arc-of -justice aspirations:  Obama’s foreign policy legacy: tragic geopolitical and human wreckage.

caught gambling in Casablanca: Victor Davis Hanson’s defense of all things Trump: he may be bad, but he’s no worse than the Dems, especially Hillary. All politicians lie, conceal, prevaricate, and deny inconvenient truths. These non-sequitur-filled, false equivalencies abound in paragraphs such as this

We have become so inured to the outrageous, that many conservatives are not quite sure whether Trump is just a more in-your-face version of current politicians or if he truly is an outlier in his vulgarity. Consider, after all, the last month in politics… The White House deputy national security advisor and senior speechwriter Ben Rhodes bragged about how he more or less lied and perpetuated a con to ram through the Iran deal without Senate oversight. Former Obama speechwriters joked on television about writing the lie, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.” Obama himself threatened to cut off federal funds to states that did not share his reinterpretation of the 1972 Title IX Amendments to include bathroom access of their choice for the transgendered. Meanwhile, the FBI weighs a federal felony indictment against Hillary Clinton, just as stories have resurfaced of Bill Clinton’s frequent and unescorted flights on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein notorious “Lolita Express.” If that is a typical month in the life of the current administration and ongoing presidential campaign, then what exactly are the norms by which we can judge Trump as a renegade?  The proper critique of Trump is that he would not restore decorum to political discourse and behavior that long ago were debased.

Note hedging phrases such as “more or less,” “joked,” “threatened,” “weighs,” “stories have resurfaced”, etc.  These allegations and innuendoes have no substance or are distortions of the facts: “more or less” means not really;  joking about something is not the same as admitting it;”threatening” or “weighing” are not the same as doing, and “stories” are, well, stories. (and they have only “resurfaced” because Tea Party hacks have dug them up from their cold, cold graves. ) This whole false bravado about Trump’s acceptability is itself a fable that  lifelong conservatives tell themselves as they stare into the abyss of a Trump Presidency.

debased, decadent, degenerate: the Clintonistas. Note this typical attack on the Clintons, by Rich Lowry. this piece relies on distortions, innuendoes, and unproven allegations. Just look at the ‘graph after the first video clip:

The Clinton campaign in 1992 reportedly spent $100,000 on private-detective work related to women. The approach, when rumors first surfaced, was to get affidavits from women denying affairs — the reflex of most women is to avoid exposure — and, failing that, to use any discrediting tool at hand.

Lowery “story” is thus based on “rumors”, and uses hedges such as “reportedly” a lot. This is the trailer trash of opinion-piece writing. That after thousands of people, including Kenneth Starr, have spent 30 years looking at the Clintons and not come up with anything should say something about this Moby Dick of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”  This is also a prime example of the creation of a “hate Clinton” genre (of which “crooked Hillary” is an offshoot.)  This is all part of what Tom Vanderbilt identifies in a recent NY Times column:

When we see a rainbow, note the psychologists James Beale and Frank Keil, we see it as distinct bands of colors, rather than the “gradual continuum we know it to be.” Even though two colors may be the same distance apart in terms of wavelength, we can distinguish them more easily when they cross a color category.

This “categorical perception,” as it’s called, is not an innocent process: What we think we’re looking at can alter what we actually see. More broadly, when we put things into a category, research has found, they actually become more alike in our minds.

“Similarity serves as a basis for the classification of objects,” wrote the noted psychologist Amos Tversky, “but it is also influenced by the adopted classification.” The flip side holds: Things we might have viewed as more similar become, when placed into two distinct categories, more different.

held to account: what hasn’t yet happened to the Clintons because the lamestream media shields them from close scrutiny. Never mind thirty years of investigations that have yielded nothing: the Clintons will always be considered guilty by the Tea Party/GOP. The only “account” that matters is the one that finally puts them in jail. Otherwise, they lack “accountability.”

health care reform:patient-centered and market-driven. It would seem that the needs of patients are in fact the opposite of the needs of the market, since people are, by nature, inefficient, full of design flaws and self-destructive impulses–thus wholly imperfect. They also often fail to respond directly to information. Markets are unforgiving and ruthless, data-driven, and profit-centered, not patient-centered. Anything that is indeed “market-driven” is only and always solely “market driven.”

idealism: delusional. Trump, on the other hand, is a Jacksonian realist.

independent-minded folks: anyone who isn’t a Hillary partisan. Hillaryites are, by definition, incapable of independent thinking.

the private sector: according to the Dems, something that belongs in jail.

revenge, resentment,rage: what the voters are finally expressing after being silenced and shamed by political correctness. They have been humiliated, and aren’t taking it any more.

tolerance:  when it comes to migrants and refugees, a European-style wish. See idealism, above.