Monday, January 23, 2012

Pomo Lingo: all about control and conditioning

The New Editor: Killing the Speech - "Modern" Kids losing Language and Confidence?" Hat tip: @victorsterren

Jan. 23, 2012
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A hell of a conspiracy theory -

This Rousseauian narrative completely ignores the sovereign debt that spiralled out of control under the weight of endless demands made by aggressive unions and the politicians who paid them off -



September 25, 2011
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When vacuity kills -

The Economist: "Krugman's toxic rhetoric"

How did a deadly shooting spree by a disturbed young man with the typically inscrutable politics of political killers turn into a crazy referendum on the state of American political discourse? (...) Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner "might have gone to some other rallies," he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if words have no meaning?' "
Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."

Got that? Ms Giffords failed to tender a satisfactory reply to "What is government if words have no meaning?", was judged a fake, and...and Mr Loughner shot her in the head. (...) Mr Loughner's obsession with language as a form of control seems rather less like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin than Max Stirner, Michel Foucault, or even left-leaning linguists such as George Lakoff and Geoffrey Nunberg. Our own Johnson discusses speculation about the possible influence of one David Wynn Miller. But nobody's going to try to smear Max Stirner, George Lakoff, or David Wynn Miller in the pages of the New York Times by recklessly associating their teachings with the tragedy in Tucson because, well, that would be completely bonkers and, more importantly, Max Stirner, George Lakoff, and David Wynn Miller didn't just recapture the House. (...) >>>

Jan. 11, 2011
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Most outrageous quotes of the year! -

Throwing labels around to manipulate perception, not necessarily rooted in reality (category: irrational acts of the will) -

Media Research Center: "The Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble"

Dec. 21, 2010
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Identity in a logo -

The expectations Democrats have for their new logo is reflecting the postmodern, nominalist, two-dimensional universe without concepts and universals: form has substituted content -

PJM: "My Pet Marxist, and the Democrats’ Perfect New Logo", by Bryan Preston


Tim Kaine thinks a logo will save his world. Harry Reid makes a "pet" out of a Senate candidate. Both of these stories tell us a lot about today's Democratic Party. (...) >>>

Sept. 16, 2010
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It's a mental disease -

Haaretz: "Obama: "Israelis Suspicious of Me Because My Middle Name is "Hussein"

Jul 10, 2010
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English: Cropped from a photo of a group of pr...Image via Wikipedia
There's still time to join the language guerrilla - It's about time some of the Dems hate speech went on record. As if we didn't suffer 8 long years of demented BDS, they're now trying to push all opposition into the bracket of 'beyond the moral pale'. After some consideration the lingo file is the appropriate place, because after all, it's still rhetoric, yet. Waxmania shows it's rapidly deteriorating into something far more sinister: purges. - Memeshock has published the official Dictionary 4.0 - join the anti leftist lingo guerrilla while you still can -

Washington Times: "Lib talk radio host calls for deaths of Limbaugh, Beck, and O'Reilly"

Liberals continue to accuse conservatives of fanning the flames of violence following the passage of the health care legislation last week. Yet, Radio Equalizer's Brian Maloney captured some audio today of liberal talk radio host Mike Malloy. Mr. Malloy spews vitriolic rhetoric in the clip and calls for violent deaths of notable TV and radio personalities Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly. Radio Equalizer's Maloney provides the transcript below (...) >>>

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Mar 29, 2010
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Has the UN become an aquatic circus now? - I'm in danger here of getting really pedantic to human beings with a normal mental make-up. But because some of them literally believe this, let me explain to the postmodern morons what's wrong with the following proclamation:

AP: "Sharks lose fight to protect them at UN meeting"

The benches at the UN have not turned into fish tanks, but rather the bureaucrats laboring on their behalf have lost the argument from other bureaucrats, probably in some deal or other. Read here how that works at the UN.

Mar 23, 2010
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NRO: "Code Words

When Glenn Beck urged Christians to leave churches that preach social justice, he allowed himself to be tripped up by conventional buzzwords of the campus Left. In plain English, “social justice” is a goal of all churches and refers to helping the poor and seeking equality. As a code word, it refers to a controversial package of goals including political redistribution of wealth, gay marriage, and a campaign against “institutional racism,” “classism,” “ableism,” and “heterosexism.” Beck was wildly off base linking “social justice” (of either form) to Communism and Nazism, but he was correct to note that the term is often used as a code.

In the words of Peter Wood, head of the National Association of Scholars, “The campus left learned with its promotion of the concept of ‘diversity’ the advantages of packaging hard-core ideology in bland, feel-good terminology.” “Social justice” is one of several terms — others include “dispositions,” “sustainability,” and “cultural competence” — that has been given in-group meanings by the wordsmiths of the cultural Left. (...) >>>

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Mar 17, 2010
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Violence, force and coercion -

Unadulterated Randism. Here's our contribution to the subject which still needs its part III written: "The Left's Default Position: Coercion".

PJM: "Force and Violence: How the Left Blurs Terms", by Amit Ghate

In a recent New York Times column, Frank Rich attacked and smeared the nascent tea party movement. While most of his diatribe received the fiskings it deserved, one significant fallacy went unchallenged. Perhaps it was overlooked because the left has committed it for so long now that it seems unquestionable. All the more reason to bring it to light. The fallacy is the equation of violence with force. The error and its consequences are manifest in what the left condemns and condones.

For example, the central complaint of Rich’s column is that tea party supporters are (allegedly) lovers of violence: Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it.  This evil, Rich contends, is to be contrasted with the left’s “non-violent” ways: In the heyday of 1960s left-wing radicalism, no liberal Democratic politicians in Washington could be found endorsing groups preaching violent revolution. It’s telling that Rich harkens back to the “good old days” of the 1960s. (...) >>>

Mar 10, 2010
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The revolution won't be demonized, there's no revolution -

Glenn Beck: "Progressives by any other name..."

And all they're doing, again, is changing the language. Let me give you something. This is in an unrelated topic, but this is from Newsweek. Newsweek, The Revolution Won't Be Demonized is the headline. Get this: The Revolution Won't Be Demonized. Now, they'll tell you that, "We're not in a revolution, we're not having a revolution, there is no revolution. Fundamental transformation, that was just a turn of a phrase. We're not there's no revolutionaries. What are you talking about." Newsweek magazine: The Revolution Won't Be Demonized. (...) First the progressives tried it under their own banner, the progressive banner. Then when it didn't work, the progressives hid under the liberal banner. They took and changed the meaning of the word liberal. It didn't mean that until progressives took it. And they did exactly what they do on everything else, political correctness. They changed the meaning of words. Now they hate it because they're trapped underneath it.

But they will morph, and they're already doing it, morphing into progressive and getting people to go yeah, yeah, I'm like progressive because it's, like, so cool. (...) You know what a democracy is? Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch. That's what a democracy is. We're not a democracy. We're a republic. Period. Play within the system and hold people's feet to the fire. They've trained us to accept word changes. Stimulus? It's no longer stimulus. It's a jobs bill. It's the same thing. But for some reason a jobs bill is okay. Follow the snake. And point to the snake. Not the skin. Point to the snake. "Hey, see this jobs bill? It's a stimulus bill. That's what it is." (...) >>>

Mar. 1, 2010
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The language of destruction -

Derrida and Chomsky, eat your hearts out. Sample the Lakoff world view on HuffPo.

Wikipedia: "George Lakoff"

George P. Lakoff (pronounced /ˈleɪkɒf/, born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. Although some of his research involves questions traditionally pursued by linguists, such as the conditions under which a certain linguistic construction is grammatically viable, he is most famous for his ideas about the centrality of metaphor to human thinking, political behavior and society. He is particularly famous for his concept of the "embodied mind", which he has written about in relation to mathematics. In recent years he has applied his work to the realm of politics, exploring this in his books. He was the founder of the now defunct progressive think tank the Rockridge Institute.(...) >>>

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Feb. 14, 2010
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Hudson NY: "Words Can Mean Whatever You Choose", by Herbert I. London

The contemporary spokesmen for government, business and the academy have taken a page out of Alice in Wonderland: Words mean whatever you choose to have them mean. At some point, words had meanings detached from the user. They were ideas that stood on their own, buttressed by Webster’s Dictionary. Now, of course, they are unmoored, set adrift by sophists who employ words for advantage or even to change meaning. The Orwellian reversal of language, e.g. “war is peace,” has been taken to a new level of manipulation.

President Obama no longer refers to enemy combatants; they are now “isolated radicals.” This is a blinkered attempt to suggest that it isn’t jihadists we are opposed to, but the most radical elements within this category. Similarly, we are not in a war against terrorists; we are rather in overseas operations. (...) >>>

Feb. 8, 2010
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The havoc of a faulty label

The Washington Times: "EDITORIAL: Thank Allah it's Friday"

Using the word Allah can be hazardous to your health. Catholic churches in Malaysia are being firebombed after a court ruling in that country permitted the use of the word Allah as a generic term for God. Some adherents of the religion of peace are pushing back hard against any notion of a vanilla Allah. (...) The generic Arabic word for small-g god is al-ilah. There is no small-a Allah. To Muslims, the word Allah is the proper name of the God of Abraham. It is as sectarian for them as Jesus is for Christians. (...) The situation in Malaysia underscores the need for clearer thinking about religion in our own country. Judge Hamilton's sloppy scholarship that made Allah a nonsectarian term fits neatly into the liberal worldview that seeks to homogenize faith rather than accept religious diversity. It's clearly not up to an American district judge to determine what the word Allah means or whether it is an acceptable substitute to refer to a generic god. Judges should understand that First Amendment injunctions against establishment of religion could as well apply to their own decisions when they try to define which names of deities are sectarian and which are not. (...) >>>
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More particularly the war of the Unholy Alliance of Muslims and postmodernists versus modernists - highly recommended for those still in the dark. The postmodern contribution flies in the face of logic and history. It is characterized by false equation (colonization = Western Jihad) and sheer dishonesty (standing up for Western values = fundamentalism, criticism = hatred, feminism for Muslim women = racism, etc., etc.). Once again a treasure trove of pomo madness:

Signandsight: "Islam criticism: the German feuilleton debate"

Since the Swiss minaret ban and the attack on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, newspaper debate on criticism of Islam (more here) has become increasingly aggressive. Over the past fortnight the feuilletons have published a mass of articles attacking outspoken critics (...) >>>

Jan. 22, 2010
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American Thinker: "Masters of the Language", by John Dietrich

In the prophetic 1984, George Orwell described the purpose of Newspeak, the language of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. Newspeak was designed not only as a medium of expression for the Ingsoc worldview, but also "to make all other modes of thought impossible." Once Newspeak was fully adopted, "a heretical thought ... should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent of words."

The ability to control the political vocabulary bestows enormous power on the possessor. For decades, progressives have had a monopoly in this sphere. It is unlikely that they will be able to make "heretical thought" unthinkable, but their ability to control the terminology gives them a tremendous advantage in any political debate. Even conservative commentators have adopted the progressive terminology. (...) >>>

Nov. 20, 2009
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Politeia: "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors"

Their skewed philosophy rests on the error that universals are but a figment of man's imagination. From this fallacy follows that concepts and essences - being universals - also do not exist.

As a result, some arbitrary attribute may be attached to - for instance man - and mistakingly serve the purpose of an essence: what to think of systems that take decisions (no parenthesis, and taken quite literally) or an angry mob. Can someone please explain what is 'an angry mob' in the order of things? (Dutch speakers may visualize the concept 'lurf' here: it is a non-existent body part. )

It borders baby-talk uttered by grown men in charge of the black suitcase, the red telephone, the nuclear button - in other words, the world's highest office has become the playpen of human entities with the mental makeup of infants: in effect, babies with razors.

Concepts, essences and universals are replaced by fleeting thought and linguistic constructs: fact and reality swapped for personal opinion and meaningless rhetoric.

Words having become just that (bla bla) and thought having been reduced to mere synapses, these tend to seen as ends in themselves and used as labeling devizes: changing the label is then confused with altering the 'meaning' of the (conceptless) word. (The question aside why you would want to do that in the first place ... but that's a subject for "The Left's Default Position: Coercion".) (...) >>>

Oct. 24, 2009
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About the dossier (permanent):

Rather than excerpts this file contains key words. Although the series also touches other aspects of Neo Communism, (Cultural) Marxism and its derivatives, it primarily focuses on attitudes, speech and rhetoric. It can best be summed up as follows: As far as the tactics in the language and attitude department are concerned we have identified: fibs and lies (technically don't exist for Subjectivists: no truth, no lie), gross exaggeration and hyperbole, posturing, genuine or faked hatred and hysterics (rage, rage, rage), emotional blackmail, incitement to violence, sentimental whining, false analogy and equivalence, (reversed) sophistry, manipulation, inverse morality, in your face tactics and ad hominem attacks, para-exegese (deliberate misinterpretation and overexplanation: anger is being unreasonable, doubt is denial, aversion is hatred, phobia is hatred, etc.) - another fallacy as a result of massive imprecision, the lack of orthologics, and the unremitting (and sometimes deliberate) confusion of terms: very often the tactical mixing of facts and opinion, and last but not least the time honored trick of equivocation (wiki: a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

A feather is light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.
In this use of equivocation, the word "light" is first used as the opposite of "heavy", but then used as a synonym of "bright" (the fallacy usually becomes obvious as soon as one tries to translate this argument into another language).
Here are the instalments and their key words:

- The Marxist Revival (9): Why the Mayor of Brussels Gags Free Speech (31st Aug. 2007)
Double standards through the Marxist Dialectic, positive action (positive discrimination, direct action), handicaps, accusations of repressive tolerance (tolerance only of the tolerable, but it would only be an accomplishment if we tolerate the intolerable, much like pomo tolerate terrorists and child molesters (matter of personal preference and only 'natural')

- The Marxist Revival (8): Hysterically Moving the Goal Posts (12th August)
Handicaps, levelling the playing field, redistribution of power and speech rights, moving the goal posts, lumping and collating, equivalence and false analogy, subjectivism, hysteria, fake outrage, psychological dissociation, delusion, subjectivism, new media

- The Marxist Revival (7): Of Reversed Sophistry & Mythical Creatures (9th Aug. 2007)
Sophistry, paradoxymora (paradoxes, contradictions, oxymora), Marxist dialectic, redistribution of power and speech rights, moving the goal posts, end justifies the means

- The Marxist Revival (6): the Queen of Rage & Ludicrous Equation (5th Aug. 2007)
Equivalence, fake outrage, Virginia Woolf, false analogy, feminism, Marxist dialectic, hysterics

- The Marxist Revival (5): Political Justification to Violence (4th Aug. 2007)
Words hurt!, literalism, revolutionary theory, incitement to violence, fake outrage, justification to violence, radicalization, violence (the struggle) generating change and growth, Marx' Manifesto, The Straight Red Line

- The Marxist Revival (4): the Assault on Free Speech (2nd Aug. 2007)
Stephen Hicks' lecture at The Objectivist Center during the 2002 (!) Summer Seminar: "Pomo's Declaration of War on free speech", aspects and attitudes to speech, positive action (positive discrimination, direct action), redistribution of speech and rights, Marxist dialectic, equivalence, Pomo art, Emerging Church

- The Marxist Revival (3): All Purpose Invective (13th July 2007)
Pomo speech, rhetoric, posturing, faked outrage, deconstructionism, sophistry, propaganda demagoguery, manipulation, ad hominem attacks, Koukl's Passive-Aggressive Tolerance Trick

- The Marxist Revival (2): the Epic Narrative (9th July 2007)
The Unholy Alliance with Islam, revolutionary theory, equivalence, environmentalism, Noble Savagery, collectivism, control

- The Marxist Revival (1): the Lie at the Bottom (7th July 2007)
De-Marxification, remembering the victims, the double standard of Right and Left Socialism, demoralization of Western students by the KGB (the Bezmenev interviews), Critical Theory, Primacy and Consciousness vs. Existance, Ayn Rand, Objectivism, atheism, subjective minorities, Marxist dialectic, victimhood, self-loathing, The Straight Red Line

Related:

- "Postmodern Ravages"
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