{"id":4180,"date":"2018-10-05T04:59:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T04:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/10\/05\/wankerati-and-other-terms-of-abuse\/"},"modified":"2018-10-05T04:59:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T04:59:24","slug":"wankerati-and-other-terms-of-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/10\/05\/wankerati-and-other-terms-of-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wankerati’ and Other Terms of Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

I  picked up a new piece of invective from Mark Steyn.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe he intends 'wankerati' to be coextensive with 'left-wing commentariat.'  Read his The Turning Point<\/a> and see if you don't agree. The brilliant polemicist offers up other choice phrases such as "malign carbuncles on the body politic." That's a reference to Di Fi (Dianne Feinstein), et al. And there's "a chamber full of posturing tosspots."<\/span><\/p>\n

'Tosspot' is a general term of abuse that conjures up drunkard<\/em> and sot<\/em>. It puts me in mind of pot-valiant<\/a>. One is correctly so described if one's courage derives from the consumption of spirits.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a use for abuse. It is a mistake to think that verbal abuse ought never to be employed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hands are best employed in caressing and blessing. But sometimes they need to be balled into fists and rudely applied to the faces of miscreants. <\/span><\/p>\n

If one resorts to verbal abuse and invective one does not always thereby betray a paucity of careful thought informed by fact. Verbal abuse has a legitimate use in application to the self-enstupidated, the willfully ignorant, and those out for power alone regardless of truth and morality. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is not reasonable to think that all are amenable to the dulcet tones of sweet reason; some need to be countered with the hard fist of unreason.  <\/span><\/p>\n

On the other side of the question, one should never resort to invective if one is trying to persuade a reasonable person. One should proceed as calmly as possible.  Any resort to billingsgate<\/a> will cause the interlocutor to assume that one lacks good reasons. <\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

……………….<\/p>\n

If you studied the above properly you will probably have learned three or four new words.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you have a large vocabulary you will love my blog; if you don't, you need it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I  picked up a new piece of invective from Mark Steyn. I believe he intends 'wankerati' to be coextensive with 'left-wing commentariat.'  Read his The Turning Point and see if you don't agree. The brilliant polemicist offers up other choice phrases such as "malign carbuncles on the body politic." That's a reference to Di Fi … Continue reading “‘Wankerati’ and Other Terms of Abuse”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[158,6,113,280],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invective","category-language-matters","category-logica-utens","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}