Tag Archives: race hustler

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

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

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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.