The War on Language

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The War on Language

Postby cmsellers » Fri Oct 05, 2018 3:14 am

There has been a lot written about the systematic way that right-wing politicians pick emotional and misleading formulations to advance their agenda, most famously things like "death tax" and "USA PATRIOT Act." However these formulations have been carefully devised by think tanks to appeal to win over people not already on the side of the person using them.

This first phase of the War on Language was despicable and dishonest, but at least effective at advancing right-wing policy agendas. More recently, we seem to have entered a second, much stupider phase, where right-wing politicians and pundits coin new terms intended to inflame the base, but which require elaborate rationales to explain because at first, second, and nine-thousandth glance, they seem stupid rather than immediately compelling.

The first example I saw of this was Republican pundits saying that "Democrat" should be used instead of "Democratic," because in their obstruction of the rightfully-elected president W., the Democrats were anti-democratic. Even if their reasoning were true and the strategy made sense, it was inconsistently applied; they never called for North Korea to be referred to as "The Democrat People's Republic of Korea." But as stupid as this use still seems to me, it was widely adopted by Republic writers and has also been adopted by non-Republic writers who are exposed to lots of Republics, which revealed another flaw in the strategy. In the process of adoption, the pejorative sense seems to have been mostly erased, because it required explaining to be pejorative in the first place.

I was then introduced to "homicide bombers," supposedly as a way of drawing attention away from the terrorists who commit suicide bombings. However suicide is the distinguishing feature of suicide bombings; in many cases they are the only fatality of the attack.

Now I have just encountered an even more ridiculous example in The Federalist, which has apparently coined the term "psychological terrorism," to describe the allegations against Kavanaugh. Quite apart from the conspiracy theory implied, this formulation has two linguistic problems. Firstly, it expands the definition of "terrorism", so that physical harm, the threat of physical harm, destruction of property with a reckless regard for the chance of physical harm is no longer required: the far-right apparently wants to expand the concept of "terrorism" in the same way that Catherine McKinnon tried to expand the concept of violence. But secondly, it is is entirely redundant, since terrorism is by definition a form of psychological warfare.

I considered posting about this on the Kavanaugh thread, but somehow I feel like I may be seeing similar attacks against language in the near future, and want to record them in one place.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Oct 05, 2018 3:53 am

Meh. English hasn't been all that great since the Great Vowel Shift, anyway.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Crimson847 » Fri Oct 05, 2018 5:13 am

The "Democrat Party" thing is funny to me. I still haven't figured out how these people conclude the Democrats are anti-democratic when every anti-democratic bias in US institutions that I can think of (like the Electoral College and Senate's bias toward residents of certain states) is opposed by Democrats and propped up by Republicans, and indeed Republicans have spent the last two years saying things like "the US isn't a democracy, and thank God for that" in response to complaints about the EC. I've tried, but haven't gotten an answer yet.

Consequently, it's also one of the terms I don't change when code-switching between Liberal English and Conservative English.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Crimson847 » Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:47 am

Crimson847 wrote:The "Democrat Party" thing is funny to me. I still haven't figured out how these people conclude the Democrats are anti-democratic when every anti-democratic bias in US institutions that I can think of (like the Electoral College and Senate's bias toward residents of certain states) is opposed by Democrats and propped up by Republicans, and indeed Republicans have spent the last two years saying things like "the US isn't a democracy, and thank God for that" in response to complaints about the EC. I've tried, but haven't gotten an answer yet.

Consequently, it's also one of the terms I don't change when code-switching between Liberal English and Conservative English.


On reflection, I just thought about the Supreme Court's influence on social policy, and how many of the "Democrat Party" types seem to be exclusively focused on social policy. That's probably it.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:18 am

Well, social policy will always be more important. Economism is worthless to society.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby SandTea » Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:29 pm

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Re: The War on Language

Postby Absentia » Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:52 pm

That's actually pretty metal. I'm down for being a Demon Rat.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Crimson847 » Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:10 pm

I've heard "Demonrats" before; always good for a double take. "Libtard" seems to be getting outdated now that many lefty folks call themselves progressives moreso than liberals, so there's clear demand for a new go-to insult. "Regressives" was kinda clever and some people seem to have picked it up, but I guess others enjoy the classic feel of an insulting portmanteau.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: The War on Language

Postby cmsellers » Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:49 am


I know that one, but as Crimson pointed out, if I catalogued all the examples of Republicans engaging in juvenile name calling, my post would be longer than an Ayn Rand novel.

And also, this thread is really about examples which are A. so stupid they require an explanation for why the speaker is using them, and B. suggest the coiner has some fundamental misconceptions about how language works. "Demon rats" is self-explanatory and at worst it suggests that Judge Jeamean does not have good instincts for wordplay.

That said, I want to note that Demon rats do the insulting wordplay nicknames too, if less often. Witness "brogressives," "Rethuglicans," and most recently, "Linda Graham."
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Re: The War on Language

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Oct 06, 2018 7:37 pm

It's all marketing.

Same reason people bought Pontiac cars for their "wide track" despite their competitors offering similar sized cars with wider wheelbases. My laptop has a nice ips screen but it isn't Retina so according to Apple I'm basically looking through opaque glass.

We're searching for the lowest common denominator and we haven't gotten there yet. The Federalist article that sellers linked to is just another form of "it's okay if my side does it but I'm gonna lose my shit if the other side does it". Oh me oh my when things happen to the GOP it's just so awful. We're so perfect and the other side are terrorists boo hoo. I mean it's like they don't want Kavanaugh on the court so they'll do anything. Unlike that Merrick Garland guy who is.... ahh.... what? Be sure to never mention the brilliant idea of repealing the health law that was labeled Obamacare as a way of tying hatred of Obama to a law that literally granted millions of people health coverage and the even more brilliant idea of not having any idea on what to replace it with. Both sides suck and are ruining the country. So let's keep burying our heads in the sand and playing victim. Sounds like fun.

My favorite quote:
The real goal is to threaten the rest of us into silence. How many people, for example, never used Donald Trump yard signs or bumper stickers out of fear of ostracism, or even property destruction?


How about MAGA hats and bumper stickers that are still on vehicles worth less than $5000? How about counter protesting a march by women? How about the time spent ostracizing homosexuals and threatening them into silence?Please, let's NOT talk about that as it doesn't fit the narrative of "psychological terrorism" as described by the author... oh wait it does. Hmm.

Those poor Trump fans, so afraid of being ostracized by liberal snowflakes. And also let's keep up the make believe that only one side destroys yard signs. That's good stuff.
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“This is going to become a bad meme,” Todd observed.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:51 pm

iMURDAu wrote:
Those poor Trump fans, so afraid of being ostracized by liberal snowflakes. And also let's keep up the make believe that only one side destroys yard signs. That's good stuff.


While a lot of this sort of rhetoric is just plain old sealioning, there is some basis in the rhetoric in that right-wing audiences have been primed to see the left as fake. I mean, the whole idea of "cultural marxism" that's spouted off by alt-rightists and armchair centrists is essentially an absurd viewpoint that every left-wing viewpoint as well as every counterculture was all made up by some school of Marxist thought from the 1930s as a ruse to spread said Marxism. So, essentially no left wing person over the past eighty years has ever supported anything like a minimum wage, racial equality, LGBT rights,environmental protections, legal pot, net neutrality, or a social safety net. It was all a ruse to spread Marxism. Also, curiously, no one was ever seriously a goth,a hippie, or into grunge or whatever. Those were all just marxists. Same goes for anyone who's ever claimed to be LGBT. There's also quite a lot of social bias going on that's sort of aggravated by the current hyper-partisan political climate and the rural-urban divide. So, you got a lot of cases where there's some rural parts of the country where people can't exactly openly left wing and aren't exactly the most diverse, so people just assume that their views are the unanimous consensus. That nobody disagrees with them. Add in the right wing media bubble, and suddenly that translates into a scenario, where Hillary's surplus of popular votes were all just illegal immigrants, where anyone not Pro-Trump is the Deep State, and no concerns are really held and all protesters are actors paid by George Soros. In some parts of the country, simply not sharing in an opinion has become a sinister conspiracy.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Windy » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:10 pm

I don't know what this thread is about but we should call Donald Drumpf an orange cheeto again, that did a great job of proving how intelligent and mature we are.
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:39 pm

I like going the opposite direction on that.

*kneels while pretending to offer a sword*

"Hail Donald John Trump, God-Emperor of Mankind, Commander-in-Chief of American Greatness, Drainer of Swamps, Breaker of Blue Walls, He Who Brings The Rain (Of Liberal Tears), I salute you, your Imperial Highness. My service, my life, my very soul, are yours."


Then if people get mad, you can just play it off like you were serious and scold them for showing insufficient devotion to His Lord and Majesty, staying in good humor the whole time. Much more fun for everybody than a shouting match.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: The War on Language

Postby Marcuse » Thu Oct 18, 2018 4:31 pm

I'm not exactly sure how any of these things constitute a war on language. I think it's a pretty simple principle that you use language to frame how you think about something and politicians of every stripe are going to use whatever tools at their command in order to make people associate one thing with another if it advantages them. You see it all the time when people use woolly and imprecise language to refer to one thing as another thing because that other thing is worse and so it feels easier to hate (for example, saying someone accused of sexual assault is a rapist).
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Re: The War on Language

Postby cmsellers » Thu Oct 18, 2018 7:10 pm

The title is a reference to the longstanding fondness on the right for labeling things which aren't wars as "wars." IE: "War on Drugs," "War on Terror," and especially the "War on Christmas."
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