulation and consumer protection makes banking, finance, Wall Street and retail more transparent and less risky, universal health care means worse health care for everyone, calling attention to black identity or white nationalism is itself racist, the “Me Too” movement turns men into victims of a kind of sexual stereotyping, etc., etc., etc.

Politiscripts Glossary, Dec. 27, 2017-Jan. 4, 2018

Posted on January 5, 2018 by suratsweet

fake news

rhetorical claim: the Mueller investigation tell-all books, leaks and reports from so-called “experts” are all fake news–the way the Swamp justifies and perpetuates itself.

rhetorical effect: best explained by the New Yorker’s Louis Menand:

Many Americans were shocked to hear their beliefs characterized as “fake science” or “fake news.” Those Americans thought that they understood what counts as evidence, what counts as reason, what counts as an argument. Suddenly, the rules changed. In national politics, you no longer need evidence or reason. You no longer need to make an argument. You need only to assert. If your assertion is questioned, you need only to repeat it.

“Fake” and “hoax” are the “abracadabra”s of the Trump world, words recited to make inconvenient facts disappear. In most of life after nursery school, “abracadabra” doesn’t work, because it stops fooling other people. For grownups, as a rule, saying something doesn’t make it so. This is not true of Presidents, however, grownup or not. Presidents are legally empowered to make what comes out of their mouths a reality for other people. This President has realized that he can say literally anything and someone will pop up to explain it, or explain it away.

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean,” Humpty Dumpty says to Alice. How can you make a word mean so many different things? Alice asks. “The question,” Humpty Dumpty replies, “is which is to be master, that’s all.” George Orwell said the same thing. Meaning, at bottom, is about power. “Truth,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., once said, is “the majority vote of that nation that could lick all others.” A disagreeable thought, but not an inapposite one in 2017.

Or, as Masha Gessen argues:

Members of Congress who voted for the tax bill, which will disproportionately benefit the very wealthy and will gut Obamacare, may be justified in assuming that they can afford to make their donors happy at the expense of their voters: partisanship and gerrymandering, they reckon, will keep their seats safe. In other words, an informed public is a necessary condition of democracy, but not a sufficient one. Democracy may indeed die in darkness, but light is no guarantee that it will survive.

******

onerous disclosure

rhetorical claim: from the WSJ editorial, ‘The Great Rules Rollback”:

The 2017 list includes a regulation that would have imposed onerous disclosure requirements on mining and drilling companies operating overseas, carrying $700 million in initial costs and up to $590 million for annual compliance. Congress also nixed rules on education, public land and the use of family planning funds. By eliminating these 14 rules, lawmakers spared Americans from $3.7 billion in costs and eliminated 4.2 million hours of paperwork, says the American Action Forum…

The size of the economic impact of all this is hard to measure, though the Trump Administration projects the regulatory cost savings for the economy will be $9.8 billion over the next fiscal year. Mr. Crews has estimated that regulation took a $1.9 trillion annual toll on the economy last year.

rhetorical effect: pretty soon any federally-mandated “disclosure” will be defined an “onerous”, and the federal government will at last be small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist predicted . What seemed mere fantasy in 2001 is coming to fruition in 2018.

******

discipline and punish

rhetorical claim: leftists hate messages of discipline and punishment because they believe “society” is to blame for everything, removing all senses of personal responsibility.

rhetorical effect: justifies corporal punishment of children, maximum minimum prison terms, lifelong bans on felons’ rights, including voting rights, the end of the social safety net, and the moral foundations of any charges of racism, sexism, etc. Also insults liberals by saying they have no sense of responsibility, a neat reversal of foreground and background since it is the GOP that is trying to wash its hands of any responsibility for pain, deprivation, inequality, or injustice.

******

post-modern notions of tolerance

rhetorical claim: The hard left is aligned with Islamist organizations. Antifa has in effect aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, which operates in the US as Muslim Students Association and Council of American-Islamic Relations. Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed. Atomization of society must also occur at the individual level; with attacks directed against all levels of group and personal identity. Hence the sexism, racism and xenophobia memes. As a Judeo-Christian culture, forced inclusion of post-modern notions of tolerance is designed to induce nihilistic contradictions that reduce all thought, all faith, all loyalties to meaninglessness. Group rights based on sex or ethnicity are a direct assault on the very idea of individual human rights and natural law around which the Constitution was framed.

rhetorical effect: belittles the whole idea of a collectivity or common humanity, echoing Margaret Thatcher’s infamous claim that “there’s no such thing as society.” Notice how “individual rights” are assumed to be based on “natural law,” as though collectivism is unnatural. Tolerance itself is represented as the gateway drug to nihilism.

******

anti-white, substandard foreign workers

rhetorical claim: America is being flooded with anti-white, substandard foreign workers.

rhetorical effect: heightened atmosphere of racial, ethnic and religious bigotry and persecution

******

fiscal discipline

rhetorical claim: tax reform that caps state and local tax (SALT) deductions at $10,000 for individuals and $25,000 for couples is the gift to highly-taxed blues states that will keep on giving. It forces these states to not only curtail any future tax increases, but to cut back taxes to prevent mass out-migration. It will force states such as New Yor, Illinois and New Jersey to at last practice some fiscal discipline.

rhetorical effect: It’s a rhetorical trap for Dems to allow the GOP to narrow the definition of the term “fiscal discipline.” Branding tax cuts “fiscal discipline” appropriates the concept of discipline, which ought to neutrally mean practicing a means to an end, not just shrinking government. You could just as easily describe increasing taxes on the rich as fiscal discipline if your aim was to use taxes to even the playing field and reduce tax advantages for the wealthy. In fact, if you are aiming for equality of opportunity, tax cuts for the wealthy are a profligacy, not a discipline.

******

sophisticates (aka, grandees, elites, the gentry)

rhetorical claim: Iranian demonstrations have also exposed the illusion..that President Trump’s more muscular policy toward Iran has united the regime with the Iranian public in opposition to the U.S. The ire of the protesters is aimed at their own rulers for corruption and wasting what they were told would be the fruits of the nuclear deal. Mr. Trump, the supposed foreign-policy bumpkin, understands this better than Mr. Obama and the arms-control sophisticates. Mr. Obama sought to win over the Tehran regime by avoiding confrontation and letting Iran have its way in Syria and elsewhere. His goal above all else was the nuclear deal.

rhetorical effect: the “bumpkins are smarter than the sophisticates” meme is the foundation of many a myth and fairy tale. Rhetorically, it mocks and undermines the hollow pretensions of what passes for sophistication, arguing for common sense and wisdom of the “forgotten men.” Thus this all-purpose meme can be used to mock science, diplomacy, academia, geopolitical and economic policy, etc. Nixon played it all the time to retaliate against the Kennedys, the Ivy League, etc.

******

incentives to work and invest

rhetorical claim: tax reform will inevitably lead to robust economic growth because it increases the incentives to work and invest.

rhetorical effect: the “incentive to work” is a euphemism for drastically cutting the social safety net and entitlements, as if no one getting any government assistance ever even thinks about working. The “incentive to invest” furthers the myth that lower corporate taxes will lead to higher wages and universal prosperity. The underlying assumption of this narrow definition of “incentive” is that it only applies to either benign, universally-beneficial behavior or behavior guided by the “unseen hand” of the market. Why isn’t greed ever considered an “incentive?”

******

white-informed civility

rhetorical claim: “white-informed civility,” the latest idiocy from college campuses, mocks the very ideas of civility, reasoning, debate and education. The argument is that prevailing notions of civility and reasonable debate are themselves rooted in privilege and power and are therefore outmoded. This makes for a brand of elitist inclusion that actually excludes all non-believers.

rhetorical effect: makes a straw man out of a fringe argument that in no way represents mainstream academic discourse. Precludes any claims of privilege or power–arguments for inclusion–as actually being exclusive, in the same way calling attention to write racism is itself labeled racism or hate speech.

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. 18-22, 2017

Posted on December 22, 2017 by suratsweet

banned words

rhetorical claim: government language has to get more objective. A longtime analyst with the public health agency told the Washington Post in a report Friday that senior CDC officials who oversee the agency’s budget were told at a meeting in Atlanta on Thursday that they are no longer allowed to use the words: “evidence-based,” “science-based,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “fetus.”

In the case of “science-based” or “evidence-based,” the analyst said an alternative phrase suggested for use was: “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” Some of the other words did not get replacements.

rhetorical effect: Orwellian mind control. Banning terms such as “science”and ‘”evidence” does not diminish their status as the pillars of rational thought and civic discourse. Saying that “community standards” should replace the concept of science is to sanction mob control and will lead to a new idiocracy.

******

benign administrative despotism

free, republican and limited government

rhetorical claim: according to Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams:

The notion that America should focus on helping others and on exporting its values to the rest of the globe [is] sheer tomfoolery …We have a more urgent task at home. We must focus, and with a sense of urgency, on saving free, republican, and limited governments at home. We have over the last hundred years been heading down the slippery slope of despotism—even if an often benign and administrative despotism.

The hedonism and decadence of America, coupled with previous immigration policies, might not only make it impossible to return to the founders’ vision of America but ultimately result in the collapse of the American government itself. True American character—rough and ready—has been submerged underneath steady inundations of political correctness, illegal immigration, imperious judicial rulings, and a lax educational system.

rhetorical effect: justifies the dismantling of the administrative state in the name of following “the moral laws of nature.” Applying these “laws” permits discrimination, which is “the right to freedom itself.” Following this logic, this freedom to discriminate between domestic friends and foes is the only way to MAGA. Democracy The key is the libertarian idea, woven into the right’s ideological DNA, that redistribution is the exploitation of the “makers” by the “takers.” It immediately follows that democracy, which enables and legitimizes this exploitation, is itself an engine of injustice. As the novelist Ayn Rand put it, under democracy “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority.”

******

misleading Americans

rhetorical claim: the lying media continually attempts to mislead the American public with inaccurate reporting–mistruths. By distorting the facts, they are practicing the worst kind of yellow journalism.

rhetorical effect: implies that anyone believing media stories critical of the Trump administration is somehow un-American.

******

the forgotten man

rhetorical claim: The GOP tax reform package will finally bring financial relief to the forgotten man, long neglected by elitist Democrats. According to Paul Ryan, “When people see their withholding improving, when they see the jobs occurring, when they see bigger paychecks, a fairer tax system, a simpler tax code, that’s what’s going to produce the results.”

rhetorical effect: The GOP has become its own caricature as the party of the rich. As Dana Millbank argues,

Republicans worked hard to convince Americans that Obamacare was a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor. Democrats can now argue, truthfully, that the Trump Tax is a transfer of income from the middle class to the wealthy and big business. Under the law, the middle fifth of American households will see an average increase in after-tax income next year of $930, while the top 1 percent get an average increase of $51,140, according to the Tax Policy Center. The rich even get a greater proportional increase in after-tax income: 2.3 percent, compared with 1.4 percent for the middle class.

While the “forgotten man” Trump lured with phony populism gets little benefit, the things that bothered the forgotten man about the tax code — a tangled mess of loopholes for businesses, the rich and Wall Street — remain intact. This will be a “bigger albatross” for Republicans than Obamacare was for Democrats, argues Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “They own the tax code. When you are upset about taxes, you’re going to be upset about the Trump Tax.”

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demographic replacement

rhetorical claim: according to Tucker Carlson:

Democrats know if they keep up the flood of illegals into the country, they can eventually turn it into a flood of voters for them. They don’t have to foster economic growth, or be capable administrators, or provide good government. They just have to keep the pump flowing, and power will be theirs.

It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s happening in public. You can watch it happen. So, when Democrats howl about shutting down the government because they want total surrender on DACA, remember, this is the reason why. Their political success does not depend on good policies, but on demographic replacement, and they’ll do anything to make sure it happens.

rhetorical effect: justifies voter suppression, criminalizes any vote that goes against Trump or the GOP.

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mixing cultures

rhetorical claim: according to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa),

Diversity is not our strength…Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one,”

rhetorical effect: summons up such classic past hate words as “mongrelization” and “miscegenation” suggesting a racist, ethnic-cleaning agenda.

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ungrateful

rhetorical clam: according to FOX ‘s Laura Ingraham, Afro-Americans ae ungrateful for the good life most of them have, especially in comparison to the lives they had 100 years ago. Whereas the only urban agenda Dems have for blacks are handouts, to

Donald Trump in one year has done more for the African American standard of living than any president in my lifetime! … Right now, the response to that is, Donald Trump has to be a racist.

rhetorical effect: “ungrateful” is a euphemism for “uppity.” Extends Trump’s labeling black culture broken and devastated. As he put it during the campaign, addressing Afro-Americans directly,

What do you have to lose?” Trump asks African-Americans as he argues that Democrats have failed them and so they should support him “You live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs.”

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rooting for failure

rhetorical claim: redistributionist Dems (the social justice brigades) are now rooting for economic failure and stuck in the politics of envy. The party this week has issued an all-but-official announcement that its core interests are at odds with those of the entire private economy of business owners and employers. For modern Democrats, the employer class is a lumpen corporatariat, with no other function in the life of the country than to be taxed and regulated.

rhetorical effect: reduces concerns about inequality to “the politics of envy”; reduces and demonizes any resistance to GOP tax cuts as a betrayal of the American people; makes Dems seem as though they instinctually oppose “growth,” whereas they really oppose corporate greed and feathering the nests of the wealthy. Also makes economic growth (measured solely by one number–the GDP) the be-all and end-all of the defiintion of national prosperity

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championing American values

rhetorical claim: Trump’s national security policy, unlike Obama’s “leading from behind”, puts the strength back into the phrase “peace through strength.” Offering a clear-eyed view of America’s enemies, it ends the period of Obama- induced national self doubt. As Victor Davis Hanson puts it,

The theme of the Trump document is American restoration. In Reaganesque fashion, the administration sees itself as similarly overturning an era of strategic stagnation, analogous to the self-doubt, self-imposed sense of decline, and thematic malaise of the Carter era. Instead, the “strategic confidence” and “principled realism” of the Trump Administration will purportedly snap America back out its Obama recessional in the same manner that Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s.

If the United States is not strong, then the world order will weaken: “America first is the duty of our government and the foundation for U.S. leadership in the world. A strong America is in the vital interests of not only the American people, but also those around the world who want to partner with the United States in pursuit of shared interests, values, and aspirations…

The Trump document does not assume a shared global agenda worth emulating. And while it is not an illiberal document, the 2017 national security strategy assumes that Thucydidean fear, honor, and perceived self-interest will always drive rival powers to dethrone the postwar order of consensual government, consumer capitalism, and individual liberty that are protected not by the United Nations, but only by the United States and its loyal allies of like mind: “We learned the difficult lesson that when America does not lead, malign actors fill the void to the disadvantage of the United States. When America does lead, however, from a position of strength and confidence and in accordance with our interests and values, all benefit.”

rhetorical effect: bellicosity–the tendency to be eager for confrontation and war–is now the centerpiece of US foreign policy, and we no longer have friends we can count on, but only temporary allies in the Hobbesian war of all against all. Reduces our national agenda to GDP growth and military dominance–hardly the shining City on a Hill. Makes us more ike Sparta than Athens.

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. 11-18, 2017

Posted on December 18, 2017 by suratsweet

price discrimination

paid prioritization

rhetorical claim: according to The Wall Street Journal 12/15 editorial “The Internet is Free Again”:

internet regulations have created uncertainty about what the FCC would or wouldn’t allow. This has throttled investment. Price discrimination and paid prioritization are used by many businesses [and will not] make the internet less free.

rhetorical effect: Green lights predatory and monopolistic pricing.

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investing in growth

rhetorical claim: as the new tax bill takes effect, businesses will once again invest in growth and American prosperity, shaking free of dead hand of federal regulation and uncertainty it produced. When Washington stops the beatings, growth happens on its own.

rhetorical effect: assumes that investment and hiring will drive a huge economic surge, whereas in reality most of the corporate tax saving will probably go to shareholders and buybacks. turns government regulation from a necessity to a “hardship” to be overcome. “Growth” doesn’t happen on its own, but needs the government to look the other way. When national growth, prosperity and civic health are measured solely by GDP and stock indexes, America loses its investment in human capital, tolerance, equality, and the rule of law.

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Muslim apologists

rhetorical claim: why are we in the United States importing a population whose religious tenets clearly call for jihad upon non-Muslims? Muslim apologists like to point out that not all Muslims commit violent or civilizational jihad, but that is irrelevant to the question of why we would even consider taking in a population raised with a religion the dogma of which in its literal form mandates our submission or death.

For the last 1,400 years, approximately 270 million people have been murdered in the name of Islam. This horrific outrage is not due to poverty, external oppression, or crusade. Islamic doctrine as recorded in the faith’s holiest texts mandates jihad upon all infidels until all of mankind is under the dominion of Allah. Nearly 61% of Quranic doctrine consists of violent verses, which call for conquest against the non-believers.

Europe is on its way to becoming an Islamist continent due to decades of Muslim immigration and a high Muslim birth rate. The face of Western civilization in Europe, with its rich cultural history and past, is being erased with an intolerant backward 7th-century ideology devoid of pluralism, equality, and tolerance. The adherents’ mission, to eradicate Western civilization, is being conducted upon an unsuspecting population who no longer believe in their own civilization’s worth and who seem incapable of understanding of the threat they face from Islam.

rhetorical effect: demonizes Muslims’ distorts Islam’s overall emphasis on tolerance and payer, not murder; reinforces Trump’s total ban on Muslims. Turns anyone defending Islam into an “apologist,” thus putting them on the defensive and implying that they have something to hide or apologize for. Similar to what was characterized as Obama’s “apology tour”: turning critical reflection into cravenness or hypocrisy.

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people were strong in the family

rhetorical claim: When asked by one of the only African-Americans in attendance at a September campaign event in Florence, Ala., what Trump means when he says, “Make America Great Again,” Moore responded in part: “I think it was great at the time when families were united, even though we had slavery, they cared for one another. People were strong in the family.

rhetorical effect: best explicated by Charles Blow:

See folks, this is how racism’s reasoning works: It requires a revisionist view of history, with stains removed and facts twisted. It strips away ancestral horror so that the legend of the lineage can be told as hagiography.

The sheer audacity of this historical lie, the depth of the deceit, is galling and yet it is clear that fabulists and folklorists have so thoroughly and consistently assaulted the actual truth, that this bastard truth has replaced it for those searching for an easy way out of racial responsibility.

If you can’t deal with it, lie about it.

Slavery was unfortunate, but tolerable. It was brutal, but people were happy. Enslavers were wrong, but their families were strong. These are all lies racists tell.

The same thing is happening with Roy Moore. These Republicans are willing to sacrifice Moore’s then-teenage accusers, because they believe in his fundamentalist zealotry.

That is a defining feature of these modern Republicans: contorted moral rationalization.

Moore and the GOP use the politics of memory to create false memories. They want to replace most people’s versions of the past with different ones that aren’t even good replicas. The real past–just like the real present–becomes “fake news” as we enter into the politics of memory.

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a disgrace to the American justice system

rhetorical claim: Mueller’s investigation is politically biased or worse. Sean Hannity has called Mueller a “disgrace to the American justice system” and said his investigation is “corrupt” and abusive. Newt Gingrich, says Mueller’s probe is corrupt, dishonest and a “partisan hit.”

rhetorical effect: The War on Mueller continues. In fact, NOT to investigate him is to be part of a coverup. The danger of this blame-the-messenger approach is perhaps best explained by E.J. Dionne:

The more Mueller imperils Trump, the more McCarthyite the GOP becomes.

The apotheosis of Republican congressional collusion with Trump’s efforts to hang on at all costs came at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. One Republican after another attacked Mueller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as if the latter should be placed on a new compendium of subversive organizations…When Republicans are FBI haters who are sidetracking probes into Russian subversion, the world truly is turned upside down.

Note also the statement of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that if every member of Mueller’s team who was “anti-Trump” were kicked off, “I don’t know if there’d be anyone left.” The implication is that even if Mueller’s investigation produced unassailable evidence of wrongdoing by Trump, we should ignore the truth, because Mueller’s team should have been vetted to exclude anyone who had a smidgen of doubt about the president.

Even if [the investigation] ultimately hurts Trump or proves Russian collusion, are Americans supposed to brainwash themselves? Trump’s allies want us to say: Too bad the president lied or broke the law, or that Russia tried to tilt our election. This FBI guy sending anti-Trump texts is far more important, so let’s just forget the whole thing.

Really?

Because we are inured to extreme partisanship and to the political right’s habit of rejecting inconvenient facts, we risk overlooking the profound political crisis that a Trumpified Republican Party could create. And the conflagration may come sooner rather than later, as Mueller zeroes in on Trump and his inner circle.

Only recently, it was widely assumed that if Trump fired Mueller, many Republicans would rise up to defend our institutions. Now, many in the party are laying the groundwork for justifying a coverup. This is a recipe for lawlessness.

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government’s moral ends:

rhetorical claim: as PJ Media argues, :

Government does not exist to make us equal, but to treat us equally. It does not exist to make life fair, but to treat us fairly. Most importantly, it exists to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Only in liberty can we treat each other ethically, because only in liberty can we make the choices that are the necessary condition for ethical life.

Trump has made our government more moral by making less of it: fewer regulations, fewer judges who will write law instead of obeying the law, fewer bureaucrats seeking to expand the power of their agencies, less money for the government to spend on itself. He has made government treat us more fairly and equally by ceasing to use the IRS and Justice Department for political ends like silencing enemies and skewing elections.

This is what moral government looks like. And if every male senator in America is grabbing the buttocks of some unsuspecting female while, at the same time, voting for more limited and less corrupt government, the senators are immoral, yes, but the government is more moral. That is why we should never let the leftist press game us with scandal hysteria, but should keep focused on voting in those who will help fulfill government’s moral ends.

rhetorical effect: The only morality for government is to have no morality at all. by limiting the definition of good government to what the government doesn’t do, justifies every Trump policy in the name of creating “liberty.” By arguing that the best government is one that doesn’t care about equality, fairness or regulation, makes the very concepts of social justice economic regulation seem unethical and self-serving, forms of “moral narcissism.”

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conscience protection

rhetorical claim: Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said there is “wide support” among congressional Republicans for allowing medical professionals to pursue “legal action” if their personal anti-abortion beliefs are violated.

The Conscience Protection Act of 2017 would “amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit governmental discrimination against providers of health services that are not involved in abortion.”

“Leadership will have to make the call on exactly when to be able to place it. I know [Mitch] McConnell is very pro-life as well, but this to me is not even an issue of being pro-life or not pro-life. This is allowing Americans to be able to live out their conscience and their values. Again, the conscience protection piece doesn’t stop with one abortion. It just allows individuals to say, ‘please don’t compel me to participate in that and to not have to,’” Lankford said at after a recent news conference on Capitol Hill. “There will be opposition by some. I mentally can’t understand why there would be opposition by some, but I’m sure there will be.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said conscience protection is “a civil rights issue.”

“You can’t coerce people,” he said after the press conference.

rhetorical effect: “conscience protection” is a euphemism for discrimination–whether it’s against women, minorities, the LGBTQ community, or progressives. Allows almost any kind of behavior if it is based on a matter of conscience of someone in a “faith community,” whatever that is.

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. 7-10, 2017

Posted on December 10, 2017 by suratsweet

Jacksonian foreign policy

rhetorical claim: Trump’s voters take a very Jacksonian approach to foreign policy: military might without the humanitarian interventions and foreign entanglements of the Bush-Obama years. This hawkish realism has America defending forward, not leading from behind.

rhetorical effect: justifies the use of overwhelming military force and the end of nuance, alliances, and nation-building. Ends any ambitious moral attempts to spread democracy, free speech, and equality. Reduces foreign policy to a Darwinian zero-sum power struggle.

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the war on Trump

rhetorical claim: the liberal media and deep state are waging a war on the Trump presidency, trying to undermine its legitimacy. The Mueller probe is the spearhead of these attempts to eventually impeach the President. The biggest scandal in the long run will not be Russian meddling with our democracy but, rather the FBI’S.

rhetorical effect: a distraction because it shifts the focus away from Trump and the Russians, and undermines any Mueller indictments. inoculates Trump from any legal or political jeopardy.

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taking sides

rhetorical claim: anyone attacking Roy Moore is taking sides and using fact news.

rhetorical effect: “taking sides” used to be called being objective and making an argument using evidence and persuasion. But now truth has become a mere “side”–a version, a self-serving, inherently flawed narrative. There’s no middle when you’re on one side or the other.

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humiliating Israel

rhetorical claim: It is humiliating to deny Israel the right to having Jerusalem as its capital–the only capital Jews have ever known.

rhetorical effect: Israel thus becomes the victim even though they are insisting on forcing the Palestinians to capitulate on questions of Jerusalem. Inflaming the entire Arab world in the name of so-called Israeli “humiliation” is itself an act of humiliation of the Arab world.

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obstruction of Congress

rhetorical claim: Robbie Mueller’s entire investigation is a partisan witch hunt, staffed by virulent anti-Trump prosecutors and investigators–what Sean Hannity calls “Mueller’s stooges who are trying to remove Trump from office.” A Fox anchor rails that The probe is illegitimate and corrupt and the FBI has become, according to Fox, like “the old KGB, that comes for you in the dark of the night.” They have repeatedly demonstrated utter contempt of Congress by withholding documents, and should themselves be investigated. No Democrats are capable of conducting an impartial investigation of Donald Trump.

rhetorical effect: another brick in the stone wall that the GOP is building to shield Trump from any consequences of the Mueller probe. Firts they said there were no Russian contacts at all with any members of Trump’s campaign team. Then they said they may have forgotten some such contacts, but that was an innocent oversight. Then they conceded that such contacts took place, but nothing consequential was discussed. Then they argued that even if such contacts took place and campaign strategy was discussed, that that’s no proof of collusion or obstruction. Then they claimed that, in any event, Presidents are immune from collusion or obstruction charges. Now they are claiming that Mueller is the real criminal here, and is obstructing Congress. Soon we’ll be hearing “lock him up.” If he is fired or investigated, it will mean the end of the rule of law in Trump’s America.

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tackling the debt

rhetorical claim: “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an appearance on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show. “… Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

rhetorical effect: poses as a solution to the deficit problem the tax bill caused in the first place; completely violates Trump’s campaign pledge to never cut entitlements; justifies the huge GOP tax cut for the wealthy, which apparently is also considered some form of “tackling the debt”; further polarizes the country, cruelly punishes the sick, poor, and elderly.

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concealed carry

rhetorical claim: Liz Cheney says that the right to carry a concealed weapon is “god-given.” It is simply a common-sense measure to protect our constitutional rights.

rhetorical effect: as Gail Collins puts it, makes you wonder “What Would Jesus Pack?”

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let the people of Alabama decide

rhetorical claim: it’s up to the people of Alabama decide Roy Moore’s fate. Beltway pundits and hypocritical liberals shouldn’t impose their values on Alabamans.

rhetorical effect: relatives morality to the point where there is no coherent moral consensus; plays the states’ rights card when it suits, but takes it away on such measures as universal carry/conceal, sanctuary cities, and environmental regulation

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cultural protectionism

rhetorical claim: Trump supporters aren’t racist or anti-Muslim, they are simply engaging in cultural protectionism. Immigrants exact huge social costs on traditional societies (crime, deteriorating schools, strained social and health services, etc.), and the globalized liberal elites are shielded from these externalities.

rhetorical effect: a new euphemism for bigotry, xenophobia and ethnic cleansing.

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regulatory raj

rhetorical claim: the Obama administration tried to install a permanent regulatory raj, which, like the British in India, intended to control every aspect of national life.

rhetorical effect: likens any government regulation to a foreign dictatorship; turns civil servants into foreign invaders; makes people cynical about any government regulation, which in turns releases corporations and small business from oversight.

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the death of self-restraint

rhetorical claim: As Daniel Henninger argues in the WSJ:

The Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment fire rages on. Incidents of sexual abuse on this scale don’t randomly erupt. They grow from the complex climate of a nation’s culture. These guys aren’t blips or outliers. These men are a product of their times.

Their acts reveal a collapse of self-restraint. That in turn suggests a broader evaporation of conscience, the sense that doing something is wrong. We are seeing now how wrongs can hurt others when conscience is demoted as a civilizing instrument of personal behavior.

Intellectuals have played a big role in shaping arguments for loosening the traditions of self-restraint in the realm, as they would say, of eros. In Oscar Wilde’s quip, “There is no sin except stupidity.”…Our long national freedom from organized conscience formation simply isn’t working.”

Since liberals have lost all shame and moral bearings, everything is permitted, and the Weinsteins of the world will continue to be exposed.

rhetorical effect: re-opens the 60’s culture wars, trying to return us to the stifling patriarchy of the 1950s.