The uses of language in the war against Trump and the right
The right geek is very, very tired. And it’s only been three weeks so far:
I was alive and politically aware during the post 9/11 W. Bush administration, and back then, I saw my fair share of leftwing nonsense. I vividly remember, for example, a young lady shrieking hysterically at me on a Boston street because I had the audacity to question the motives of an ANSWER-driven protest against the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, mind you. Not the legitimately controversial war in Iraq. Believe me, Bush Derangement Syndrome was a real phenomenon and a toxic one. All the same, it doesn’t hold a candle to what is happening now.
True. For me, the most tiring thing of all is scanning the news each day and seeing the coverage—wall-to-wall hysteria, designed to drum up even more hysteria. In recent years I’ve grown to distrust the MSM more and more, but it has reached the point where I discount virtually everything I read, which is not a good point to reach.
And one of the things of which I’m sickest (but perhaps I’m repeating myself here) is the constant use of the phrase “undocumented workers.” It’s a brilliant coinage, though, and I seem to recall that it’s been in use for well over a decade. I’m not sure when it began, but its two words encapsulate an astounding amount of thought-shaping in one succinct little package. “Undocumented” indicates a mere misplacement of papers, or perhaps even a sort of modesty about an accomplishment. And “workers” is absolutely a compliment: they are here to work, not to slough off or rip off or do a single bad thing—even when we’re talking about felons, as we were in a recent ICE raid. They are doing the work Americans won’t do!
That doesn’t mean that a great many illegal immigrants (some on the right prefer the even harsher word “aliens,” which is technically correct) are not here to work. Many, many are indeed here to work. So what? They are still not “undocumented,” they are here illegally.
Now, what you might want to do about that (or them) is another story, and reasonable people may differ. But that has nothing to do with the fact that they came here illegally and that other immigrants have patiently waited in line (and are still waiting) to get their documents to be allowed to come here legally.
Another euphemizing word of which I am very tired—one used by both left and right, because it is now a standard term—is “sanctuary city.” But take a look at the meaning and history of the word “sanctuary” and you can see from whence it came:
Sanctuary is a word derived from the Latin sanctuarium, which is like most words ending in -arium, a container for keeping something in””in this case holy things or perhaps holy people, sancta or sancti. The meaning was extended to places of holiness or safety. A religious sanctuary may be a sacred place (such as a church, temple, synagogue or mosque), or a consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar…
The area around the altar came to be called the “sanctuary”, and that terminology does not apply to Christian churches alone: King Solomon’s temple, built in about 950 BC, had a sanctuary (“Holy of Holies”) where the Ark of the Covenant was, and the term applies to the corresponding part of any house of worship. In most modern synagogues, the main room for prayer is known as the sanctuary, to contrast it with smaller rooms dedicated to various other services and functions.
The term evolved to mean the shelter offered for several hundred years by churches and other houses of worship to the accused. The word has deep and positive spiritual connotations; here is my very first exposure to it as a tiny tyke who had to ask what it meant because I didn’t know:
About three decades ago the term came to be applied to those who protected from deportation people here illegally from Latin America. This was the context:
Sanctuary of refugees from Central American civil wars was a movement in the 1980s. Part of a broader anti-war movement positioned against U.S. foreign policy in Central America, by 1987, 440 cities in the United States had been declared “sanctuary cities” open to migrants from these civil wars in Central America.
These sites included university campuses and cities.
It still does include those sites, although most of the illegal immigrants are not refugees from those civil wars; they are economic refugees.
> but it has reached the point where I discount virtually everything I read, which is not a good point to reach.
Me too. I was just thinking that now when I see a headline from the NYT, WP, CNN, …, I just laugh. Trying to know what is going on is a hopeless task, we must live on faith alone. It is like crossing a narrow bridge in the dark on foot.
chuck:
I don’t know about you, but for me it’s more like crawling across that bridge.
In the rain.
I think the toxic political talk is bad on both sides. When Obama was president the hysteria from the right was just as nonsensical. That he was really a Muslim, that he was for open borders, that he would be grabbing our guns, that he was a Marxist….
I would say the difference is that right wing circles pretty much stayed confined to right wing websites and on occasion FOX News. While the left wing circles include more of the MSM. But I would also add that Trump does not help matters with his tweets and his spokesmen such as Kellyanne Conway [Alternative facts, Bowling Green Massacre], Sean Spicer [attack dog mentality], Stephen Miller [wild claims about voter fraud]. They seem more strident in their views than anyone Bush had on his team [except maybe Cheney and Rumsfeld. But they were not the front lines of the Bush admin].
So, in my view, the left’s reactions are to Trump’s team interaction with the media or anyone who questions them. Remember that Trump’s methods derive from Roy Cohn, who believed that if someone hits you, you hit them back twice as hard. That is bound to create a toxic environment. Especially if the someone hitting you is a journalist / news organization simply doing its job and not trying to be antagonistic.
Montage:
The intense involvement of the MSM is very much the difference, and it is an important. A dangerous side-effect of that involvement is the loss of trust in the truthfulness of the MSM, which is not a good thing either.
Montage:
“Especially if the someone hitting you is a journalist / news organization simply doing its job and not trying to be antagonistic.”
Ye gods, man, what planet do you live on?
Piers Morgan, a moderate liberal, is to be commended for speaking out against the hysteria, the paranoia, and the descent into irrationality of most of the opposition to Trump. The anti-Trumpians of the so-called “Resistance” have proven time and again that their unwillingness to accept the results of the election has less to do with the character or performance (after less than a month in office) of the new president than with an infantile rage completely untethered to the world of facts and evidence.
The last time I looked polls show djt ranks higher than the msm when people are asked who they trust. Montage can not truly believe the left’s reactions to both GWB and DJT are comperable to the right’s reaction to BHO. I do not recall riots and death threats in 2008 or 2012.
One other thing I noticed today: In speaking about the Trudeau/Trump talks, no one on CNN mentioned the Keystone Pipeline. I can’t believe the Canadians aren’t delighted to be able to more easily sell their oil. Trump certainly won us some points there.
Here is a link to a WSJ opinion piece by John Vinocur on Russia’s friends in Germany. I don’t know if the link will work or if the piece is behind the paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vladimir-putins-german-friends-in-high-places-1487018173
Anyway, it’s a good article and it adds to the understanding of what Merkel is up against. I wouldn’t want her job.
NPR did mention that “Canadian oil producers” are happy about the possibility of the Keystone XL being greenlit. They further noted Trudeau’s very different view.
From a 2013 article at HuffPo:
So their rationale was to avoid calling people “illegal.” This reminds me of when I was little and my mom would say, “I love you, but I strongly dislike [we weren’t allowed to say “hate”] your actions,” which she thought, correctly, was truthful, though quite hard for my 6-year-old self to process. Relatedly, my parents were spankers, but not hand-spankers; they used a wooden spoon on us because, as they were sure to impress on us, they had been advised by parenting experts that doing so would cause us to attach our negative emotions to the spoon instead of them. I include this blast from the past because it serves to illustrate that words have meaning, and that intentions count for zip when actions contrast with them.
Back to the media: their solution, apparently, has been not to say “people who have immigrated to [or “entered” if they’re not staying] the U.S. illegally.” This is a longer construction, but it retains the original meaning exactly. “Undocumented worker” DOES NOT. But I bet anything they’d say they use “undocumented worker” because it’s shorter, not because it has a deliberately changed meaning from the original. And they would be lying…
Montage is undoubtedly a MSM journalist in disguise.
I can say that recent events haven’t caused me to lose my trust in the truthfulness of the MSM.
That occurred decades ago when I read how the MSM reported on any issue with which I had first-hand knowledge.
See the Nobel Prize Winning Physicist’s ‘Gell-Mann amnesia effect’. So if you don’t accept it you are anti-Science 🙂
Montage, the balance is off. See for instance this article from Politico back in 2009 about the recess “battle plan” for Congresspeople during the runup to the vote on the ACA:
Both sides attempt to use this tactic; it’s not a Trump thing. And yes, there were some people on the Right who were “birthers” and more who (on considerably more evidence) believed and probably still believe that Pres. Obama wanted to advance a Euro-socialist agenda. But see how those people were treated in and by the press: they were loons, they were “violent,” their rhetoric was “dangerous.” See, now, how protesters who say that Trump = Hitler and how those who voted for Trump are Nazis are treated in and by the press: they are The Resistance. Not the “self-styled Resistance,” not “groups who are so opposed to the President’s agenda that they liken themselves to a resistance movement in a dictator-led nation” – they are called, without embarrassment or qualification, “The Resistance.”
Members of the Resistance in WWII France have GOT to be rolling over in their graves.
Jamie:
Those who resisted the Nazis in France and were unfortunate enough to be captured must certainly be rolling over; summary execution, or torture followed by execution. Just like what the “Resistance” to President Trump is facing in the USA? How stupid are these “resistors?”
I want to say “They mean well,” but honestly I don’t know what they mean. I’m not altogether sure they know what they mean.
Oops, sorry, I meant the protesters; I think the media are pretty clear that they have a mission.
But let’s talk about fake news.
Trump actually tweeted, ‘Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election.’ That. Is. Absurd.
He is equating the election polls, which were not actually wrong nationally, with ALL polls that might show some policy of his as negative. It doesn’t work that way!
Next, Sebastian Gorka who is deputy assistant to President Donald Trump said in an interview:
“There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media, not just the pollsters, the majority of the media to attack a duly elected President in the second week of his term….Until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say, ‘fake news.”
Notice that in his view ANY negative coverage is an ‘attack’. And so therefore as long as these ‘attacks’ continue then all news [legit or not] will be called ‘fake news’ until we determine the media is willing to give us positive coverage. That is crazy because it does not attempt to actually address actual news from attacks. It equates anything deemed negative as fake. That is a pretty convenient way to treat all news one doesn’t like. I understand spin – all presidents do it. But calling all news fake is crazy.
@Montage
I guess you’ve forgotten things like:
1.President Obama saying of Republicans: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
2. Tea Party peacefulness vs. BLM and OWS violence
3. The evening of the 2016 election, according to the MSM Clinton had >99% chance of winning.
4. While you state, “Notice that in his view ANY negative coverage is an ‘attack’,” you fail to note that the MSM has done nothing but attack. Have you see Remnick at The New Yorker? He’s gone nuclear. Yes, The New Yorker. Perhaps the administration would see things differently if even just occasionally the MSM reported – front page, above the fold – some of their successes. Then again, perhaps you don’t think they’d had any successes.
I could go on and on.
Any criticism of bho was racist and the critics were bitter clingers and far right agitators. Anyone who did not believe Nadal’s murderous actions were “work place violence” were islamophobes. Anyone who believes those born XY should not pee or shower with school children who are XX are ‘transgender’ haters. And so on.
You can’t have it both ways Montage. Ply your trade all you want, but it will not influence people like me or make me believe you are the least bit interested in an honest discussion based on verifiable information.
Montagne:
When the legacy media spouts any fake news, how do you then determine what is and what is not fake? All the other legacy media will be spouting the same line.
For eight years, I have been reading WaPo and NYTimes to see what they’re talking about and the spin they put on it, then going to a half-dozen blogs (including this one) to find out what the blog authors and a fair number of the long-term commenters are saying about that purported “news” from the MsM. Sometimes the MsM version is corroborated, but a majority of the time these blog sources reveal what the MsM is hiding or misstating. There are some seriously knowledgeable commenters on this and other blogs, whose views I pay great heed to, because they have repeatedly been corroborated by events.
You’re new here. If you really want to learn what’s going on in this nation, stick around for a few months and keep quiet.
OM Says:
February 13th, 2017 at 6:56 pm
Jamie:
Those who resisted the Nazis in France and were unfortunate enough to be captured must certainly be rolling over; summary execution, or torture followed by execution. Just like what the “Resistance” to President Trump is facing in the USA? How stupid are these “resistors?”
* * *
I don’t remember know how I found this Tweet, but it seems appropriate here:
https://twitter.com/SonnyBunch/status/830775701817135105
Sonny BunchVerified account
â€@SonnyBunch
Donald Trump is such a terrifying fascist dictator that literally no one fears speaking out against him on literally any platform.
http://libertyunyielding.com/2017/02/13/anti-trump-media-sound-fury-signifying-nothing/
At times in the recent past, the MSM were reasonably reliable about reporting the news, and taking legitimate news as the basis for editorial or polemical discussion. Admittedly, those times were a shrinking subset of all the content pumped out by the MSM. But the subset was still healthy enough to count.
It no longer is. The mainstream media, along with the entire New Media leftosphere, are now mounting a full-court press (as it were) against the Trump administration, simply lobbing as much as they can out there to see what will stick. None of it has to be true, credible, or even rational. The purpose, besides creating an appearance of general chaos, appears to be putting heads on pikes, whether the lopped-off heads of the administration’s policies — introduced as President Trump promised during his 2016 campaign — or the figurative heads of the administration’s personnel.
In the pursuit of this objective, no amount of unsubstantiated innuendo or simple egregious nonsense seems to be too much. The media don’t bother to defend it (or make it sensible); they merely repeat it, from one outlet to the next, until it seems to be coming from everywhere.
… An atmosphere of dementedness prevails — not because either the government or the people have gone crazy (the violent-protest left excepted), but because the media have.
I really hate to see the Old Faithfuls of the rightosphere taking up every new talking point as if it merits serious discussion. Too many of them don’t seem to realize that the mode of political operation has changed for the MSM and the left (to the extent those are separate entities). The MSM aren’t interested now in making sober points in a give-and-take dialogue. They are using communications to attack, with whatever weapons come to hand — and they are going for as many kills and as much carnage as they can get.
There is no shared communication space in which political opponents can stake out positions in legitimately common terms. The MSM are a predatory noise machine, not propounders of meaningful news. Discussing the defamatory rumors and the stream of overheated invective the MSM now constantly spread about the Trump administration and its voters is not a means of engaging in dialogue or analysis. It functions only to amplify false themes that should rather have dirt thrown on them and be suffocated. …
RTWT, of course.
Neo quoting the right geek:
“Not the legitimately controversial war in Iraq.”
Of course, President Bush’s decision for Operation Iraqi Freedom is not “legitimately controversial”. Rather, the controversy is based on a brazenly revisionist narrative. The US case vs Saddam is in fact substantiated. Bush’s OIF decision was substantively correct on fact, procedurally correct on law and precedent, and justified on policy.
“Donald Trump is such a terrifying fascist dictator that literally no one fears speaking out against him on literally any platform.”
LOL
Of course Montage would see this as proof that in turn (aka fake news) the messiah, Pelosi, Reid, Waters, and the rest of those who thought Gaum might tip over crowd were subjected to death threats and the evil right destroyed property and actually commited acts of violence on the above and/or their supporters.
Eric,
I have missed your comments, welcome back.
Sincerely,
parker
Cap’n Rusty
“You’re new here. If you really want to learn what’s going on in this nation, stick around for a few months and keep quiet.”
I’m not new and I definitely will not keep quiet. Sorry if that doesn’t fit into your world view and biased narrative. I’m actually a moderate who reads a lot of news sites. I know spin when I see it and what Trump is doing goes beyond the usual spin into crazy.
Irene
#1 and #2 have nothing to do with what we are talking about. If anything it is the equivalent of saying, ‘Well if Obama did it then we will do it too…” #3 were predictions by people whose job it is to predict. They were wrong. But the news did not report Clinton’s chances as fact. They simply reported what the polls showed. But that alone does not make other NEWS and actual EVENTS untrue. Or Alternate Facts somehow true.
Regarding David Remnick he does not count unless you also count the National Review and their attacks of Obama. No one thinks the New Yorker or the National Review are unbiased news. They are partisan. My concern is that Trump does not want ANY facts that might be bad press reported to Americans. It goes beyond spin.
@Montage
Re: polls. All pollsters – especially the anointed ones like 538 – were out for Trump’s blood from Day 1. If you think they were out to predict, I’d say that’s pretty delusional. They were out to aid Clinton and they tried every trick in the book to make the Clinton look unbeatable. 538 didn’t even have a single writer who was Independent. They were all rabid D’s and acted accordingly. And so did the other big pollers. The only exception that I am aware of was the LATimes, and they were continuously ridiculed.
Re TNY: I don’t think you know anything about The New Yorker or its standing here in NYC. The New Yorker was the standard bearer of high culture for many, many decades. Politics was usually a sideshow until Remnick was appointed Editor. And now he’s gone even further – literally to the point of hysteria. The NR was never primarily a “cultural” magazine. It was always political in nature.
The reason I brought up 1 and 2 was because you opened your comments by saying, “I think the toxic political talk is bad on both sides.” I posted #1 because I cannot recall any earlier presidential candidate ever saying anything so incendiary – thus it was not the right that started it. And Point #2 was a gentle reminder that the vast majority of supporters of the right don’t act out violently, don’t get their talking points from communists and others trying to foment REVOLUTION, and, have generally acted like adults. So, please spare us the toxic political talk is bad on both sides because the degree and support is not the same at all between the right and the left.
Wow Montage! Congradulations! Your face has met your small intestines. A rare feat. Way to go! BTW, do you have video posted on youtube to make this accomplishment global viral?
WOP
With out papers started with Italians
Back then it was rare because you could be shot trying incursion
“Montage Says:
February 13th, 2017 at 4:10 pm
I think the toxic political talk is bad on both sides. When Obama was president the hysteria from the right was just as nonsensical. That he was really a Muslim, that he was for open borders, that he would be grabbing our guns, that he was a Marxist….”
– Obama’s embrace of the doctrine of “positive liberty”
– His statement that “mere tolerance is not enough”
– The shared individual responsibility mandate. And,
“that’s how we take care of each other”
Not a Marxist? Argue that if your wish. The fact is that he is near enough.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/09/23/why-the-fuss-obama-has-long-been-on-record-in-favor-of-redistribution/#8c3f4125db64
“Sanctuary” [city, county, state] is generally pronounced as a four syllable word, whereas the more properly apt political descriptive “Nullification” [city, county, state] is a far longer five syllable word.
Ach.
Troubling.
Too, in a time when Democrats are often easily stirred up into a frenzy by imaginative linkages from Pres. Trump’s invocation of an “America First” policy today by jumping backward toward the ’30s Lindbergian America Firsters (how handy for those who revel in opportunities to suggest a sulking Nazism on the loose!), calling out nullificationists [Ooo, six! how unwieldy!] for what they are may invoke just a tad too much truth for these delicate Democrat’s political sensibilities.
And we mustn’t have that. Feelings, you know. Gotta respect those feelings.
The democrats remind me of a little child whose toy has been snatched away and now they are having a screaming temper tantrum. It has been noted that chronologically these people are adults but mentally they are children. I’ve seen them called kidults and adultolescents on blogs.
Check out the new “yellow star” campuses are adopting:
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/31183/
“White privilege” is the new “Jewish untermensch.”
Irene, we’ve talked about pollsters before on this site. It’s simply not true that they were biased in their election polling. There’s no evidence of it. None of the techniques they used were in any way unconventional. There are reasons to be cautious about election polling, but bias isn’t one of them.
Also, 538 isn’t a polling outfit; they analyze polls (among other things). Their analysis was a little off, but not outside the mainstream. And if they wanted to manipulate the election, they should have been saying that Clinton was a couple of points behind. Saying that someone is ahead reduces turnout.
Neo, I think “refuge city” is more the concept that people are trying to refer to. Those were the cities in the Kingdom of Israel that criminals could move to and live without punishment. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s roughly the idea.
Montage has an interesting point.
We are seeing a devolution into strict lines of blue vs red team political argumentation.
This is what comes from escalation.
Each side can point to the other side as the instigator of bogus and inflammatory claims.
Yes, the left seems to take to the streets more readily, and do deplorable things (e.g. defecate on police cars).
That kind of stuff never was what the average obama supporter would do, though “they” “own” it because “they” didn’t decry it, thus they must be part of “them”, the broadly brushed “left”.
Meantime, “we” stand by as trump seems to court racists and misogynists, let alone says things so contradictory “we” know he is mutable, but that is all “acceptable”.
The left broadly brushes the “right” as “racists”, etc..
Surprise!
Then, folks want to proudly wear the badge “deplorable”, like association with these things is a good thing.
.
In the end, it is just all a hyperbolic blue vs red team political game our “leaders” and the media on both sides engage in.
They get us all to declare ourselves “victim”, a much craved and vaunted status nowadays, enraging us to ever higher levels to justify greater centralization and use of power against “them”.
In this tit for tat game, the escalation continues.
.
trump represents an escalation at the highest level. We used to expect some kind of decorum with our POTUS.
But now, to “get our way”, eff decorum. Afterall, obama “started it!”
We want someone to “tell it like it is”, only we are just getting different spin and “alternative facts”, and such. Somehow, that is okay.
The dems used raw power to push through obamacare, circumvent budget deliberations on $1T deficits, eliminate the Senate fillibuster for appointments, etc.
So, screw ’em, we are going to do them one better!
“Our” POTUS will issue even more, and possibly broader EOs and other EAs, Congress will pass laws strictly on party lines, and the Senate will eliminate the final fillibuster. All, A-OK!
Heck, we don’t like the judical decisions on a case before the courts, after our POTUS screwed up – blame them, and give trump a bye.
Call it being merely thin skinned and/or cheer him on when he declares the judiciary biased and political, just like how he earlier suggested a judge to be unfit to rule because of his Mexican heritage.
It’s “refreshing” he is saying something we are “thinking” (ignoring how self-serving for trump it all is).
As if furthering the accelerating the downward spiral of distrust this precipitates is a good thing.
.
So, yes, dems/left = bad, right/trump = good.
trump cannot be criticized for any of the escalation because it is the left’s fault – THEY are the ones who are more intense than ever, donchaknow!
/rant
.
This is destructive!
Yes, we (really, really) need change. But, it needs to be lasting change.
We will not get it this way!
We need to start getting out of the echo bubble, get perspective, and engage.
.
How is it a black man can talk a KKK leader out of his role and give up his robes?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/every-racist-i-know-voted-for-donald-trump/516420/
“They” are not a monolithic bloc of humanity.
“They” are individuals that can be convinced.
Not all of “them” see things in a uniform blue vs red team perspective, all the time.
You might be surprised to see someone in a leftist publication questioning how polls are reported?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-supporters-bowling-green-massacre_us_589df750e4b0ab2d2b14cb22
Maybe, after we clear out all the hot rhetoric and hyperbole, not everything the left says is without some merit?
.
Maybe our best response is not to engage in ever more outrage against the left (which seems to only get mirrored back at us), but expecting accountability on all sides, and truth rather than spin and partial truths.
Maybe we ought to expect our POTUS to set the cultural tone for the country and behave responsibly and competently.
G0d knows we’ve seen enough departure from that over the last eight years.
Do we really think doubling down will get us to a better place?
Are we so sure that without bringing more than trump’s core support on board to get things “our” way, it will outlast this admin?
.
Maybe our concern about the msm, and its losing credibility is really a statement about ourselves and our own inability or reluctance to engage and convince others who are not in our bubble of like-mindedness.
Democracy, even as it is structured in this Republic, is founded on the idea we must bring sufficient numbers together to agree on the path forward.
There is only one way around that, and that is to turn our back on democracy.
Is that what we want?
If not, the question to each of us is, then why encourage this escalation?
Ponder all this before y’all jump on comments like Montage’s, as “it takes two to tango”, as they say.
.
Apologies for the long “essay”, but lately it seems the arguments here are sliding back into the usual, and perhaps more comfortable, we vs they mode – being all in about how bad the left are (of course “they” are, but not every one of “them” agrees with “them”), and downplay the contributions to all this by trump and his staff in the response we see from the left and the msm.
And, before y’all come down on me, as several of you surely will, I’ve seen first hand how the left in the msm play – they lied on national television about a significant event I observed.
I have no sympathy for the left, nor for those in the msm who perpetuate and encourage all this, as not all of it is merely biased.
However, our “side” are not angels by any means.
The left and msm are seemingly the “worst ever”. Fair.
Is it merely coincidence that our side also, by several measures, seems to the left as the “worst ever”?
This is NOT something to “get over” and ignore.
I only hope that the many great cabinet picks have the ability to tame some of the worst of trump and elbow out those in his admin who’d encourage more of the same.
If something doesn’t change, then this opportunity we’ve been given will be squandered.