Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 21-30, 2016

the climate police: anyone concerned about the environment, climate change, global warming, etc. Rhetorically hints that any environmental regulatory action is authoritarian at best, and a form of schoolmarm scolding and social control. These police are related to the “pc police.”

the collective: the ultimate leftist cult, in which individual rights and matters of conscience are always subordinated to the authority of the collective.

equal protection under the law: leftist ideology

Hillary-as-criminal: a given. Here’s what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”:

Guilt and innocence do not determine judgment, but rather judgment determines all, including the definition of guilt.–Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno

Leviathan: the federal government.

market uncertainty: the real culprit of the 2008 financial meltdown, caused by government inconsistency, regulatory excess, and pressure to issue sub-prime loans to unqualified minority borrowers. Perfect certainty would cause perfect markets.

raid: government policing or regulatory actions, especially those that affect consumers and businesses.

regrettable infelicities: any of the Donald’s statements that provoke outrage in the liberal Democrats. Aka, “lapses of taste and judgment.”

resentment: the rhetorical heart of Trumpism: economic resentment, immigration resentment, racial resentment, gender resentment.

trends: what pass for principles among Dems. Always shifting and subject to change, depending on what’s trending or politically correct at the time. Examples include playing “the woman card” and identity politics, climate change, and charges of p0lice violence. None of these rest on a principled foundation: gender identity politics for its own sake is pandering; climate change is a man=made fiction, and “police violence” is an urban myth.

“unfair” and “abusive”: government-speak for market-driven business practices.

“you can’t say that about a woman”: Trump’s attack on political correctness that he uses as ironic justification whenever he calls women screamers, “disgusting”, ugly, etc.

 

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, euphemisms, sneers, and innuendos in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Feb 15-22, 2014

bitter seeds of anger and mistrust: any talk of race, economic inequality or social justice (see also0 “race hustler,” below)

costly (or “gold-platted) medical coverage benefits: mandatory modifier for any ACA-mandated coverage or standards. The ACA must always be called either “costly” or “gold-plated”.

dignity, standards, and judgement: all the qualities lacking in Obama.A perfect trifecta of character defects.

diversion: the Dem’s’ “war on the rich”. Just as discussion of race become “playing the race card,” any discussion of wealth inequality becomes diversionary “class warfare”. The irony of course is that the GOP use of these prophylactic terms becomes a speech act embodying and encouraging the very thing it is accusing the Democrats of promulgating: racism and classism.

entreprenurial federalism: the latest euphemism for playing desperate state governments against in another as a way of wringing out concessions on taxes, regulations, labor laws, pensions, etc. The Democrats call this “the race to the bottom”.

holocaust denial: the new false equivalency for “climate change denial”.

market uncertainty: the mere threat of new taxes or regulations supposedly spooks the business community more than anything else, and stops them from investing in new products, factories, or hiring. “Market certainty” is a kind of imaginary equilibrium, almost surely one of those chimeras, utopias or phantoms of the mind, such as “perfect socialism” or “unfettered free markets” or perptetual motion machines.

the Miles Per Gallon Illusion: “when consumers don’t realize that increasing fuel economy for 15 mpg to 20 mpg saves much more than going from 45-to-50 mpg because the former increase represents a much larger percentage”. Of course, going from 20-50-mpg would be an even bigger percentage.

morass of consequences: the wreckage caused by any Dem policy or law.

powerful: mandatory modifier for  “teachers’ union”.

race-hustler: any Democrat who talks about racial inequality, discrimination, voting rights, or the criminal justice system. The mere act of bringing up race is now called “playing the race card,” but also calling Eric Holder a “race hustler” connotes criminality and deception.

retreat: any Obama foreign policy initiative that doesn’t immediately threaten invasion, coup, meddling or sanctions.

the “so-called” rich: Anyone worth less than $5 million. They also call it envy, but we should actually pity these people because they are so mislabeled as they struggle to pay for their second homes or cruises.

statist: what the GOP calls the Democrats, as in Big Brother. A stand-in word for dictatorial or authoritarian.