Progressive Northwest: glossary

If you’re a liberal who finds it hard to understand what the far-right folks are saying these days, try to imagine how confused they must feel.
Just when they had it all figured out, when they knew that dirty Muslim in the White House was going to be all touchy-feely on terrorism and kept a Qur’an hidden under his pillow and read from it every night to Michelle and the kids, it turns out Joe Ricketts, the billionaire owner of the Chicago Cubs, has been planning to spend $10 million of his own money to resurrect Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. as part of a scare-the-crap-out-of-dumb-people campaign effort. That’s right, Rickett’s plans to show that President Obama has been attending an evil Christian church. Yeah, he’s a…

Wait a minute... It only gets worse for our friends on the right-wing fringe. Evangelicals are having a devil of a time swallowing the notion that a Mormon is running for president as their very own candidate and also claiming to be an honest-to-gosh, red-blooded Christian. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is moping around his house in bedroom slippers, complaining that liberals ruined the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most conservative institutions in the entire world, and led it down a path to rampant priestly, predatory, sexual abuse. I mean: what won’t those liberals stoop to?
SO, IT’S TIME AGAIN to do our best to decipher what conservatives are really saying in the second installment of what will undoubtedly be my life’s work, a multi-volume work, tentatively titled
The Far-Right Lexicon of Imaginary Terms and Far-Out Definitions.
Several recent additions have a sort of theological theme:
Creationism: on the first day God created the heavens and the earth, on the second day the Founding Fathers, on the third day Fox News, on the fourth automatic weapons and the right to bear arms. On the fifth day He created gay people so that all His other creations would have someone they might fear and loathe. On the sixth day he created real Americans (see below) and traditional marriage and then He rested.
Evolution: when Converse black basketball shoes were replaced by Air Jordans.
Garden of Eden: where Adam and Eve lived, after God finished His labors, and Nature was pure and clean and the first woman exclaimed, “Drill, baby, drill.”
Defense of Marriage Act: where God defined marriage as between one man and one woman, which was kind of confusing, since Adam and Eve had only sons. Not to be confused with Deuteronomy 22:15, where God gives advice on how a man with two wives should handle matters of children by two different women. Oh, and ignore Judges 8:30, where Gideon has seventy-one sons, many wives, and enjoys the favors of a concubine for good measure. Gideon was just some trumpet player and probably a closet liberal.
Sermon on the Mount: when Jesus blasted food stamps as a “government giveaway” and said Representative Paul Ryan was his homeboy, because Ryan had a deficit reduction plan that both protected downtrodden millionaires and billionaires and denied health care coverage to free-loading cripples and lepers. Christ went on to explain that tax increases discourage small business growth and gave a shout out to the founder of the fast food chain “Loaves and Fishes.“
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God: Biblical admonition against closing tax loopholes for camel herders and Big Oil companies.
IT’S NOT JUST RELIGIOUS TERMS that seem to confuse conservatives, either. We need to dissect economic and political terms, too. This was made perfectly clear a few days ago, when Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party standard-bearer, who took out Dick Lugar in the Indiana Republican U. S. Senate primary, spoke with Fox News. Murdock was asked his about his idea of bipartisanship. Mourdock replied, like a fair-and-balanced Tea Party stalwart on hallucinogenic drugs: “I have the mind-set that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”
So now we have:
Bipartisanship: when labor unions are dead, completely, and Big Coal, for example, is no longer pestered with government regulations, such as rules to protect safe drinking water, which is in no way mentioned anywhere in the 2nd Amendment, and which commies and liberals want to fluoridate in any case. Safety rules will be repealed, so that workers killed by a buildup of explosive gasses or in cave-ins are dead, as well, and then coal barons will get credit for creating jobs; as in, when workers are killed by gas or cave-ins, and suddenly we need replacement workers (see: right to work law, below).
Dream Act: the dream that every multimillionaire with really good hair, running for president, can have his own illegal-immigrant gardener, while simultaneously assuring Fox News viewers (also called real Americans; see below; also see part one) that he intends to “secure America’s borders” if elected. Securing the border will apparently keep out waves of gardeners armed with pinking shears.
Stand your ground law: a well-regulated militia being necessary to protect Sarah Palin from reality, the individual’s right to carry a gun into a Victoria’s Secret store at the mall shall in no way be infringed, since the Founding Fathers meant for everyone to have the right to drive M1A1 battle tanks if they desired, and to gun down home invaders, including Jehovah’s Witnesses who ring door bells on Saturday mornings.
Right to work law: passed with the support of campaign donations from multi-national corporations, who are really people–as Mitt Romney tells us all, when he’s not talking about trees in Michigan being just the right height–exactly as the Founding Fathers intended. These laws protect regular workers and help create jobs, often at the very lowest rate of pay. Sometimes called, jokingly when billionaires gather to party: “right to work for less laws.” Such legislation guarantees the right of non-union workers to earn $729 per week on average vs. $938 for unionized workers (See also: union thugs; part one).
War on Christmas: when the average non-union worker begins to get restless because his paycheck doesn’t allow him to buy as many Christmas presents as he was hoping, Fox News fills his mind with scary, end-times warnings that godless secular humanists want to deny his children the right to say, “Merry Christmas” to their teachers and deny him, the happy non-union worker, the right to put up festive holiday decorations.
Tax increase: what conservatives absolutely, positively protect the average worker from, because nothing says, “We love the average worker,” like low-paying jobs with no health insurance. This means the average worker, who is safe from being forced to join a union, who makes $211 less per week on average, or $10,972 yearly, is protected from paying $14 more in weekly payroll taxes and $500 in union dues. In return the thankful worker votes in support of the political interests of millionaires and billionaires, who are, really, almost like personal friends, like drinking buddies, people who still say, Merry Christmas, too, only way, way richer.
Socialism: the idea that raising taxes by 3% on top wage earners, say, a hedge fund manager who earned a $1.2 million bonus in 2012, will reduce the deficit, when in fact any attempt to raise taxes will end with the crushing of the liberties of all god-fearing real Americans (see below) and make it impossible for said hedge fund manager to donate $36,000 to his favorite GOP candidate, who is for small government for everyone, and so, when you think about it, the top 1% are really altruistic heroes.
Deficit reduction: the idea that you cannot raise taxes on Albert Pujols or said hedge fund manager, or Joe Ricketts, either. (See: socialism, above; also part one); but cutting three teacher’s jobs, because each makes $36,000 per year, will reduce government spending and trim the deficit, which is killing this nation, the greatest in the world, the nation that has a tax code that allows the super-rich to pay lower taxes than the average teacher (see union thug; part one) and now those unemployed teachers can go to work at Wal-Mart and you can save the economy and create even more jobs in the long run and thank god the billionaires are looking out for what is best for all of us.
Real American: anyone who watches Fox News religiously (and we do mean, religiously) and believes Bill O’Reilly is actually a Biblical prophet; also, anyone who believes that there is an ongoing War on Christmas (see above), and thinks that liberals want to kill and eat the Easter Bunny.
Auto bailout: a clear attempt, by President Obama, to introduce socialism, or communism, or maybe botulism to America; not to be confused with purest capitalism, which is always perfect and good and what God intended, and what Jesus was really trying to tell us, and what Joe Ricketts is trying to protect when he pours that $10 million into a slimy advertising campaign, while simultaneously asking city and state government to fork out tens of millions to upgrade his very own Wrigley Field stadium.
As far as I can tell, that’s what conservatives are saying these days; and I’m happy if I can be of any help.

Progressive Northwest

Thursday, May 31, 2012

The Far-Right Lexicon of Imaginary Terms and Far-Out Definitions.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

John’s Glossary of the Far Right

About Me

Blog Archive