Political Language – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Homophobia and Carniphobia

One of the purposes of this weblog is to resist the debasement of language and thought, and to recruit a few others to this worthy cause. The term ‘homophobia’ is an excellent example of such debasement. Worse than a question-begging epithet, it is a question-burying epithet. That is, its aim is to obliterate or at least occlude the very question of the morality of homosexual practices. For the term implies that any opposition to such practices can only arise from an irrational fear, which is what a phobia is. 'Homophobia' implies that there can be no rationally-based opposition to homosexual practices.

My point is not that homosexual practices are immoral, or the opposite. My point is one that should strike any rational person as entirely uncontroversial, namely, that there is a genuine moral issue here, an issue that no one has the right to legislate out of existence by a merely verbal maneuver.

Suppose a bunch of meat-eaters band together to advance their cause. Instead of mustering whatever arguments they can for the moral permissibility of meat-eating, or rebutting the arguments against its moral permissibility, they hurl the epithet ‘carniphobe’ at their vegetarian opponents. Then they try to get laws passed banning ‘carniphobia.’ Clearly, their aim is to obliterate the very question of the morality of meat-eating and to suggest that there cannot be any rationally-based opposition to it. My point is not that meat-eating is immoral, or the opposite. My point is that there is a genuine moral issue here, just as there is a genuine moral issue regarding homosexual practices.

But how many who can be convinced that ‘carniphobia’ is a term to be resisted, are clear-headed and honest enough to see that the same goes for ‘homophobia’?

Not to mention 'Islamophobia.'

Thanks to Catacomb Joe for supplying the above 'trigger image' as he call it.

Is Trump a Threat to Democracy?

He most certainly is on the Orwellian subversive's understanding of 'democracy.' For what they mean by it is elite-globalist oligarchy.

Moderate?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican antagonists, will join Democrat Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Thursday aimed at reaching out to moderate voters and rattling the former president. (emphasis added)

The implication, of course, is that Trump's policies are extreme. What we have here, once again, is political projection: unwilling to admit their own extremism, the extremist Dems project it into their political opponents. And Turncoat Liz goes right along with it. She is one of the more repulsive of the RINOs.

The Dems embrace a number of extreme, and extremely deleterious, policies. I challenge anyone to point to one of Trump's policies that is extreme. Policies, not personality. He is not Mr. Nice Guy, like Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House. But how effective is a guy like that in the clinch?

UPDATE (10/5): A Dem sees the light.

‘Broken’ and Other Examples of First-Grade English

Stack topper.

Enlisting William S. Burroughs in the War Against Leftist Language-Abusers

I've been fulminating for over 20 years online against the language-abuse of the language-abusing Left, having found it necessary on only a few occasions to take conservatives to task. Although my Beat credentials are impeccable, I never took William Seward Burroughs seriously enough to suppose he could be enlisted on our side. And then I stumbled upon this article:

The modern left is unabashed about wielding language as a virus—or, really, as a form of control. “Supercut” videos by critics of corporate leftist media, like Tom Eliot, reveal the media figures and politicians repeating the same words and slogans over and over again: President Joe Biden, despite drooling on himself, is “sharp.” Kamala Harris has brought the “Joy, joy, joy” back into politics. Conservatives are “weird.” Abortion is “healthcare.” These word storms rip through the country via television, radio, and social media, infecting hosts from D.C. to California. Millions of people mindlessly repeat them as if they have been infected with some kind of mentally impairing disease. It’s a virus worse than COVID.

I agree with that completely. I am rather less enthusiastic about the following:

So how to fight the language virus? According to Burroughs, language can also be used to liberate. He believed that if words were cut into pieces and rearranged, you could break free from what he called the Control. Burroughs used rearranged texts, “found sound,” and tape-splicing—techniques still used by artists today—to defy the establishment. Burroughs used the method of cutting up sentences and rearranging them in famous countercultural books like Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine.

My generation took a more direct approach to using language to dismantle Control: punk rock. Not for nothing was Burroughs known as “the Godfather of Punk.” The writer was lionized by people like Lou Reed, David Bowie, and bands like U2, Nirvana, Joy Division, Led Zeppelin, and Steely Dan. In his book American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Beat Generation, Jonah Raskin describes meeting Burroughs in San Francisco in the 1970s.

I will leave it for you to decide whether the way to combat the leftist language virus is via Old Bull Lee and punk rock.

Of the Beat triumvirate, "sweet gone Jack," alone moves me, supreme screw-up that he was, and surely no role model.

One month to go, and then then it is October, Kerouac month in my literary liturgy.

The Left’s Verbal Theft

A Substack warning to foolish conservatives.

Michael Anton on “Celebration Parallax”

Here:

More tellingly, this charge is an example of something I call the “celebration parallax,” which is explained here. In brief, the celebration parallax holds that the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it and, crucially, the perceived intent of the speaker.

So if someone says that the U.S. is experiencing levels of immigration that are unprecedented in human history, if it’s presumed or suspected that he might have doubts, then he is an evil racist. But when Bill Clinton or Joe Biden makes exactly the same point, well, that is A-OK! Because they are “good guys” who welcome “an unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop” (Joe Biden’s words). By the way, I leave to readers to intuit the difference between “unrelenting” (Joe’s word) and “ceaseless” (my word) and the reasons why the former is A-OK but the latter is somehow “racist.”

Kamala as Zelig

Do you remember Zelig? If Zelig was the human chameleon, Kamala Harris is the political chameleon.

Official Trailer #1

Mia Farrow as Kamala

Who is Kamala Harris? The Language Nazi cannot resist pointing our that the author of the linked piece confuses 'errant' with 'arrant' about five paragraphs down.

Past-Directed Gaslighting

An egregious example of present-directed gaslighting of the American people by the regime and the regime media is their dismissal of the numerous videos depicting Joe Biden's physical decrepitude as 'cheap/deep fakes.'

What then are we to call the lie being currently spread by the regime and its shills that Kamala Harris was never the 'border czar'? I call it past-directed gaslighting. This form of gaslighting is promoted by 'scrubbing' the historical record, a tried-and-true totalitarian tactic. Totalitarians want total control, and thus they want control over the past. They cannot erase the past, which is what it was, no matter what anyone says or writes. But they can bury the past in oblivion by altering the historical record. The burial in oblivion, the destruction of collective memory, suffices for their nefarious purposes.

Now the meaning of Christopher Wray's ludicrous 'shrapnel speculation' falls into place. Its purpose was to prepare the way for a future denial that the Trump assassination attempt ever happened.

How do I know that? Well, I don't know that, but what I do know about these deep-staters makes my speculation reasonable. Or do you have a better explanation for Wray's remark?

The Bloodbath Canard

The corpulent Democrat Jerry Nadler repeated it today before the Christopher Wray congressional hearing. The context-dropping crapweasel knows full well what Trump meant, and if you don't, Snopes will clue you in.

A Quote of Note from J. D. Vance’s RNC Speech

Here is the part of Vance's speech Thursday night that impressed me the most. It also impressed Cathy Young at The Bulwark, but for opposite reasons. It sounds Blut-und-Boden to her: "I think it’s fair to say that this portion of Vance’s speech had overtones of blood-and-soil nationalism." Fair? Or scurrilous?

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. [I would add: ONLY on our terms.] That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.

Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.

Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle[s]. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first. (Emphasis added.)

Perhaps I will explain myself tomorrow if Typepad behaves itself.

……………………

OK. It is now 'tomorrow.' (Memo to self: write a post on the use and abuse of temporal indexicals.)

There is a distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism. The former is rooted in blood and soil, language and tradition, the particular. The latter is based on ideas and propositions that purport to be of universal validity. American nationalism is not wholly civic. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any nation that could be wholly civic, wholly 'propositional' or wholly based on a set of beliefs and values. And yet the United States is a proposition nation: the propositions are in the founding documents. This cannot be reasonably denied. You should now pull out your copy of the Declaration of Independence and carefully re-read its second paragraph. There are plenty of propositions, presuppositions, principles and values there for you to feast your mind on.

I also don't see how it could be reasonably denied that the discovery and articulation and preservation of classically American principles and values was achieved by people belonging to a certain tradition grounded proximally in our founding documents and ultimately in our Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman heritage.

This has consequences for immigration policy. I take it to be axiomatic that immigration must be to the benefit of the host country, a benefit not to be defined in merely economic terms. I also take it to be axiomatic that there is no right to immigrate any more than anyone has a right to invade one's domicile and set up camp there. This is why immigrants must be vetted and why the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants must be upheld, along with the related distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Only those who accept our principles, values, and the like should be let in.

Although we are, collectively, in steep cultural decline, normative American culture is superior to plenty of other cultures I could mention. If you don't believe that, you are free to leave. Just as there is no right to immigrate, there is no obligation to stay. So there is a sense in which I am for open borders: they ought be be open in the outbound direction. This is why it is perfectly asinine to liken a southern border wall to the Berlin Wall as more than one prominent Democrat has done. It is entirely fitting that the totemic animal for this once-respectable party is the jackass. 'Asinine' from L. asinus = ass. The word is polyvalent, a fact I will exploit in a moment.

We have a culture to restore and defend. There is only one man who is in a position to lead us forward. You know who he is. So get off your sorry ass and join the fight.

As for Cathy Young, she is doing what hate-America leftist scum regularly do: she is playing the Nazi card, a card they never leave home without.

Signposts on the Way to the Insane Asylum

Looting is shopping without money.
The 2022 riots were peaceful.
The border is secure.
Trespassing is insurrection.
Dissent is hate.
Free speech is hate speech.
Barring candidates from the ballot is democratic.
Abortion is health care.
'Migrants' are newcomers.
The only purpose of guns is to kill people.
Math is racist.
There is no 'migrant' crisis.
Diversity is our strength.
'DEI' is the new 'N' word.
Coercive confiscation of firearms is gun buy-back.
Sex of a baby is not biologically inherent but a matter of 'assignment.'
Race and sex are social constructs.
To oppose the sexual mutilation of children is 'transphobic.'
'2A' is a terrorist marker.
White supremacy is the greatest threat we face.
'Blind review' denigrates the sightless.
The disabled are 'differently abled.'
To argue against the moral acceptability of homosexual practices is 'homophobic.'

I am just getting warmed up. But I'm sure you've caught the drift by now. Each of these bullet points can be nailed down with numerous references which I have supplied elsewhere in many a post.

It is now your turn to do something in defense of civilization.

‘Progressive’ and ‘Conservative’

In their contemporary usages these terms are mainly misnomers.

If progress is change for the good, there is little progressive about contemporary 'progressives.' They are more accurately referred to as regressives. Or do you think that allowing biological males to compete in women's sporting events is a change for the good? It is obviously not, for reasons you will be able to discern without my help. That is just one example among many.

As for so-called 'conservatives,' what do they ever succeed in conserving? These 'conservatives' are good at conserving only one thing: their own perquisites, privileges, pelf, and position. The things they are supposed to conserve they allow to be destroyed, among them, the rule of law, our rights and liberties as enumerated in the Constitution, our national heritage as embodied in monuments and statues to great men, the very distinctions, principles, and values that underpin our republican form of government. They will soon be gone forever, and the Left will have won, if we the people don't push back pronto.

But it may be too late for effective resistance, sunk as we Americans are in the warm bath of our own decadence. We shall see.

Meanwhile, don't get too excited about all this. This world's a vanishing quantity and we with it. The wise live for something that transcends it, but without dogmatism and doctrinal narrowness.