Tuesday, September 18, 2012

“Values Voters”


At the recent convention of Republican/Tea-Party “Values Voters”, Rich Santorum sniveled that social conservatives will never get a fair hearing in “the media” (a clip that was no doubt a hit on the Republican house-organ known as Murdoch Fox "News"), then went on to say something revealing:

            We will never have the elite -- smart people on our side.

The italics represent the intonation of the original (heard on the radio).

First, let us note:  Such an attitude is self-fulfilling.   The more the Republicans denouce “smart people” as such, the further they will firm up their impressive monopoly on morons.
Second, a linguistic sidelight.  We earlier commented on the well-documented phenomenon, of words originally coined as insults  being bravely adopted by their targets, and -- given fairly blameless behavior by the targeted groups, in what followed -- the words eventually becoming referential and emotionally neutral:  Tory, Quaker, and the like.  Now, this newish trend among rightwing Republicans (a descriptive phrase  that may eventually fuse  to a single word:  rightwingrepublican) is the converse of that:  You start with a perfectly neutral (or even positively-toned) word, and chant it over and over, with enough venom, that it becomes a hate-word for your clique.  This has happened notably with the term liberal -- a word etymologically related to liberty, and which for hundreds of years connoted ‘tolerant, generous’ (as in: “with a liberal hand”).  And now, it might happen with smart.

Allow me quickly to confess, that I have myself done something superficially similar on this site, by carefully cultivating, in post after post,  the term Nominalist as a term of abuse.   The difference is:
(1) No-one stupid enough to fall for the “chant-it-to-hate-it” approach has even heard of the term “Nominalist” (which has its home in medieval Christian theology, with stray surviving technical contemporary uses that do not overbrim the boundaries of Anglo-American analytic philosophy), nor have the least idea what I am talking about, on this subject or any other;
(2)  It’s funny, folks  -- satire -- metapolitics -- phree-phloating philosophy.

Anyhow, back to politics:  I am myself, as it happens, a Values Voter;  and some of the Values I value are:  competence, intelligence, honesty, humility, flexibility …   These we do not find in the current crop of upstart  TeaPublicans.

In terms of adherence to traditional Christian family values, I am so Attilic as to be a likely vir non gratus  in the tearooms of Bryn Mawr, as you can easily verify here:
But I would not vote for Romney-Ryan, Perry-Palin, or Beelzebub-Tr…. T-T-Trrr.. (omigosh, it’s sticking in my throat) T-T-T-T-T-TRrrrrrrrrrr ….. (ukhh!  the foul taste of the name!  it’s enough to make you barf -- omigosh -- it’s about to come out, in a stream of projectile vomiting)

Donald
TRR-RR-RRUMPP-P   !!!

-- wouldn’t vote for such trash  though you paid me or slayed me.

[Update 18 Sept 2012]  Another Value I rather value  is not posing as a squeaky-clean family man  while associating closely with utter scumbags:

Romney "47 Percent" Fundraiser Host: Hedge Fund Manager Who Likes Sex Parties

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