Category Archives: scripts

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, May 2-10, 2017

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comeuppance

rhetorical claim: Our comeuppance lies in a less and less distant future. But today from the media we get only the horror of any proposed budget cut. We get told about the intolerability of any entitlement reform—and will continue to get such reporting right up to the day when it all unravels. Any cut in the nominal tax rate for affluent taxpayers is an attack on the poor even if this claim has no relation to the logic of how our tax system actually works.

Entitlements won’t entitle: Medicare will pay for an operation only at a price no doctor will accept. Programmed into law already is a 29% across-the-board cut to Social Security when its trust fund runs out in 12 years.

Then, in the other great twitch of American journalism, will come the blame-laying. The finger will be pointed at everybody but the press itself for wringing out of our politicians any inclination they might have mustered to meet our challenges head-on.

rhetorical effect: the threat of a coming economic catastrophe unless the social safety net is eviscerated is designed to justify inhumane cuts to almost all non-defense sectors of the federal budget. The closest we’ve actually come to an economic meltdown was, of course, under a Republican regime.

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win-win

rhetorical claim: eliminating the capital gains tax and deregulating the economy will create an unprecedented surge in US economic prosperity. Thus everyone wins–all boats rise on a rising tide.

rhetorical effect: more corporate power gleaned from deregulation will actually create even more of a winner-take-all economy. “Win-win” talk is just a euphemism for social and economic Darwinism.

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abrupt and expensive changes

rhetorical claim: so-called “climate change” is either a hoax or a cyclical natural phenomenon being blamed on man-made causes. In either case, the prudent response is either to do nothing or else go things very gradually. We need to avoid abrupt and expensive fixes to a problem that probably will go away on is own.

rhetorical effect: the effects of do-nothingism or gradualism are ever more obvious as the planet warms, oceans rise, droughts and storms get more extreme, plant and animal species migrate, etc. Calling any proposed changes “abrupt” is to postpone them indefinitely. Climate change doesn’t go on recess, but Congress does.

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eliminate tax breaks for special interests

rhetorical claim: Trumpian tax reform will help pay for itself by eliminating tax breaks for special interests.

rhetorical effect: this vague and simple elixir-like chant conceals multitudinous lies and helps justify tax cuts for the wealthy without addressing how they might affect the deficit. The lies include calling it tax “reform” when it is only a tax cut; the idea that anything can or will “pay for itself” without consequences and long-lasting side-effects, and that some nefarious, especially greedy group of “special interests” is driving up the federal deficit through “tax breaks.” Of course, the process of identifying which groups and which interests will be highly politicized, and whatever tax breaks the wealthy and corporations give up will be more than offset by their tax cuts.

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health care policy

rhetorical claim: health care will only get more efficient and affordable if Obamacare is repealed and the government gets out of the health care business. A market approach will bring a new era of patient-directed health care.

rhetorical effect: turns health care into a product, not a right, and patients into consumers. Calla a massive tax cut a “policy,” when it’s actually just a tax cut.

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Trump will be Trump

rhetorical claim: Trump is just going to do what he says he’d do and what he wants to do. This resoluteness and independence is why people voted for him in the first place.

rhetorical effect: forces the GOP into either Congressional stalemate or tortuous comprise–such as the proposed American Health Care Act. Could also make Trump irrelevant, since what he wants to do simply can’t be done–there can’t be any instant Middle East peace or an overnight crushing of ISIS or a Muslim ban or a wall across the entire US-Mexican border. He can’t pull us out of NATO or start a trade war with China or end press freedom or make theories of climate change  hoaxes.. Being Trump, oblivious to every nuance except how to advance his brand, inevitably means bumping into reality. The Dems’ greatest hope if that Trump remains Trump.

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give the people what they want

rhetorical claim: the House health insurance bill gives the states flexibility to offer innovative solutions to health care expenses. The bill simply gives the people what they want–freedom to buy the insurance they want and keep their doctors.

rhetorical effect: justifies a tax break for the rich in the name of populism. “What the people really want” is affordable health care that mandates the essential services covered under the HCA and guarantees that no one with a preexisting condition can ever be denied insurance or charged an unaffordable rate. In other words, what “the people really want” is community rating. If the GOP, as claimed, also wants this, why are they even providing an escape hatch via a state waiver? Is there anyone out there who wants an insurance policy that doesn’t cover most essential services and excludes preexisting conditions?

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political opponents

rhetorical claim: Sally Yates’ testimony about Flynn should be dismissed because she is a political opponent of Trump and so can’t be trusted. If anything, Yates and Susan Rice should be put on trial for “unmasking” Flynn.

rhetorical effect: makes opposing Trump a dishonorable act. By calling his opponents liars, by definition Trump becomes the only source of truth–obviously a key turning point in the establishment of a dictatorship.

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lynch journalism

rhetorical claim: mainstream media journalists have a pack mentality that is always on full attack mode when it comes to Trump. They in effect are a permanent lynch party, always on patrol.

rhetorical effect: equates dissent with treason; uses reverse racism to accuse the media of the racism the right wing is steeped in.

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, April 26-30, 2017

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trickle down theory

rhetorical claim: an ambitious tax cut would unleash businesses that now feel constrained by one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Corporations would be freed to build plants and create jobs in the United States instead of in foreign countries, and would bring home money currently sheltered overseas.

rhetorical effect: justifies huge tax cuts for the wealthy–they get a gusher, everyone else gets a trickle. (Also suggests getting pissed on.)  This theory persists even though there is no evidence that tax cuts produce sustained economic growth. In the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Voodoo economics indeed.

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freedom to learn

rhetorical claim: freeing up public money in the form of education savings accounts or vouchers will give parents who withdraw their kids from public schools 90% of their child’s per-pupil state allocation to spend on private-school tuition, curriculum, tutoring or other state-approved education expenses.

rhetorical effect: in the name of “freedom”, school choice is a Trojan Horse for destroying the public schools. Funny how Republicans are pro-choice in education and anti-choice when it comes to abortion. Has nothing to do with learning, but everything to do with dismantling teachers’ unions and spending public money on religious indoctrination. Should be called “freedom to earn ” because of the tremendous windfall for the private sector that will ensue.

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growth will pay for it

rhetorical claim: tax cuts will stimulate the economy and produce the largest  growth surge since the 1990s. Cutting corporate taxes will also amount to a pay raise for all employees, creating universal prosperity, raising everyone’s pay, increasing businesses to invest, and eliminating inheritance taxes.

rhetorical effect: A profession of pure faith–magic fairy dust. Promises all things to all people. After all, who is against lower taxes overall? Despite the fact that trickle down theory never has worked, this faith in tax cuts will never go away. Any government program is acceptable under this scenario because “growth will pay for it.” This is the biggest lie of all. As Charles Blow explains about Trump’s lies: “In Trump world, facts don’t matter, truth doesn’t matter, language doesn’t matter. Passionate performance is the only ideal. A lie forcefully told and often repeated is better than truth — it is accepted as an act of faith, which is better than a point of fact.

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legal babel

rhetorical claim: Obamacare’s 2,000 pages of legal babel cripple the health care insurance market, just as Dodd-Frank is full of regulatory sludge.

rhetorical effect: eliminating any policy constraints or coverage mandates will indeed simplify the insurance market: inadequate or exorbitant policies will become the universal norm. The pernicious claim tat markets are allergic to regulation is one of the wedge rhetorical ploys for all Obama administration policy changes. Demonizing regulation as sewage of nonsense makes it easier to discard altogether.

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Trump administration momentum

rhetorical claim: the Freedom Caucus’s blocking Obamacare repeal stymied the Trump administration’s very real progress on deregulation, international leadership, the Supreme Court, etc.

rhetorical effect: this totally mythical conceit is designed to misdirect attention to the fact that Trump has not delivered on his signature campaign promises. The concept of “momentum” assumes that progress has already underway, which is belied by stymied Muslim travel ban, health care reform, tax reform, border wall construction, actions against China, withdrawing from the Paris Accord, etc.

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left wing lunatic

rhetorical claim: the Dems are driving further leftward  ever since the election, making any of their candidates unelectable.

rhetorical effect: demonizes any opposition to Trump as crazy.

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holistic tax reform

rhetorical claim: Trump’s swashbuckling tax proposals combine into one document all the tax-reform ideas that most inspire conservative movers and shakers. Simplify the brackets? Check. Lower rates? Check. Harmonize rates between corporations and small businesses? Check. Move to a territorial corporate-tax system? Check. Kill off the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax, itemized deductions, and corporate loopholes? Check. This is the sort of stuff that think tanks, congressional reformers and business groups have been salivating over for since Ronald Reagan. The media will spend the coming weeks attempting to drag this debate into the minutiae, highlighting every GOP disagreement over every teensy provision.

rhetorical effect: by lumping them all together, makes it impossible to attack any one of these “plans” (really mostly just cuts) without endangering the whole schema. Belittles any attempts at compromise over such “teensie” matters as the elimination of the alternative minimum tax. Covers over the fact that the reason they’ve been hatching these plans for 25 years are the enormous tax breaks it gives to the wealthy. Most importantly, calling it “holistic” tax “reform” is double misleading because  by only cutting taxes and thus reducing revenues it is not budget neutral. In other words, without any explanation of how it would “pay for itself” (see above), it is just a tax cut, not a tax reform, or even a tax “plan”. At best it is only part of the solution, not a “holistic” approach.

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climate hysterics

rhetorical claim: only climate hysterics support the “theory” of climate change or global warming, and they will lie as much as possible to perpetuate this myth.

rhetorical effect: makes any scientific claiming supporting climate change sosund hysterical–what men call women who argue with them, used as a way to belittle and silence dissent.

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net neutrality

rhetorical claim: so-called “net neutrality” is a euphemism for government control of the internet. Unfettered free markets made the internet revolution happen, and should be left alone to help it continue to flourish. It is in no one’s interest to slow down or filer the internet.

rhetorical effect: assumes the free market is the only truly “neutral” force, as if monopolies do not exist.

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, April 21-25, 2017.

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common values

rhetorical claim: Mainstream America wanted jobs and racial healing, secure borders and safety from jihad.  Obama gave them the opposite.  Once elected, he went further and repeatedly dissed his white voters as bigots.  Obama’s radical millennial shock troops, financed and trained during his eight years in office, now pipe the tune to which the Democrats dance. Americans began to lose their lives to jihadis and cop killers and illegal criminal aliens.  If you didn’t like it, you were called a racist and Islamophobe.  Progressives boasted that whites would soon be a minority in America.  People could see the exploding Hispanic and Muslim population in their towns and cities, brought into this country for the good of the Democrat Party, not for America’s good.  The culture war Obama launched against religious freedom was the coup de grace.  Happily, the rest of us are not stuck in Obama’s scenario.  America is not as racist as he is.  We have a unified vision of success for the whole country, based on our common American values. A renewal of freedom and personal responsibility has the potential to unleash enormous prosperity for every American citizen.

rhetorical effect: blames Obama for Trump’s victory. Polarizes the country by calling the Dems–especially the centrist Obama– polarizing. Normalizes a rhetoric of fear, overt racism and Islamophobia to justify racist and Islamophobe policies, and calls these racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic values “common” values. Plays the race card to prove they don’t play the race card.

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a big beautiful wall

rhetorical claim: To stop the onslaught of illegal immigrants from eneering the US and taking American jobs, America will build a big, beautiful border wall and Mexico will pay for it. They just don’t know it yet.

rhetorical effect: justifies a fake solution to a  manufactured crisis, making  the wall sound like an inevitability. The American people are going to have to pay for, they just don’t know it yet.

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health care regulatory discretion

rhetorical claim: from the WSJ:

Setting essential health benefits and pre-existing conditions allows states that want to continue to ruin their insurance markets to go right ahead. But the deal creates an exit ramp for reform Governors who want to experiment with market-based solutions. States that apply for waivers and then stimulate more liquid insurance systems with more choices and lower costs could nurture public confidence in non-ObamaCare alternatives.

The Affordable Care Act gave the Health and Human Services Department the regulatory discretion to achieve similar results, but the new waivers would carry fewer conditions for states. One reason the temperature of American politics is so hot is that too many questions have become binary decisions imposed by Washington, and decentralizing power to the states would be a pluralistic achievement.

rhetorical effect: much to unpack here. The gist seems to be that “market-based solutions”–aka, “waivers” or “regulatory concessions” –will provide an “exit ramp” for Governors who do not want mandated coverage of community rating of preexisting conditions. So this “compromise” bill will appear to be keeping essential benefits and covering preexisting conditions, but, in reality, actually won’t do either . “Market-based” is a synonym for Darwinian or fraudulent.

Instead, we will get “liquid insurance systems,” which simply means they will disappear when you make substantial claims. What they call a “pluralistic” outcome will in effect be the one outcome they seek: much leaner “junk” policies that will appear to lower costs but will end up sending everyone back to the e.r. because their insurance is useless.

The “fix” is in.

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student thuggery

rhetorical claim: “snowflake” college students are suppressing free speech when they exercise soft totalitarianism to ban unpalatable speakers. Mugging the First Amendment is hardly the sign of a tolerant, educated person.

rhetorical effect: tars students as thugs and totalitarians if they simply oppose their school’s support of racist, sexist speakers. Shifts the focus from the hate-filled words and malign intent of the speakers to the supposed naivete and imperiousness of the students. Creates a false equivalency between “free” speech and “hate” speech.

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hoax of the month

rhetorical claim: Bill O’Reilly is hated because he sees through the progressives’ hoax of the month: global warming, evil bankers, sympathetic criminals, Black Lives Matter, Cops Lives Don’t Matter, etc. There will be no patience for the likes of Black Lives Matter and the anarchist groups seen disrupting Berkeley and the colleges. Traditional cultural norms will reassert themselves, and the exotic lifestyles that have flourished in the last 20 years will be frowned on.

rhetorical effect: all liberal causes are linked together as fake news, and progressivism is perceived as a gigantic hoax on the American people.

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the Fourth Turning

rhetorical claim: Steve Bannon is right: there is a new cycle in American history in which the real Americans will prevail with lower taxes, fewer sex offenders, and real borders. Free people with guns and money to use as they choose will control the country. . Criminal justice will be swift and rough. Vagrants will be rounded up, the mentally ill recommitted, criminal appeals shortened, and executions hastened.

rhetorical effect: “Free people with guns and money” want to foment a civil war.The Fourth Turning is code language for racism, sexism, political repression, and attacks on free speech.

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leading from the side

rhetorical claim: America is once again leading the world via economic, military and political influence, as opposed to Obama’s abandonment of global leadership otherwise known as “leading from behind.” This “leading from the side strategy” emphasizes engaging with allies. The Mattis-McMaster foreign policy taking shape looks like a flexible strategy born of military experience in fast, fluid circumstances—our world. It is based on both formal and mobile alliances with partners willing to use diplomatic, financial, political and, if necessary, military pressure to establish stable outcomes. The word “abandon” doesn’t fit here.

rhetorical effect: beneath the blather about honoring alliances and being flexible, this is either the same as Obama’s foreign policy or else a smokescreen for Trump’s erratic, kneejerk volatility, which only warns the world that America is unstable and unreliable.

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American economic exceptionalism

rhetorical claim: The best way to gauge America’s capacity to reignite economic growth through tax reform is to move beyond congressional economic models and look to the empirical evidence of our historical ability to grow and prosper. America’s economic exceptionalism has been the product of freedom and opportunity, secured through limited government–and especially in Reagan’s administration. When government policies have strengthened or impeded these sources of American exceptionalism, they have yielded quantifiably different results.

rhetorical effect: Paves the way for tax cuts for the rich–the only group that really ever enjoy economic exceptionalism, freedom, and opportunity. The trickle-down fantasists  claim about Reagan’s tax cuts is designed to cover up his military keynesianism that exploded the debt. Reagan inherited a $90 billion national debt and left his successor a  $2.9 trillion debt, mostly because of his Pentagon build up. In addition, Reagan’s big tax cuts overshot so badly that he subsequently raised taxes eleven times to stanch the flow of red ink. And, from page 276 of Principles of Macroeconomics, 7th edition, written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a conservative: “When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he was committed to smaller government and lower taxes. Yet he found cutting government spending to be more difficult politically than cutting taxes. The result was the beginning of a period of large budget deficits that continued not only through Reagan’s time in office but also for many years thereafter. As a result, government debt rose from 26 percent of GDP in 1980 to 50 percent of GDP in 1993.”

The tax-cutting, deregulating snake oil salesmen always claim that economic progress in subsequent years is due to Reagan’s policies, as if George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had nothing to do with Clinton’s surpluses.

We saw what happened with Junior Bush’s tax cuts and unfunded war/legislation — he left Obama a $1.4 trillion deficit. The tax fairy abandoned him, as well.

An remember: under Obama we had 75 months of continuous job growth — despite inheriting an 800,000 monthly job loss.

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economic nationalism

rhetorical claim: an ”America First” economic policy will revive the economy and create thousands of good-paying jobs. The coming economic boom will be fueled by American-made products.

rhetorical effect: As Kevin Williamson argues in National Review

To call it “economic nationalism” would be too grand: It is merely a very narrow form of special-interest politics consisting of backdoor handouts to favored corporate interests.

Trump has signed an executive order organized around two themes: “Buy American” and “Hire American.” In sum, the executive order is intended to provide incentives for American businessmen to . . . not act too much like the guy who built Trump Tower with illegal-immigrant labor and who relies on the H-2B visa program to keep Mar-a-Lago stocked with dishwashers and housekeepers. That guy, if we are to take Trump’s rhetoric seriously, is kind of a jerk, one who doesn’t care about the country at all. The “Buy American” order is, in Trump style, pretty vague, with a lot that will need to be filled in later by people who know what the hell they’re talking about. (Fortunately, he does have a few of those around.) It makes minor administrative changes to existing “Buy American” federal procurement rules, which date back to the “Buy American Act” passed in 1933, a year not renowned for the excellence of its political and economic ideas. Bad call, Herbert Hoover.

 

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, April 11-19, 2017.

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Inspector Clousseau feel

rhetorical claim: Congressional investigations of alleged Trump-Russian ties have lost all momentum and have a bumbling, Inspector Clousseau feel to them.

rhetorical effect: undermines any serious attempt to get at the facts of Russian election hacking; shifts any blame to hapless hacks such as Michael Flynn or Carter Page. Minimizes the entire process as comic ineptitude or outright Dem lies and as the last Dem attack to delegitimize the election.

social justice warrior

rhetorical claim: Progressives see every issue through the distorting lens of social justice, leading to exclusionary, elitist identity politics. What they consider “just” is always based on redistributionism and wealth envy. Above all,they foment class warfare.

rhetorical effect: the very concept of social justice is demeaned and made to seem like a self-righteous, partisan indulgence. Calling social activists “warriors” makes them appear to be foolish and single-minded. “Justice” itself is now a politicized concept–replacement Trumpian synonyms include “freedom” and “fairness.” There is no more possibility of “class warfare” because the wealthy have won.

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libtard

rhetorical claim: progressives. No more bowing to political correctness: its OK to use the word “retarded” again.

rhetorical effect: continues Trump’s assault on the physically and mentally disabled; turns liberalism into a pathology or mental derangement or even mental illness. Lays the groundwork for demonizing all liberal causes.

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masculinist

rhetorical claim: feminists (especially men pretending to be feminists) are politically correct public predators always virtue signaling and happy to smear others viciously with false accusations of sexism, racism, white nationalism, hate speech, etc.” Masculinists, on the other hand, acknowledge male superiority.

rhetorical effect: progressives supporting gender equity, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. are not only stigmatized as “politically correct”, but also as being public predators, akin to sex offenders. This is rhetorically equivalent to the Nazis calling the Jews vermin.

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germ warfare

rhetorical claim: putting immigrant children in our public schools is a form of germ warfare since they re-infect our kids with supposedly eradicated diseases.

rhetorical effect: demonizes immigrants; equates “others” with vermin–call if verminization.

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regulatory onslaught

rhetorical claim: the Obama administration nearly killed American business with over-regulation. To unleash American innovation, the Trump administration is eliminating thousands of rules and regulations governing workforce and product safety, environmental regulation, corporate liability, workers’ rights, and the scope of class action lawsuits.

rhetorical effect: makes any regulation seem to be part of the “onslaught,” like some deeply unpatriotic fifth column of rule-makers.  Regulations come to be seen as “shackles” and “problems” rather than protections. Deregulation is defined as “burden reduction.” This rollback all but eliminates the possibility of fair and sustainable economic growth.

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coming into focus

rhetorical claim: what with the Syrian bombing, the Gorsuch conformation, and the tough stance against North Korea, the Trump administration is finally coming into focus.

rhetorical effect; the mere lack of lying presidential tweets and the absence of any congressional or legal setbacks is interpreted as strong leadership when it actually is just a respite in the crazy salad that is Donald Trump. Every major campaign promise is unfulfilled, but the claim is that they will all be accomplished sometime in the near future, like his secret plan for defeating ISIS, which has yet to be revealed. Erratic lurching from one policy position to its opposite is hardly a moment of equilibrium, focus or direction.

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corporatist welfare model

rhetorical claim: The ultra-liberal French Left’s poisoned and failed legacy of state control, redistributive taxation and social management may be coming back in vogue in the pre-election surge of Jean-Luc Mélenchon . The Left’s basoc economic illiteracy guarntees the ultimate collapse of all of the economic policies.

rhetorical effect: undermines any strong government action for social or environmental justice; leads to tax cuts for the wealthy; creates a laissez-faire, Darwinian economy without legal or economic protections against economic predators.

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complicated

rhetorical claim: Trump c;aims that he congratulated Turkish Prime Miniter Erdogan’s victory in Suday’s referendum partly because he has major business interests in Istanbul and that he “thrives on complicated.”

rhetorical effect: as a ephemism for “conflicts of interest”, “complicated acts as a rationale for any Trumpian policy affected by his investments. The complications do not come from moral dilemmas or equally fraught p[olicy alternatives, but, ragher, from his desires to protect his investments, bolszter his poll numbers, and get his own way.  They are akin to complications caused by a two-year-old’s tantrums.

 

 

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, April 6-10, 2017

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cleaning up the voter rolls

rhetorical claim: the GOP cleaned up the voter rolls in many states by requiring voter i.d. and other measures designed to stop widespread voter fraud.

rhetorical effect; rather than “cleaning up” the voter rolls, these voter suppression acts have either purged qualified voters or prevented qualified voters from registering. There was nothing to “clean up” because there was no voter fraud to begin with. The only thing that got “cleaned up” was Democrats’ voter turnout.

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Dawa

rhetorical claim: As Hirshi Ali explains, so-called Islamic terrorism is in reality Dawa, the  ceaseless, world-wide ideological campaign waged by Islamists as a complement to jihad. It is the greatest threat facing the West and could well bring about the end of the European Union as we know it. Islam the religion, in Ms. Hirsi Ali’s view, is a Trojan horse that conceals Islamism the political movement.

It is “conducted right under our noses in Europe, and in America. It aims to convert non-Muslims to political Islam and also to push existing Muslims in a more extreme direction. The ultimate goal is to destroy the political institutions of a free society and replace them with Shariah. It ends when an Islamic utopia is achieved. Shariah everywhere!

We need to get away from this game of jihadi Whac-A-Mole and confront “the enemy that is in plain sight—the activists, the Islamists, who have access to all the Western institutions of socialization. They’re there, in families, in schools, in universities, prisons, in the military as chaplains. And we can’t allow them to pursue their aims unchecked.

America needs to be on full alert against political Islam because its program is fundamentally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution—with religious pluralism, the equality of men and women, and other fundamental rights, including the toleration of different sexual orientations. When we say the Islamists are homophobic, we don’t mean that they don’t like gay marriage. We mean that they want gays put to death.”

rhetorical effect: an outright ban on all Muslim immigrants, or an ideology test for all would-be visitors from Muslim countries; increased surveillance and detention of  all Muslims in the US, regardless of citizenship.

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health insurance market forces

rhetorical claim: the less involvement government has with health insurance, the more efficient the market will be in providing the kind of insurance people actually want.

rhetorical effect: puts all Americans at the mercies of the insurers. Holds out the illusory promise of better care for less money, while all the while diluting actual coverage. Will return health care in the US to being a protection racket for insurance and drug companies and hospitals, rather than a “free” market. The only “choice” consumers will have is how sick they can afford to be.

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conflict is attention

attention is influence

rhetorical claim: these two favorite phrases of alt-right blogger Mike Cernovich perfectly capture the heart of Trump’s rhetoric of outrage. Perpetual conflict keeps the spotlight on Trump, stoking the fires of rage in his core supporters.

rhetorical effect: this war against the world can never end and will always demand fresh victims to stoke the fire.

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the First Amendment

rhetorical claim: an impediment to effective counter-jihad techniques. Protection of free speech in this case is not American exceptionalism, but, rather, exceptionally handicapping in the war against jihad.

rhetorical effect: the “temporary” suspension of all First Amendment rights as part of a counter-terrorism campaign.

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microscopic news coverage

rhetorical claim: the mainstream media’s obsession with the phony Russian election hack story has led them to round-the-clock, microscopic coverage of a non-story.

rhetorical effect: any reporting at all is demeaned as witch-hunting, and any details are pejoratively called “microscopic,” as if they are not visible to the human eye. To merely report new developments in an ongoing story is thus defined a delusional obsession.

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experience

rhetorical claim:  Dems castigate Trump cabinet nominees for making profitable investments in the industries they will be regulating. The logic of stigmatizing this experience as a conflict of interest even if the nominees agree to divest escapes all logic.

rhetorical effect: confuses experience with the public regulation of companies with the experience of profiting from their stock. As Betsy DeVos proved, having profited from an industry is no substitute for not knowing anything about policies and regulations governing that industry.

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countering Chinese adventurism

rhetorical claim: apologies, acquiescence, disinterest and passivity are terms that no longer describe or apply to Washington’s leaders.  This shift to an “America First” strategy should be demonstrated to the Chinese.

rhetorical effect: any compromise or acknowledgement of China’s core strengths and policies is demonized as an “apology” and a fatal weakness. Peace through strength is an illusion–it just means weakness through bluster.

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“I don’t show my hand”

rhetorical claim: President Trump does not tip his hand when it comes to foreign policy–he is a doer, not a talker or apologist, drawing phony “red lines.”

rhetorical effect: this myth of shrewd poker player who never tips his hand provides cover for Trump to erratically lurch from one reactionary policy to its diametric opposite on the turn of a dime. He doesn’t show his hand because he doesn’t have a plan except for the frightening thought of a reactionary military response to any foreign policy threat or slight. The effect of this policy of no policy is explained by The Atlantic’s Eliot Cohen,

Sooner or later, someone needs to explain what Trump’s foreign policy is beyond the macho swagger expressed by Mulvaney, whose hard-power experience has consisted chiefly of earning the enmity of John McCain for trying to slash military budgets as a congressman. At the moment there is no Trump foreign policy doctrine, no coherent explanation of the world as seen by the Trump team, and the broad outlines of their policy for dealing with it. There are threats leveled at North Korea, which will either have to be backed up by force or retreated from in humiliation. There is a far warmer reception for an Egyptian dictator than for a fairly elected German chancellor. There is foreign policy conducted as though the United States government were a Middle Eastern court, where the ruler’s family counts for more than the sovereign’s foreign minister. And there is the invocation of America First, a slogan with a rancid history, as the president knows very well.

Perhaps this will end. Perhaps Secretary Tillerson will find a voice. Perhaps he will somehow lay out a vision of foreign policy that reconciles America’s interests and its values, that reassures allies and promises a steady hand in the years to come. Perhaps he will charm the press as some of his predecessors have. Perhaps he will come to be seen as primus inter pares in shaping U.S. foreign policy. For the moment, however, his silence is as dismaying and depressing as the chirping of Trump’s tweets and the sound of Mr. Mulvaney pounding his unbemedalled chest.

As The New York Times’ Charles Blow puts it,

“I don’t show my hand” isn’t a strategy to conceal a plan as much as one to conceal the absence of a plan.

His statements are all bluster and bungling and bosh. Our commander in chief is not in full command of his emotions or facts or geopolitics.

We may sometimes think that the absurdity of Trump’s endless stream of contradictions and lies ends at the nation’s borders, but it doesn’t. The world is watching, and the world is full of dangerous men who see killing as a means of maintaining and exerting power. They see in Trump a novice and know-nothing, and they will surely test his resolve.

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, April 1-5, 2017

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crime

rhetorical claim: crime is the new black entitlement. As long as black people are permanent victims of relentless white racism, cops should not chase them, juries should not convict them, judges should not sentence them, schools should not punish them, and white victims should not complain about the black crime and violence so wildly out of proportion.

This is what a growing number of lawmakers, professors and, of course, reporters are prescribing as a way to “improve the way our system serves justice.”

rhetorical effect: criminalizes being black; justifies all police violence against blacks; re-inforces the gross insinuation that blacks are dependent on the public dole and feel entitled to government support just because they are black.

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teachers’ unions

rhetorical claim: the only group ever able to give America’s teachers a bad name.

rhetorical effect: extends the demonization of teachers as greedy hypocrites hungry for power and indifferent to education outcomes. In other words, accuses teachers of caring least about their students, whose welfare is ostensibly the only reason anyone would take on such grinding, unforgiving, low-paid work.

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environmental extortion rackets

rhetorical claim: “global warming,” “climate change,” automobile fuel standards, scares over CO2 levels, almost all EPA regulations are all hoaxes and literally extortion rackets to fine corporations and force them to make outlandish financial investments in technology that can’t solve imaginary problems.

rhetorical effect: relativizes environmental regulation by either devaluing its causes or its effects. As is almost always the case, makes progressive environmental activists out to be power-hungry hypocrites.

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the Democratic steno pool

rhetorical claim: the dishonest MSM has c0ncocted the entire Russian election hacking story to discredit the Trump administration. They are little more than stenographers of whatever false narrative Hillary Clinton Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and Susan Rice give them–

rhetorical effect: seems to make it impossible to get at the facts–let alone the truth–of gettin of the extent of the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russians. Reinforces the idea of a “post-truth” era, in which they challenge any assertion of fact. Yet they have it both ways because they also insist (see “rumor mongering,” below) that “the real story” is the Obama/Susan Rice monitoring of the Trump transition team. So none of te mainstream media news is considered real, and none of their news can ever be fake or self-serving.

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flexibility

rhetorical claim: states’ rights should guarantee flexibility is such broad areas as health care policy and mandates, environmental protection, public safety, birth control, gender discrimination laws, consumer laws, etc.

rhetorical effect: absolves the Trump administration from any of the political blame for inadequate or unaffordable insurance coverage, police violence against minorities, racial, sexual and gender discrimination, inadequate womens’ sexual health protections, air and water pollution, consumer fraud, etc.

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rumor-mongering

rhetorical claim: any of the Russian election-hacking stories. The real story is Susan Rice and the Obama administration’s surveillance of the Trump transition team.

rhetorical effect: reduces facts to rumors–that is, unsubstantiated claims made for politically partisan purposes. Any criticism of Trump is trivialized as rumor or gossip. If this was a courtroom, it would be impossible for the prosecutors to present any acceptable evidence because they could not conform to the canons of evidence. It’s the Alice in Wonderland scenario:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

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the war on fossil fuels

rhetorical claim: the “climate change” conspiracy has finally lost its war on fossil fuels now that the Trump administration has opened up oil and gas drilling, provided  regulatory relief, and more or less banned any climate change research.

rhetorical effect: denies the reality of harmful CO2 emissions; dismantles 50 years of environmental regulation; absolves corporations from any liability for harmful effects of their activities. Fossil fuels are now fighting a war on the earth.

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churches

rhetorical claim: America’s greatest cohering force. Religious freedom must be upheld.

rhetorical effect: the defense of religions at the expense of basic human rights–as in the cases of abortion, gay rights, gender identity, school curriculum, women’s rights, birth control, etc–not only sanctions prejudice but enshrines it as the cornerstone of national cohesion.

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, March 18-31, 2017

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Fifth Column

rhetorical claim: Every day brings new evidence that today’s media are engaged in clandestine fifth column activities involving journalistic acts of sabotage, media malfeasance, blatant disinformation or media espionage conducted by secret sympathizers. President Trump is engaged in a vicious counter-terrorism war with the media and the Democratic Party.  Yes, terrorism, for what is terrorism but violence or intimidation to achieve some political mean?  The Democrat Party, aided and abetted by their army of fifth column “journalists,” are waging a clandestine war against the heart and soul of America. They are fake Americans producing fake news.

rhetorical effect: discredits any mainstream media reporting; turns them into “the enemy of the people,” and Obama collaborators, and could eventually lead to relaxed libel laws that will muzzle the press and consolidate government power. Turns the Trump Administration into the true resistance movement.

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virtue signalling

rhetorical claim: feel-good policies such as allowing men to use girls’ bathrooms and ruinous $15/hr. minimum wages are progressives’ way of signalling their virtue and political correctness.

rhetorical effect: reduces idealism, social justice, and equality to self-serving attempts at cynically holding power. Renders any claim of morality sound sanctimonious and hypocritical.

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the Obama-Clinton pushover axis

rhetorical claim: why would the Russians hack our election when they had the feckless, incompetent Clinton/Obama apparatchiks doing their very bidding. Obama was recorded on a hot mic telling “Vladimir” he would have more flexibility after the 2012 election (and boy did he).   Obama/Clinton let them take Crimea and Georgia without a peep.  Obama/Clinton apparently (allegedly) signed over 20% of America’s uranium for some huge donations (said to be over 100 million dollars) to the Clinton Foundation plus mega dollars for Clinton speeches that were of no value.  The botched Russian reset button, the drawdown of our military, the total feckless weakened foreign policy of Obama/Clinton, and more; the list of reasons for Vladimir to love Clinton are legion.

Given all those facts, why in the world would Putin want to change from the easy marks he had to a bulldog, a fighter, a man of accomplishment who ran on toughness, a man who wanted to reassert America’s greatness, a man who promised to build the strongest military in the world, a man who wanted to vie, compete and beat Russia as a player in the energy markets?

rhetorical effect: this incredible string of lies and half-truths shifts the narrative away from Trump and back onto the Clintons and Obama.

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reverse monitoring

rhetorical claim: In its final stages, the Obama administration ordered wiretaps on targets they knew that the Trump transition team would be speaking with. This subterfuge and deception was a backdoor way of mining the incoming administration for dirt

rhetorical effect: deflects attention away from the Russian election hack story; distorts events into a hurricane-strength dose of fake news; makes Obama sound like a traitor and a felon for authorizing these taps. Their claim that anyone who reveals names and details of this surveillance should go to prison also has a chilling effect on public disclosure and journalism.

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hard power

rhetorical claim: the strong-power administration needs a strong military to overcome Obama’s perpetual “apology tour”and make America respected and feared again. Makes sure that no one “messes with us” (see below) ever again.

rhetorical effect: justifies enormous defense budget increase at the expense of domestic programs; makes our allies less likely to build up their military spending;  purity and patriotism carry the day over compassion and alliance-building; an increased likelihood of  state-based aggression in the form of American bellicosity , coercion, and military intervention, and, as Nina Burleigh explained in Newsweek,:

What Trump’s budget ensures is that the nation continues down the road that got him elected in the first place—poorly informed and sickly people, ill-served by unfunded public education, lacking decent health care, poisoned by pollution, eating food and using machinery whose safety is not ensured by public agencies, and slipping behind other countries in science and innovation

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originalism and textualism

rhetorical claim: When interpreting the Constitution, judges should confine themselves to the words of the Constitution. Originalism says that if the words are at all unclear, then judges need to consult historical sources to determine their meaning at the time of ratification, and the correct application of these words to new cases should clearly  limit judicial discretion. As Justice Scalia argued, if judges are not bound by words and history, they will inevitably exceed the limits of their judicial authority and, like “activists” or “super-legislators,” make the Constitution say whatever they want.

rhetorical effect: guarantees conservative SCOTUS decisions because it does not take into account the modern meaning of terms such as “right,” “unreasonable,” “probable cause,” “due process,” “excessive,” “cruel and unusual” and “equal protection.”  Does not allow justices to consider context, the intent of the Constitution, contemporary circumstances, and the political and social effect of opinions. Also naively assumes that 250-year-old language is transparent, when clearly anyone attempting to channel the minds of the framers is herself interpreting. Interpretation is a speech act, and anyone reading anything is thus an “activist.”

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governance

rhetorical claim: Congress should do everything it can to dismantle government and eliminate regulation.Its mandate is not to use government to solve problems, but instead to treat government as the problem.

rhetorical effect: lets the private sector do whatever it wants, in effect making profit the sole government principle. Replaces a socially-oriented government–a public sphere– with a military-police operation.

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fashionable political statements

rhetorical claim: federal appeals judges blocking the travel ban are using fashionable political statements to undermine national security.and weaken America They should have no jurisdiction over national security judgement calls.

rhetorical effect: turns two of America’s greatest strengths–judicial review and the separation of powers–into a traitorous-sounding weakness.The GOP calls favorable judicial rulings “Constitutional originalism,” while unfavorable ones are demoted to being “political statements.” In what ways is the theory of original construction not a political statement in itself, since it is based on speculation, ideology and interpretation?

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messing with us

rhetorical claim: Trump has promised to make the U.S. armed forces “so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is gonna mess with us.” Purity and patriotism carry the day.

rhetorical effect: Purity and patriotism carry the day. As Katrina vanden Huevel put it in the Washington Post:

The question is whether we will continue to mess with them. A military that can go anywhere and do anything is called on constantly to go somewhere and do something. The problem with endless wars without victory is that they must be ended without victory. The challenge for a true America First policy is to reduce the lives and resources squandered across the globe in order to rebuild at home. Trump’s budget submission omitted plans for his promised rebuilding of U.S. infrastructure. Clearly the military buildup took priority. And that buildup — along with the doubling down on current policies in Europe, the Middle East, Korea and the South China Sea — suggests that once more the bipartisan consensus of the United States as the “indispensable nation” on duty across the world will betray the promise to rebuild our country.

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, March 8-14, 2017

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The Right To Try

rhetorical claim: prolonged FDA drug approval policies are depriving sick patients of needed drugs and driving up costs. Therefore, the FDA should only approve drugs for safety, not efficacy. The market will determine which drugs succeed and fail.  Patients should get the right to try new drugs to more quickly discover what’s best for them.

rhetorical effect: makes anyone arguing that drugs need to be proven effective before approval seem like part of the administrative state that Bannon says is destroying America. Will end up wasting billions of dollars  on drugs that don’t work, and, in the process, making sick people sicker and causing a lot of false hope and disappointment. But, on the bright side, will greatly increase Big Pharm’s revenue and enormous profits.

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health care reform

rhetorical claim: the American Health Care Act will force states to set priorities in patient coverage–including only the truly needy– and create a more vibrant insurance market through the low-cost policies that people actually want. It will bring freedom to he health care market. defederalizing, block granting, and capping

rhetorical effect: Translations: “setting priorities in patient coverage” actually means rationing; “the truly needy” will be an ever-diminishing pool of low income patients; a “vibrant insurance market” means the right to ever-cheaper, unregulated,  and useless policies; and “policies that people actually want” hastens in a new race to the bottom. People will only think they have policies they “want” until they actually have to rely on these policies to save them from financial catastrophe. As for freedom, here’s Gail Collins’ matchless description:

There’s freedom for wealthier Americans not to pay taxes that help subsidize health insurance for their low-income fellow citizens. Freedom for those who can afford coverage to refuse to buy it. Freedom for insurance companies to hike their prices for middle-aged customers. Freedom for the states to stop providing Medicaid-backed health insurance for maternity care, when nearly half of all the births in the country are currently covered by Medicaid.

“It gives power back to the insurance companies to discriminate against women’s health care, which is more expensive, obviously,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington.

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global community fantasyland

rhetorical claim: multilateral trade agreements and other international treaty obligations only promote the one-world globalists whose main aim is to supplant US sovereignty. This global community fantasyland threatens US courts and domestic democratic institutions. The era of global governance is rapidly passing.

rhetorical effect: excuses the US from participating in any international organizations or tribunals; makes the  “America First” mentality the sole arbitrator of our stance toward climate change, environmental justice, women’s health human rights, and labor laws.

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messaging problems

rhetorical claim: the lamestream media is the enemy of the people and of the Trump administration, so naturally they portray all Trump policy initiatives as chaotic failures. This is laughably not the case as Trump systematically begins to tackle immigration, a border wall, health care, and deregulation. Any “chaos” around these efforts is simply a matter of the new administration’s messaging problem, amplified by a hostile media elite always poised to pounce.

rhetorical effect: blames the media for Trump’s obvious struggles; reduces bad governance to “miscommunication”–as if a little spin can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Messaging problems can be tweaked; policy problems are irredeemable without major restructuring.

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McCarthyism

rhetorical claim: ironically, college campuses have become the new centers of intolerance and hate speech. This McCarthyite speech suppression has created  a hostile atmosphere toward controversial speakers, whose very expression of ideas has been called a “violent act.”

rhetorical effect: the elimination of all campus speech codes, designed to protect vulnerable and minority populations from hate speech and prejudice. Civil liberties  (the freedom to do things) will be privileged over civil rights  (the freedom from things) as the rights of minorities are suppressed. Discriminatory harassment–which  includes conduct (oral, written, graphic or physical) directed against any person or, group of persons because of their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran’s status and that has the purpose or reasonably foreseeable effect of creating an offensive, demeaning, intimidating, or hostile environment for that person or group of persons–will be permitted; marginalized, oppressed groups will become even more marginalized and oppressed;

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our civilization

rhetorical claim: there is a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, and we are committing cultural suicide by admitting Muslims immigrants. As Iowa House member Steve King puts it,  “culture and demographics are our destiny.  We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” National identity and racial identity overlap entirely

rhetorical effect: reinforces the claim that the GOP owns the “America” brand and so to oppose them is un-American. (Thus “our” is not an inclusive term.) Puts economic nationalism at the center of all US foreign and economic policy. Offers tacit support to racism, xenophobia, and and anti-religion violence. Defines civilization solely in terms of Western values and accomplishments.

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deep state mischief

rhetorical claim: Democrats play to win, though this time with a perversity and desperation that’s downright scary. They’re trying to scorch the earth — and then rule among the ruins. Their efforts to overturn Trump’s election are not just politics as usual. Slandering Trump as Putin’s Manchurian candidate-turned-president is a gambit aimed at destroying the man and his movement.

Obama — formally or casually — sanctioning Trump Tower wiretaps without due process is criminal. Deep State mischief, in concert with Obama holdovers, threatens liberties. Loretta Lynch encouraging violence in the streets promotes lawlessness. Democrats’ silence at street violence is agreement. Democrats’ ploys are wildly irresponsible, promoting even greater divisions and conflict. This invites reprisals toward a future Democratic president. Does the nation survive if Democrats are fighting for a zero-sum win?

rhetorical effect: makes any opposition seem subversive and even treasonous; refutes any claims about Trump corruption, incompetence, or irrationality; makes Dems the opponents of liberty and the rule of law.

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liberal issues

rhetorical claim: liberal virtue-signalling results in a sanctimonious testament of lies and self-serving hypocrisies. Their bullying lies and non-negotiable demands–black lives matter; women’s rights are human rights, science is real–are a form of political agitation and the suppression of free speech.

rhetorical effect: creates conditions for what Putin calls a “post-truth world” where power trumps reason and economic prosperity is the sole measure of political success.

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black suffering

rhetorical claim: Truth-telling is agaon possible thanks to Donald Trump. This is especially true when it comes to telling the truth about inner cities and black suffering. As explained by Lloyd Marcus on The Federalist website:

Then, there is the black thing. Leftists say you had better not tell the truth about why blacks are suffering in cities controlled by Democrats — generational poverty, epidemic school dropouts, high out of wedlock births, over 70% fatherless households, high unemployment and record-breaking black-on-black crime.

All this black suffering is the result of Democrats pardoning blacks of all personal responsibility for their lives. Democrats claim all issues plaguing blacks are the fault of white racist America. This leftist poisonous lie robs blacks of their personal power by placing their success or failure in the hands of someone other than themselves. Leftists hate this truth. America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it! Period.

Despicably, leftists lie claiming cops routinely murder blacks. The truth is blacks are killing each other to the tune of 20, 30, and 40 every weekend in cities like Chicago and Baltimore, controlled by democrats for decades.

But Leftists forbid us from telling the truth about black lives. Doesn’t common sense suggest that if Leftists truly cared about black lives, they would relish an honest discussion? Leftists high-tech crucified white TV commentator Bill O’Reilly for compassionately daring to address the real reasons why blacks are suffering. For years, I have been routinely excoriated, called an Uncle Tom and a traitor to my race for simply stating truths; petitioning blacks to assume responsibility, which equals real black empowerment.

rhetorical effect: blaming the victim for institutional and historical violence and oppression; justifying the demolition of the social safety net; condoning police violence, and creating an overall atmosphere of racist hatred.

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the Russia insinuation

rhetorical claim: the ignominious collapse of the Democratic claims and insinuations that Donald Trump was improperly connected to the Russian government has de-escalated the Democrats’ campaign against the president — from a frenzied assault seeking impeachment and removal for a cause to be named later, to guerrilla war. Russian collusion has vanished down the same deep hole as the charges of sexism, racism, and a will to autocracy.

rhetorical effect: trivializes and dismisses any talk of the ever-more-apparent Russia-Trump connection; renders Trump impervious to criticism; equates all critical media coverage as fake news.


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, March 1-7, 2017

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military operation

rhetorical claim: that the deportation of undocumented immigrants will, according to President Trump, be carries out as a “military operation.” This definition of a mass-deportation military operation was later dialed back by General Kelly and Sean Spice as being selective only and not involving the military

rhetorical effect:  further undermines Trump’s rhetorical authority since his aides now say he actually meant “non-military” when he said “military.”  Also scares every immigrant and suppresses free speech.

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no investigation is needed

rhetorical claim: Trump’s ties to Russia and Russian interference in the US election don’t need to be investigated because there is no proof that any crime was committed.

rhetorical effect: becomes the template for avoiding any independent investigations of the Trump administration. Establishes the absurd idea that evidence could possibly exist before an investigation.If you had proof, you wouldn’t need an investigation.

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health care populism

rhetorical claim:  deregulated, competitive health insurance markets are the most fair and efficient way to the health care markets people really want. Key to fairly managed markets is the right of patients to cost consciousness. Innovative contracts offering limited and selective  kinds of coverage, and shifting more responsibility onto the patients, are the wave of the future. It would be a case of “moralistic overreach.” (see below)

rhetorical effect: turns health care from a human right into a consumer-driven obligation, thus paving the way to blame the victims for their own illnesses.  Will lead to vastly reduced coverage; exclusions for preexisting conditions; huge increases in both the uninsured and the under-insured, and record profits for unregulated insurance companies and providers.

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political extortion

rhetorical claim: A special prosecutor is the worst possible way to inform Americans about the Russia episode. He’d operate in secret with a goal of criminal indictments when what the U.S. political system needs is information about what happened. Democrats have made many allegations but fear there may be nothing to find. A special prosecutor would let them continue to claim for months or years that the 2016 election was stolen even if no indictments were ever handed up.

rhetorical effect: makes any investigation of Trump’s Russian ties seem politically-motivated, inevitably biased, and nothing more than Dems’ revenge for a lost election. Saying that the American people “just want to know what happened ” without  a “secret” Special Prosecutor issuing indictments is to rule out findings of criminal conspiracy and even treason.

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progressivism

rhetorical claim: progressivism is the true believers’ conspiracy against government by the people. Progressives want to dispose rights through the administrative state, not allow these rights to be disposed by “The laws of  Nature and Nature’s God.”

rhetorical effect: normalizes and reifies  Trumpism as a “popular revolt” bubbling up from the people and not an administrative coup engineered by progressives. Demonizes progressivism as elitist, authoritarian, and unnatural–a pure, naked power grab justified by a bogus sense of historical inevitability.

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moralistic overreach

rhetorical claim: appointing Special Prosecutors–or even creating the FISA Court in the first place– circumvents the natural process of letting the Justice Dept. gather the facts and instead constitute an act of moralistic overreach on the part of the Dems.  Judges should not be involved in the surveillance equation.

rhetorical effect: removes judiciary oversight of the Justice Dept., allowing it to bury or ignore evidence. “Moralistic” is of course a pejorative term in itself, suggesting prying scolds and hypocrites. This phrase delegitimizes any independent investigation of US intelligence, surveillance, or political connections with foreign powers. It also makes the concept of morality itself seem suspect.

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tax competition

rhetorical claim: Obama had a taboo on lowering taxes through tax competition, which made efficient corporate tax planning very difficult. Relegitimizing tax competition will be a powerful economic stimulant.

rhetorical effect: tallows for a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxation. In the name of efficiency, will lead to drastic cuts (always now called “trade-offs”) in social spending. Competition in this context always means efficiency, never collusion or monopoly power.

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white guilt

rhetorical claim: according to Shelby Steele,

the Trump election suggests an exhaustion with the idea of white guilt, and with the drama of culpability, innocence and correctness in which it mires us. White guilt is an anachronistic  mock guilt, a pretense of real guilt, a shallow etiquette of empathy, pity and regret. It’s only aim is moral authoritarianism….When America became stigmatized in the ’60s as racist, sexist and militaristic, it wanted moral authority above all else. Subsequently the American left reconstituted itself as the keeper of America’s moral legitimacy. (Conservatism, focused on freedom and wealth, had little moral clout.) From that followed today’s markers of white guilt—political correctness, identity politics, environmental orthodoxy, the diversity cult and so on.

This liberalism evolved within a society shamed by its past. But that shame has weakened now. Our new conservative president rolls his eyes when he is called a racist, and we all—liberal and conservative alike—know that he isn’t one. The jig is up. Bigotry exists, but it is far down on the list of problems that minorities now face. I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It’s harder now for young blacks to find a closed one.

Let’s stipulate that, given our history, this liberalism is understandable. But American liberalism never acknowledged that it was about white esteem rather than minority accomplishment. Four thousand shootings in Chicago last year, and the mayor announces that his will be a sanctuary city. This is moral esteem over reality; the self-congratulation of idealism. Liberalism is exhausted because it has become a corruption.

rhetorical effect: the laughable claim that we now live in a “post-racist” era and that there is no longer any reason to believe in liberal causes makes it a “corruption” to even be a liberal. Mired in self-esteem issues and apologizing for America, liberals are now “the enemy of the people.”

 

 

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog whistles, canards, euphemisms, innuendoes, insinuations, fake outrages, and obsessions in The Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories and fever swamps, Feb 13-19, 2017

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back to basics

rhetorical claim: when it comes to climate change, getting away from so-called “climate change” science to simply reducing pollution, on a voluntary basis.

rhetorical effect: removes objective data from the “discussion” about environmental regulation–in other words, turns evidence-based policy debates into matters of opinion. In such a case, the “basics” are always subordinated to economic growth

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cooperative federal-state relationships

rhetorical claim: turning environmental regulation, education, labor laws, Medicare and other programs over to the states will put the states and federal government into an equal partnership, rather than the feds’ command and control stranglehold.

rhetorical effect: removes federal oversight, allowing states to starve programs and policies they don’t like. At best, this will constitute  benign neglect of the letter and spirit of federal laws.

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racial civil rights

rhetorical claim:  pc identity politics that turns race into divisiveness and hatred.

rhetorical effect: by characterizing any civil rights argument as prejudiced, stigmatizes the very act of making racial distinctions.

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racism

rhetorical claim: a hypothesis to be explored, not a fact beyond dispute.

rhetorical effect: see “racial civil rights”, above

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predictable insurance markets

rhetorical claim: health insurance will be unaffordable until the market is deregulated so insurers can operate it in stable, predictable markets and not be subject to the whims of federal bureaucrats.

rhetorical effect: the only things predictable in this scenario are ever-higher higher rates for ever-skimpier and restrictive coverage.

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Alinski tactics

rhetorical claim: the media’s barrage of fake news and anti-Trump hysteria is wearing out its welcome with the American people. The media is turning into a 24/7 pile up accident.This technique of personalizing, polarizing and vilifying your opponent into submission is borrowed directly from socialist “community organizer” Saul Alinski.

rhetorical effect: turns dissent and political activism into smears, which by definition are dishonest and calculating. Part of Trump’s strategy is to turn everything into a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. Thus there is no problem with breaking every norm and tradition and govern by any means necessary. Turns lying into a rhetorical strategy, as explained by John Podesta:

We now see a toxic overlap between sensationalist politics and media manipulation. Each presidential stroke of bombast plunges the media, the administration and the public into a frenzied scramble for the truth, with the phrase “fake news” nonchalantly thrown around, adding a heaping spoonful of cynicism to the whole mess. These episodes distort our understanding of reality and put us in danger of experiencing an information void like Russia.

If Trump succeeds, something fundamental will be lost. Russians hear something on TV and assume it’s a lie. That attitude of reflexive cynicism makes it impossible to know the death toll from an industrial accident or a terrorist incident, or the risk to their kids of drinking the water, or even the results of the last election. It ruins everything.

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sleeper cells

rhetorical claim: according to Breitbart,

Many other potential Yateses—holdovers from the Obama administration who have found their way into spots throughout the Trump administration—await throughout government.

“They’re hiding like sleeper cells everywhere,” one source said.

White House and other government sources say there are as many as 50 of them throughout government, and Priebus has full knowledge of their whereabouts, who they are, and what potential for damage they may cause. He is not doing anything about it, these sources add.

rhetorical effect: career federal workers’ civil service protection could be endangered if they are likened to terrorists.

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restoring science to its rightful place

rhetorical claim: EPA diktats are based on junk science that cherry-picks the “facts”, relies on biased, subjective “modeling,” and has many detractors.  The EPA is less a government bureau than a secular church enforcing the dogmas of climate change. Science’s rightful place  is not to politicize and distort the facts, but just  to report them objectively.

rhetorical effect: makes all scientific research seem arbitrary and relative; creates cynicism toward all refereed publications; makes the “facts” opinion-based rather than evidence, in which case the only opinion that matters is that of the energy industry.

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street-based progressives

rhetorical claim: hysterical demonstrators, calling themselves the resistance, react to any Trump initiative as fascist or racist.

rhetorical effect: equates progressivism with violence and reaction, and makes anti-Trump demonstrators sound like hooligan armies of anarchy let loose in the streets.

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the dignity of the Office of President

rhetorical claim: according to Kellyanne Conway, media coverage of Trump lacks “respect for and recognition of the dignity for the Office of the President.”

rhetorical effect:  likens any dissent to a personal attack on Trump’s character. “Respect” and “dignity” are master rhetorical tropes encompassing society’s deepest values, so any attack on Trump is framed as an attempt to undermine the country. It’s hard to equate master-tweeter Trump with any notion of dignity as he disgraces the Presidency daily.

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financial independence

rhetorical claim: in June, the House Financial Services Committee released a proposed bill to dismantle the DFA and reform the CFPB. Titled the Financial CHOICE Act and introduced by Republican Congressman Jeb Hensarling, the bill aims to replace the DFA and restructure the CFPB. In his statement at the release of the Bill, Hensarling asserted his opinion that the DFA was “a grave mistake” that “has failed.” The proposed Financial “Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs” (CHOICE) Act is intended to empower Americans to achieve greater financial growth “with real reforms that work.” Most significantly, the Bill changes many of the provisions that now enable the CFPB:

  • The new organization would get a new name, the Consumer Financial Opportunity Commission, or the CFOC.
  • The fundamental mission of the Bureau would change, with the addition of facilitating competitive markets along with assuring consumer protections.
  • The Office of Economic Analysis would perform a cost-benefit analysis of proposed agency rules before their adoption and implementation.

rhetorical effect: by substituting “opportunity” for “protection,” this becomes a right-to-be-fleeced agency, and would make it impossible to even gather consumer fraud information, according to The Washington Post.

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moving on

rhetorical claim: now that General Flynn has resigned, the nation needs to “move on” to more pressing matters.

rhetorical effect: exactly what didn’t happen in Watergate, despite Nixon’s best efforts to demote it to a “two-bit break-in.” Not denying the facts, but twisting and trivializing them has the effect of confusing the public, changing the subject, and making critics sound hectoring and vindictive.