Category Archives: roles

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, August 20-23, 2016

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co-conspirator: James Comey or any Hillary defender.

denying upward mobility: opposing charter schools. To do so is to doom millions of Hispanics and African Americans to lives of diminished possibility, if not poverty.

emoting: what Elizabeth Warren does every time she pens her mouth,  shooting from the hip in an unhinged, hysterical and “emotional” way. As if Donald Trump is the voice of reason and constraint.

fake evidence of racism: any evidence of racism, since we live in a “post racial” world.

giving our jobs away: what Obama/Clinton have done to America. (see also “open borders,” below). Trump actually claims that Hillary would rather give a job to a non-US citizen than to a Hispanic or African American US citizen. This is of course an outlandish lie.

information chaos: what the Obama/Clinton political machine create whenever they tell their lies, make their distortions and insinuations, leave out inconvenient facts, etc.

mockery: what Hillary does very time: to foreign policy, to the rule of law, to truth and basic human decency, to the very idea of an honest election.

negative trolls: those who attack Trump.

omnidirectional bureaucratic opportunism: the spoils of the Dems’ entrenched, permanent political ruling class in Washington. (See also “rent-seeking,” below)

open borders: the Obama/Clinton immigration policy.(see also, “giving our jobs away,” above). Never mind that Obama has deported more immigrants than any other US President, or that Hillary has never advocated “open borders.”

pandering to blacks: what the Dems have been doing for decades as they have exploited blacks and only pretended to be interested in them every four years. Any regulation or legislation that promotes racial justice, economic equality or improves the lives of blacks.

rent-seeking: how the Clintons use private gain for political purposes.

something that needs to be addressed: any of the Bill-Hillary shenanigans–the Clinton criminal cartel’s conduct. Basically, in Trumpland, anything that challenges him or any allegations he makes, however wild and crazy. Always has a tone of ominousness and paranoia. One of Trump’s first instances of this were of course his “birther” charges against Obama in 20008.

a stable and predictable regulatory system: the end of government overreach, so that businesses and ordinary citizens can finally break free of the nanny state. The key predictability and stability factors here are that there won’t be any  more regulation. This much wished-for panaceas has been at the heart of GOP dreams forever, and part of Grover Norquist’s injunction to make government so small that it drowns in the bathtub.

unstable, unhinged, unbalanced: Hillary. Also referred to by Sean Hannity as Hillary’s “seizuresque” moments.

what do you have to lose?: since blacks have been pandered to, why they should support Trump. For a definitive answer to this question of what African Americans have to lose, see Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post column :

Let’s count the ways.

Trump has championed a strict law-and-order agenda that rejects the suggestion there are legitimate complaints in the African American community about policing. He is a lightning rod for racial animus and tension, falsely accusing cities with large African American populations to be crime havens. With Trump, we’d lack a president who had any conception that there is a problem with policing in minority communities or any desire to bring communities and police together.

This is someone who declines to speak at African American gatherings (e.g., the NAACP). He’s someone who just brought on to lead his campaign the former head  of a website pandering to the alt-right — that means white supremacy. Only after prodding and a growing controversy did he figure out that he should denounce David Duke and the KKK. And, of course, this was a man heavily invested in birtherism, asserting the president was born in Africa, not in the United States. It’s ironic that in the very speech asking what minorities have to lose, he pits African Americans against immigrants. And let’s not forget his shout-out at a California rally: “Look at my African American.”

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, August 2-12, 2016

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artificial: government regulations or price controls or anything that inhibits the pure, natural functioning of Mr. Market. Always an innovation killer and jobs/growth inhibitor. One notable area of the effects of artificial barriers to economic growth are the environmental rules, zoning laws and building restrictions that plague the housing market.

the Constitution: null and voice starting Jan 20, 2017 if Hillary is elect3d.

demonizing police officers: criticizing their conduct.

economic distortions: corporate taxes.

justice: law, order, and safety at home. In his convention acceptance speech, Trump seemed to conflate justice (a Rawlesian combination of equality and liberty) with law and order and political suppression. A particularly Orwellian passage indiscriminantly equated justice, progress, an enhanced police state, economic prosperity and “The American People” (all capitalized):

Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress.

The American People will come first once again. My plan will begin with safety at home – which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. There can be no prosperity without law and order. On the economy, I will outline reforms to add millions of new jobs and trillions in new wealth that can be used to rebuild America.

Apparently anyone who disagrees with these false equivalencies and glib causal chains is not entitled to be part of “The American People.”

going fetal: what the police do when their hands are tied by DOJ oversight, which punishes the police rather than rewarding them. In Tea Party/GOP logic, the answer is less policing, not better policing. Police passive resistance and work slowdowns are just another form of their abuse of power.

lies: Trump’s form of marketing, as explained by the WSJ’s Holman Jenkins:

He tells an excitable part of the electorate what it wants to hear, on guns, trade and immigration. When you tell the public untruths, in Mr. Trump’s understanding of business, that’s marketing.

pussies: Democrats and liberals, according to Clint Eastwood.

selective smear: any Obama administration report critical of the police, restrictive voting rights laws, or financial industry misconduct.

They: anyone not supporting Donald Trump, especially the media. A fifth-column.

unaccountable, unelected officials: any Obama agencies or appointees. In GOP administrations, they are simply called “Dept of Justice” officials or whatever.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, July 28-August 1, 2016

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Birkenstock and Granola Wing: Bernie supporters among the Dems. Aka, composters and tree-huggers. These golden nuggets from at least 25 years ago come courtesy of Karl Rove, who, ironically, seems stuck in the past while all the while belittling Hillary as a possible agent pf change.

community activist: any prosecutor who brings charges against the police. (see “rush to judgment,” below)

courts working as they should: judicial outcomes supported by the Tea Party/GOP. (see “rush to judgment, below)

Europeanizing: Obama’s weakening America by cutting the military in the name of social redistribution programs. It doesn’t seem to matter that the defense budget has grown under Obama, since he has only slowed the rate of growth. (see “public utilities, below).

failure: a matter of personal choice.

governing: about attitude, rather than experience, practicality, evidence, or reasoning. Anything that stokes tribalism, fear, and hatred fuels the Trumpinistas’ aim of political tyranny and endemic political repression.

gutting the First Amendment: any restraints on campaign financing.  Any weakening of Citizens United puts the government in charge of who precisely can speak in elections. This hyperbole works by setting up a black vs. white dichotomy: either unregulated spending (and thus unregulated speech) or totally controlled spending and speech. Thus attempts to keep big money out of politics and bring more transparency to political spending get reduced to a totalitarian clampdown on free speech.

hard-working: white.

increased minimum wage: surefire way to increase youth crime and gang activity. This classically counter-intuitive GOP/Tea Party claim is held aloft by supposition and  correlation: the unsupported assumption that higher wages lead to greatly increased youth unemployment.

public utilities: under Obama, any sector of the economy subject to federal regulation. For example, the banks are now answerable to the government first. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground in GOP/Tea Party ideology between no regulation and total regulation.

rush to judgment: any brutality charges brought against the police.

uninformed: anyone under 30 who votes against the Tea Party/GOP.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, July 21-25, 2016

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America’s best days are behind us: according to Hillary Clinton, adhering to the Obama status quo of no growth or slow growth. This is a straw-man argument if there ever was one: no politician would ever argue that America is a has-been country.

the art of the deal: a zero-sum game.

campaign contribution financial disclosure: harassment and intimidation.

desert: what the real Americans have coming to them again: respect and opportunity. (See “respect,” below.). Migrants, liberals, the “pc” crowd, the media elite, etc. all have gotten respect they don’t deserve. This assertion of entitlement is however based on a fabled country that, paradoxically, at once has passed and never existed in the first place. Trump’s cruel conjuring trick is to summon the djinn of  hope to people who need anything but magical thinking and a false messiah.

elitist:  the default attitudinal starting point  of any Dem argument against Tea Party/GOP ideas. By definition, Tea Party opponents are not only wrong but “othered” as effete, condescending fools. “Elite” here doesn’t refer to quality, but to attitude: they only think they’re better than everyone else, but there is nothing distinguishing about them except their smug ignorance of how the world really works.

grating: Hillary ‘s voice any time she opens her pie-hole. Aka, “shouting,” “hectoring” and “scolding”.

gutting: what Dems want to do to the First and Second Amendments–see “muzzling, ” below.

justice: law and order. On the surface, Trump’s invocation of the need for law and order seems self-evident.  But, rather than being reassuring and inclusive, in Trump’s hands, “law and order” becomes threatening, ominous and divisive. The “order” Trump refers to is the old order of white privilege, and his “law” is Old Testament law, based on outrage, retribution and revenge. Old Testament law and desert are unaccommodated things without the restorative cure of New Testament love and healing.

mocking: the Dem elites’ attitude toward average Americans. Every Dem criticism of Tea Party dogma is  a case of “mocking, “moralizing” or talking down.”

muzzling. Any Dem attempt at campaign finance reform. The pc crowd wants to muzzle free speech.

progress: part of Donald Trump’s vision of order:

Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress.

respect: Donald Trump’s promise to those who feel marginalized or dispossessed that they will get their country back. As David Frum argues,

Trump’s country is divided in a different way: between those who have lost a status they deserved—and those who have gained a status they do not deserve.

restless: what the blue-collar voters are this year, which is why Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are in play.

 servant: what Donald Trump will be to “the people,” of whom he is the “voice.” More likely is that he is the puppet-master and his followers the puppets, being jerked around by a phony populist (a so-called “blue collar billionaire”) and someone pretending to not be political.

speaking from the heart: Trump’s straight-ahead, ‘tell it like it is” style that differentiates him from”the politicians” and their “political correctness.” Actually a euphemism for Trump’s unfiltered vendettas and racist, sexist or xenophobic insults. As Virginia Heffernan puts it in the NY Times,  “Casting Mr. Trump’s incitements to xenophobia and violence as heartfelt evidently makes them slightly less terrifying,” going on to add:

It’s become impossible for Mr. Trump’s supporters to lend reason or logic to his vendettas, daft misogyny, thoroughgoing racism and bloodlust. Instead, they advertise it as lovable.

theory: Dems’ “facts.” In John Oliver’s already-classic characterization, in which Trump supporters claim that candidates can create feelings,  feelings are as valid as facts,and thus candidates can create facts.

unelected judges: those appointed by Dems. Any Tea Party/GOP (unelected) appointees are called just that, never “unelected.” This rhetorical sleight-of-hand implies that Dem picks are always elitist and not the will of the people. This flirts with the argument that such judges are illegitimate because they are “unaccountable.”

unleashing innovation: the free market unleashed, the animal spirits of capitalism, unabated creative destructionism. But when has innovation ever been leashed? More likely is that fraud, greed, and

the very survival of the American Dream: imperiled by Hillary. Part of the apocalyptic , hyperbolic, baleful rhetoric of the 2016 GOP Convention.

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, July 15-19, 2016

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Black Lives Matter: anarchy and thuggishness.

contest of ideas: The ascendancy and domination of Tea Party rhetoric. This favorite phrase of Paul Ryan’s appears to champion free debate, with the best ideas winning out. In But there actually is no debate in the sense of presenting evidence and counter arguments, only dismissal of  straw-man liberal ideas. Nothing is “contested” because the fix is in.

haters: Trump’s critics. As Wesley Morris recently argued  in the New York Times:

Trump has taken “hater” further than any rapper, because he’s attained a power no rapper’s ever had. He can exploit the concept of hateration against investigative journalism, the legal system, pollsters, facts and establishment Republicans, while also being a practicing hater who can deflect the charge by making haters of his critics. He’s rubber; the rest of us are glue.

identitarians: see “race realists”, below.

justified: what the police are called when they are exonerated for committing “justifiable” homicide when killing unarmed or retrained suspects. These killings are judged to have been “by the book.” Why is it then that Hillary Clinton is not considered exonerated, or her acts “justified,” even when she is cleared by the FBI, Congressional committees, special prosecutors, etc., thus in essence determined to have gone “by the book” in terms of the rule of law?

kababs: Muslims. Aka, “rat people”.

national decline: the erosion of family values, patriotism,  respect for the sanctity of life, sexual restraint, etc. (see “personal character,” below). Also, America’s loss of respect around the world.

Negroid gun thieves: Black Lives Matter. Prehistoric cop killers.

persecution: (see “haters,” above). The establishment’s default attitude toward Trump.  Trump, acting as the persecuted, actually becomes the persecutor; posing as the victim, he becomes the bully; posing as the wronged, he becomes the avenging man on the white horse setting things right. Playing what Bill Maher calls the “whiny little bitch,” he becomes the attack dog, the insult king.

personal character: a rapidly declining quality, thanks to attitudes of victimhood, therapeutically-induced  self-justification, sloth, “identity” politics, political correctness, etc. Goes part and parcel with “national decline” (see above.)

public health threats: pornography, according to the GOP  Platform. Somehow, though, coal mining, carbon emissions, and military assault rifles are not considered threats to public health.

race realists: white supremacists.

socialist statist collectivism: life and rule under the ObamaClinton regime.

thugs:  both black teenagers and government; “thuggish government” is a redundancy, much like “legitimate government powers” is an oxymoron.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, July 8-14, 2016

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above the law: the Clintons. Especially when ‘the law”–that is, the FBI, the Attorney General, Congressional investigations–find no criminal wrongdoing by the Clintons, they are considered guilty. There is no room in this moral universe for innocence.

Amexit: the withdrawal of America from global leadership under President Obama.

animus against police: any criticism of policing practices. This hatred of the police has led to falsehoods about police violence, and made it open season on police officers.

Black Lives Matter: inherently racist and anti-American. According to Rudi Guiliani, parents ought  to  tell their kids to fear black protestors rather than fear the police.

bribes and payoffs: any donation made to the Clinton Foundation. Any contribution, no matter how used or how intended, is thus considered guilty until proven innocent.

chaos: the result of “corrosive rhetoric” (see below). See also “disrupter,” below. Somehow, through the alchemy of rhetoric, Trump can get away with being perceived as a “disrupter” of the status quo, but Dems’ calls for political or social reform inevitably  lead to “chaos”.

civilization vs. chaos: what’s at stake when the police are unfairly criticized in “relentless” attacks. (See  also “corrosive rhetoric,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “animus against police”). Note the false dichotomy thus created: there is no middle ground between accepting police brutality and criticizing it. Any criticism of the police starts you down the moral slippery slope to “chaos” .

corrosive rhetoric: any mention of race or any criticism of the police.

cosmopolitan America: the sneering coastal elites who mock and devalue Flyover America. Donald Trump is the candidate of Flyover America.

disruption: Trump’s brand: the Lord of Misrule. When the Dems talk about expanded environmental regulations, women’s health services (including abortion), police restraint, background checks on gun ownership, family leave, etc–that is, any domestic programs that would disrupt the status quo–they aren’t praised as disrupters, but condemned as being “politically correct.”

Liberal racism: the racially divisive, politically correct rhetoric that is killing people. As explained in The American Spectator:

Liberal dogma requires that no matter what terrorist act or crime is committed the motivation of the perpetrator — if it is a black person, a Muslim, or any other protected minority — cannot be stated truthfully. That rule is obeyed even when it is obvious that the motivation is religion, race hatred, or politics.

Thus this p.c. rhetoric becomes the master trope connecting all news stories over the past eight years:

From Henry Louis Gates’s arrest to five assassinated cops in Dallas is a chain of events caused by eight years of racially divisive liberalism. That liberalism, expressed in politically correct rhetoric, abandonment of the rule and letter of the law, has torn our social contract to shreds. Everything from Hillary’s escape from criminal prosecution to the Dems’ insistence that gun control is the answer to mass murder is traceable to that single cause.

inflammatory rhetoric: any mention of race.

moral condescension: the hallmark of the liberal ruling class: contempt for the lumpen proletariat. Having a moral position at all opposed to Tea Party doctrine makes someone a self-righteous, moralistic hypocrite, just as merely bringing up the subject of race makes one a racist.

political correctness: not being right, but being hypocritical and blindly doctrinaire. Should actually be called lockstep or knee-jerk ideology.

postmodern progressives: moral anarchists, totalitarian to the core. For postmodern progressives, seemingly unobjectionable concepts such as justice, inclusiveness, diversity, and equality are actually barely-disguised wills to power. (see “moral condescension,” above.)

rigged: the only reason Hillary wasn’t indicted is because the liberal elites have “rigged the system” to protect her. There is a sinister media conspiracy to prop up the liberal state, based on its sense of moral superiority and the resultant condescension (see above). Nearly every elected official is part of this “rigged” system–only Donald Trump is telling the truth. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the real rigging: gerrymandering,  restricted voters’ rights laws, bailouts of Wall Street and the big banks–goes on unimpeded and even celebrated.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 29-July 7, 2016

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anti-trade: pro worker. As Paul Krugman argues, this is the the ultimate Trump sleight-of-hand, part of his phony populism:

No matter what we do on trade, America is going to be mainly a service economy for the foreseeable future. If we want to be a middle-class nation, we need policies that give service-sector workers the essentials of a middle-class life. This means guaranteed health insurance — Obamacare brought insurance to 20 million Americans, but Republicans want to repeal it and also take Medicare away from millions. It means the right of workers to organize and bargain for better wages — which all Republicans oppose. It means adequate support in retirement from Social Security — which Democrats want to expand, but Republicans want to cut and privatize.

Is Mr. Trump for any of these things? Not as far as anyone can tell. And it should go without saying that a populist agenda won’t be possible if we’re also pushing through a Trump-style tax plan, which would offer the top 1 percent huge tax cuts and add trillions to the national debt.

Sorry, but adding a bit of China-bashing to a fundamentally anti-labor agenda does no more to make you a friend of workers than eating a taco bowl does to make you a friend of Latinos.

debt: the key to success, according to Trump, the self-styled “Kine of Debt”. Apparently, though, US government debt and trade deficits are not OK, so Trump wants it both ways.

dishonest: what the media is whenever they claim Trump is lying. Thus, by definition, Trump is incapable of lying and the media is incapable of honesty–it’s all part of the “rigged” system.

Freddie-Franny Clintonite crowd: the crony capitalists who get rich by pushing sub-prime loans onto unsuspecting minority borrowers, and then bail each other out when the loans go belly-up. These were also the instigators of the 2008 market crash. To the Tea Party, anyone who advocates non-discriminatory loan practices for minorities falls into this category.

gradualism: Obama’s foreign policy; aka capitulation, disengagement, surrender, appeasement. The opposite of gradual is Trump’s threatened sudden and tumultuous changes to the world order.

pay-for-play: the Clinton way of governing, always maximizing privilege, power, and class.

political correctness run amok: lefty charges of Trump’s racism, sexism or anti-semitism  Even though Trump re-tweets these memes from proto-fascist and white supremacist websites, he’ll take the tweets down when criticized and then take credit for being such a steadfast champions of “the blacks,” the “Jews,” etc. This is a classic rhetorical ploy of innuendo and dog-whistle to his base–it’s all between the lines and has built-in plausible deniability. The fact that it keeps happening though, and that the material is always lifted from these heinous websites and web forums seems like proof that the Trump campaign knows exactly what it’s doing.

puritanical alarmism: any opposition to Trump. It’s called “puritanical” because liberals are characterized as being sanctimonious and hypocritical, pretending as they do to only noble, lofty ideals and censoring Trump for any of his foibles or failures. It’s called “alarmism” because Trump is not nearly the threat to civilization that they make him out to be. This works so well rhetorically because any criticism of Trump is deflected as being “alarmist”. It’s akin to calling Hillary “hysterical” whenever she speaks at all stridently about Trump.

race baiting: bringing up the subject of race, since racism is officially over in the US, according to the Supreme Court in Obergfell. Accusations of racism are the instinctive and cynical Dem response to any Tea Party candidate or policy. This rhetorical ploy turns any race-baiting Tea Partiers into the victim, and astonishingly talks about the GOP/Tea Party as the true home of Blacks and Hispanics, even though the party is against affirmative action, does everything it can to suppress minority voting rights, defends mass imprisonment of minorities and police violence against minorities. tries to get every social safety net program whenever possible, supports elitist white charter schools, etc. Here’s a typical counter-intuitive rant that turns the world upside down:

For too many years Republicans have acted helpless in the face of Democrats scapegoating us as racist.  Because we are then rejected by blacks, we allow Dems to claim that we are against blacks.  In reality, it is our values and our policies that would benefit blacks, while Democrat policies destroy them.  Blacks who join Republican or Tea Party ranks are welcomed with almost delirious enthusiasm.  We would love blacks to join us in our defense of freedom and prosperity for all, but scapegoating works.  We have let ourselves be marginalized as racists.

reckless: crooked Hillary has also become reckless Hillary, lacking the judgement to be President. Thus the Clinton Derangement Syndrome makes yet another pivot, as explained in the Financial Times:

Clinton scandals never end. They continue long after their purported original sin is forgotten and multiple investigations prove that there was nothing much there to begin with. We are still talking about the Vince Foster scandal, the allegation that the Clintons murdered their aide in 1993. That scandal is now into a third decade of groundless innuendo.

The email inquiry is a perfect example of this scandal-industrial complex and its capacity for perpetual motion.

resilience: deregulation, particularly in the financial sector. A resilient, robust economy releases the animal spirits, the unseen hand of the market–constraints removed, Atlas Unchained!

rights: constitutional rights, not human rights. Constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms, or the right to do whatever you want in the name of your religion,  are sacred, whereas human rights, like the right to health care, or the right to be free from discrimination, are not.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 22-27, 2016

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affirmative action: the Dems’ sordid business of sorting by race. Shame on them for dividing rather than uniting America. Note that the idealistic goal of achieving equal opportunity has been turned on its head by this rhetorical sleight-of-hand , so that idealism becomes cynical and actually sordid–meaning dirty, corrupt, and shameful. What is an attempt to address and counter the deep historical roots of racism and segregation is instead likened to a cynical con game. Counter to GOP claims that racism is over in America, the need for affirmative action remains as great today as it was 60 years ago. Yet the GOP/Tea Party continues to try to whitewash and oversimplify the past, present and future of race relations in America.

constitutional conservatism: bedrock American values of individual liberty, limited government, and unregulated free markets. Tea Party nostalgia for a lost utopia that never existed.

ethnic identity: tribalism that is unacceptable in a pluralistic society. If identity is your identity, then your primary identity better be American. America First!

green crony capitalism: taxpayer subsidies for smug, holier-than-thou, super-elite climate alarmists

in some sense: Trump’s “reprehensible” rhetoric that really isn’t so bad, and often points to deeper truths. Tea Partiers often frame their defense of Trump in terms of “I don’t agree with how he says things,” or “I don‘t agree with everything he says,” when they actually, sometime secretly, love how he says things and agree with everything he says. So they’ll say, “in some sense,” or “in some ways” what he says is unacceptable, but the “sense” or “ways” they’re staking moral claims to are actually antithetical to their sense of free speech–they just can’t quite bring themselves to be as honest as Trump.

jump-starting the economy: always tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, never stimulus packages. Other euphemisms for tax cuts for the rich include “tax sanity,” “fairness” and “simplicity”. When these terms are used by the Tea Party/GOP, the only “simplicity” they’re talking about is more money in the pockets of the wealthy, and the only “fairness” is based on the idea that the rich should be left on their own to make as much money as possible since they’ve “earned” it. This idea of “fairness” strips away the moral notion of “fair” as being just and equitable, leaving only the unfettered, absolutist playground bullying idea of “fairness” as meaning being able to do whatever you want to .

morally distasteful: what the Dems consider anything morally necessary, especially in regards to domestic and national security  or immigration reform.

politicized cultural liberalism: gun control, abortion, immigration. Rank partisanship masquerading as public policy.

racial profiling: common sense.

religious liberty: church-sanctioned bigotry.

Trumpism: Created by the hyper-partisan,  unconstitutional overreach of Barack Obama.

ungracious: any immigrant who complains about or criticizes America, especially those who criticize job creators and great patriots such as Donald Trump.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 9-21, 2016

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divorced from reality: Obama and Clinton, especially in their failure to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism”. “Reality” in this case is solely defined by the Tea Party/GOP, so any position antithetical to theirs is “divorced”–that is estranged–from reality.

global warming: an environmental scare campaign.

government tribunal: any rubber-stamping federal agency regime which holds a Sword of Damocles over capitalism, free enterprise and individual rights.

guilty until proven innocent: Hillary Clinton, Muslims.

multiculturalism: a twisted ideology, a sickness, a form of mass delusion, leading to the acceptance of terrorism.

Muslims: blood-cult monsters; the Aztecs of the Internet.

orthodoxy: any politically-correct Dem position, such as “climate change”, inequality, “the GOP war against women”, etc. These are all fictions,  confected for maximum political effect, full of empty calories, false promises, and faulty premises.

public sector: the chief role of the public sector is to produce wealth for the private sector. This is best done by lowering taxes, ending government regulation, and ending judicial interference in the private sector (aka, “tort reform”). To the Dems, the only role of the private sector is to produce wealth for the public sector.

rammed through (or snuck by): what the Dems have to do to win court decisions–either stack the courts or use subterfuge to fool gullible or inattentive judges.

real Americans: Trump and Romney supporters. Romney’s 47% aren’t genuine Americans, but social parasites not worthy of full citizenship.

there’s something going on: ban Muslims, period. Somebody needs to look into this.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, May 29-June 8, 2016

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bipartisanship: when Obama agrees with the Tea Party. (see “failure,” below)

civilizational advantages: Europe over the Middle East; the US over everyone else;

failure: Obama’s intransigent partisanship with Congress that led to his inability to get any GOP support, as argued by Mitch McConnell. In a hilarious WJS op-ed, McConnell shamelessly insists that the Senate is supposed to be bipartisan,  somehow overlooking his thousands of obstructionist statements, such as this 2010 reveal:

It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”

Mr. McConnell said the unity was essential in dealing with Democrats on “things like the budget, national security and then ultimately, obviously, health care.

hate group: any organized effort to oppose Trump.

judicial activist: any federal judge who rules against the Tea Party or GOP policies and principles.  (see “settled law,” below).

obstacles to investment: taxes and regulations, aka, “morasses”. Thus, establishing taxes and regulations–the two chief functions of government–puts a finger on the rhetorical scale from the beginning. If taxes were instead characterized as obligations or opportunities or investments in the future, the GOP would lose its inherent rhetorical edge in economic policy framing.

position of trust: something HRC will never be in, no matter whether she is ever charged with a crime or indicted. Although her “crookedness” is an allegation, based on other allegations, she has somehow  forfeited trust in a way that Donald Trump never has, despite changing his mind and contradicting himself on every major issue.

purposely negative reporting: false reporting. Any attack on Trump is by definition a horrible “hit job”, a piece of “sleaze”, a personal attack that should be illegal and subject to huge fines. Trump thus takes a page from the fascist playbook, currently being ruthlessly enacted by Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, who has charged or jailed political opponents, journalists, civic society groups, and others, characterizing them as terrorists:

If the H.D.P. has dropped all caution, so has Erdogan. The man who once held back Turkey’s trigger-happy security services has now given them carte blanche. “Turkey has no Kurdish problem, but a terror problem,” he said in January. “No one should try to palm it off on us as a Kurdish problem.” He later called for members of Parliment to be stripped of their immunity, so H.D.P. leaders could be prosecuted and jailed as terrorists, and parliamentary debates devolved into mass fistfights. In mid-May, the Parliament passed the immunity-lifting measure, an act that is likely to push more Kurds toward militancy.

At the same time, Erdogan has led a crackdown on the press, with the state jailing critical journalists and academics en masse and closing down opposition outlets; scarcely any remain. He has urged Parliament to “redefine” terrorism in a way that is ominously broad. “The fact that their title is lawmaker, academic, writer, journalist or head of a civil society group doesn’t change the fact that that individual is a terrorist,” he said in March. Even in Erdogan’s own party, total loyalty to the president has become a condition of survival. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, long viewed as a flunky, was forced out unceremoniously in early May after some mild gestures of difference with Erdogan, including on the Kurdish issue; he had hinted at a return to peace talks. “The one who talks about peace in wartime is as much a traitor as the one who talks about war in peacetime,” wrote an Erdogan ally, in an anonymous denunciation of Davutoglu posted on a blog on May 1.

This all-or-nothing strategy seems guaranteed to return Turkey to the days when the Kurds were forced to choose between the P.K.K. and the state. If that happens, many who are now critical of the P.K.K.’s violence and hungry for an alternative will fall in line behind Ocalan’s minions. Turkey’s compliant mainstream media, meanwhile, have done their part to whip up a nationalist frenzy. Turn on a TV anywhere in Turkey, and you will see frequent footage of soldiers’ funerals, but no mention of civilian casualties or the hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes.

This reads like a preview of the attack on free speech that would be the hallmark of a Trump Presidency.

rule of law: what the Dems call racism.

 

settled law: any standing judicial policy or precedent that the Tea Party agrees with. Everything else is “judicial activism”. (see above)

victims: in the case of LGBT bathroom use, the victims are little girls who will have to suffer degenerate trannies  exposing themselves in the girl’s bathroom. Victims and victimizers are thus intentionally conflated, as with Jim Crow laws, which ostensibly were designed to protect white women from black rapists. These purported forms of violence are hypothetical only, much like so-called voter fraud.