Friday, October 26, 2012

Semantic Audacity


By this point, I really hate commenting on US electoral politics.  If Paul Krugman still has the stomach for it, God bless him.   But it is like weighing the relative merits of turds in a toilet bowl.   I can’t stand it.

So, a couple of minutes ago, at the top of the hour, I switch on NPR, just to see if the lead story is something significant and brand-new -- Spain’s government collapses, Israel bombs yet another country, some celebrity or other tries a new diet -- only to hear this.
Speaking not (the report emphasized) ex tempore, but (as befits a major policy announcement), reading a prepared text off the teleprompter, Romney said :

This is not the time to double-down on the trickle-down policies that have failed us…

Had I been sitting in a chair, I would have fallen out of it.  As it was, some rather expensive single-malt  sloshed  and was lost to humanity forever.  Qua linguist, I was alarmed.
On the linguistics of doubling-down and its congeners, we have unbosomed ourselves here:
But what of its jingling companion in Romney’s mot -- “trickle-down”.

Don’t take my word for it -- here’s how Wiki defines it:

"Trickle-down economics" and "the trickle-down theory" are terms in United States politics to refer to the idea that tax breaks or other economic benefits provided by government to businesses and the wealthy will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole.

More epigrammatically:  Feed the billionaires, and perhaps they’ll tip the help. -- In other words -- exactly Romney’s position.

Now, as Chairman Mao once said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom”.  And “trickle-down” is such a flower;  fine.  We tried it, under many a Republican President.  Empirical upshot:   A tide that rises owing to “trickle-down”,  does not lift all ships:  It lifts the yachts, while the rowboats and fishing-smacks  plunge to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Well -- just being strictly linguistico-logical here -- maybe you think that’s a good thing:  Good riddance to the forty-seven percent (or more like 99%, but anyway …) 
Still, it is semantically, lexically, linguistically, frigging indisputable that “trickle-down” is associated with plutocrats and their minions;  as opposed to the Democrats, whose policy (maintaining a polemical balance here) is to subsidize the pimpmobiles of welfare queens or whatever, while declaring Class Warfare against anyone who has worked his fingers to the bone to earn an honest (well, anyhow, legal, under current tax law) billion.

So what is going on here?  Evidently Romney figured:
            (a) The average voter has only two functioning neurons.
            (b) One of them has somehow (curses!) taken it into its tiny little head, that “trickle-down” doesn’t work for the little guy.
           
This presents a serious problem to his candidacy.  Therefore, following the noted maxim of Casey Stengel (“L’audace, l’audace, toujours de l’audace!”) Romney simply co-opts the phrase, ascribes it to his enemies -- and occupies that single other neuron of the moron  with a beguiling rhyme (double-down … trickle-down … double-down … trickle-down …).  With no available third neuron to evaluate the trick, the voter is beguiled.

Are Americans really that stupid?
We’ll know in a few days.


[Update]  Lap it up, puppies, you'll like it, it's good for you.
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/26/1150776/-Evidence-surfaces-suggesting-Iranian-missile-Photoshoppers-could-be-on-Romney-campaign-payroll


[Update] 
Romneycare --  A sneak peak into your future!

It’s one of those heartwarming tales from the campaign trail:
a small, small business, in Mitt Romney’s own home state of Massachusetts --
just Maw ‘n’ Paw ‘n’ Sister Sue, getting up with the sun to milk the cows,
and to build their very own smalllllll  business,
free from the heavy hand of federal regulation!

Of course,  as a result, many people had to die, or be brain-damaged for life,
but that is a small price to pay for our freedoms.


Ooh, that spoilsport FDA!  Dun worry, Mitt Romney gonna fix your wagon!

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