Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 12-18, 2014

comes for: black helicopter talk for any assertion of federal power, as in the Bundy Ranch brouhaha. They’re a-comin’ for ya!

envy vs. opportunity: one of those stark, apparently inevitable, yet ultimately false, dichotomies at the heart of Tea Party logic, along with “live free or die” and “liberty vs, collectivity”.

failure:  by definition a given, an inevitability when it comes to any Obama policy, especially the ACA. This circular logic is based on the assumption that the policy can’t work, under any circumstances.

grievances: pejorative for any Dem claims to justice, or, really, any Dem criticism of the status quo.

hysterics: any liberal defense of social justice, redistributionism, the social safety net, or opposition to war or invasion.

identity politics: pejorative used to describe any liberal political alliance, cause or faction. On the other hand, when the Tea Party, for example, comes together to oppose, say, taxes, it’s just plain “politics” (a term that in itself can be a pejorative, as in “playing politics” with an issue).

imperiously: the adverb of choice when referring to any Obama administration response or policy announcement.

ingrates: welfare queens, said to be the victims of the poverty Pentagon and race hustlers.

liberal bias: any statement of fact (e.g., overwhelming consensus on climate science) inconvenient to Tea Party dogma.

missing information:  a catch-all loophole word to explain away ant Obama policy success, or to prolong any “scandal”. A kind of perpetual motion machine, because some piece of “information” will always be “missing”.

phalanx: e.g., the liberal “media phalanx” that always supports he Obama administration. Implies an unstoppable, conspiratorial social movement.

the politics of personal destruction: the argument against ANY disclosure of political donations. A kind of shield law for big donors, removing any trace of transparency in the democratic system. Just revealing donors’ names, let alone criticizing them, is now being framed as “personal destruction”. Disclosure as a hate crime!

questions remain : insidious way of undermining any Dem success, by suggesting that “questions remain”. This “questions remain” ploy is in current heavy rotation in relation to Obamacare, which (see “failure,” above), which, despite mounting signs of its success, is always portrayed as an abysmal failure because “questions remain”.  In Benghazi Derangement Syndrome, of course, questions will “remain” unto eternity. (see also, “missing information”).

Snowden’s accomplices: anyone opposed to secret data-gathering on US citizens.

unnecessary: any policy or regulation the Tea Party opposes. Apparently any court decisions, such as Citizens United, they support is “necessary”–another act of purely circular logic. (see above, “failure”)

 

Glossary, August 15-28, 2013

an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in Wall Street Journal editorials and other precincts of the GOP blogosphere, Aug 15-28, 2013

colorblind: aka, “race neutrality”. Race is like Voldemort: He whose name cannot be mentioned. Somehow, in yet another example of GOP magical thinking, taking racism off the table as a subject suddenly makes it go away. Or, worse, they seem to be patronizing blacks and ludicrously seizing the high moral ground on racial justice. Since everone is now “colorblind,” racists have disappeared, but, somehow, racism hasn’t,

diversocrats: entrenched defenders of racial equality, equal opportunity, and affirmative action. A sneering nickname for Democrats.

evidence: In the case of a longed-for Obama impeachment, the crazy thing that Obama’s defenders are calling for. In this case, evidence is a Democratic ploy.

grievances: all calls for equal justice, civil rights, voting rights, etc. All such claims are usually linked to Al Sharpton, a man who “foments arson and murder”. Somehow, there is no longer a correlation between rights and justice because justice has been served and we are now in a “colorblind” society.

gun-grabber: anyone supporting even criminal background checks for gun licenses. Obviously someone kowtowing to “New York anti-gun” interests.

national self-abasement: the sum total of Obama’s appeasement-based foreign policy, the only outcome of which is American irrelevance and humiliation.

negative rights/negative liberty: the originalist interpretation of the Bill of Rights, claiming that the guiding vision and promise of America’s founders was to limit or kill off government. The alternative is  positive liberyt or rights–a “European style cradle-to-grave democracy” that promises the people a free lunch.

sycophant media: any media outlet that reports White House statements and policies without sneering derision.

utopian interventionism: anything we do to intervene in Syria on humanitarian grounds.