As I get older, the nuances of linguistic meaning of words and the personal variation of the linguistic deconstruction across political viewpoints, sometimes individual, is becoming apparent.
"Freedom" for example in the political sphere ultimately comes down to what aspects of opposed politics you want to oppress. Like the actual fictional meaning of libertarianism, it really is defined as the freedom to do what you want, but regulate anything that people may do to you.
So much of rhetoric is linguistically clarified by gender swapping to reveal sexist double standards, or appending "white" to key words to make the racist undercurrent component more apparent.
I know this is incendiary, but for example in huge amounts of right wing rhetoric like something as basic as "I'm voting for America", a classic vapid pseudo patriotic statement that somehow marks a divide between parties, if you translate it to "white America" on the right vs "multicultural America" on the left, all of a sudden the organizing emotional undercurrents become clear.
Obviously loaded rhetoric exists on the left. Oh course my opinion is that it is far more pervasive on the right however.
Such is the media universality we exist in, the assault of media advertising, we often aren't even aware of the loaded meanings.
So let organizing linguistic phrasings, which becomes psychological worldviews, are compounded with deeply complex and layered visual and audio aspects: stalwart conservative white man with authoritative voice., for example. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.
I find Trump's often smorgasborg of word political salad instructive often because such ramblings are actually a mass deconstruction of right wing rhetoric. It removes the framing and just goes to the loaded words
>personal variation of the linguistic deconstruction across political viewpoints, sometimes individual, is becoming apparent
I don't particularly like or trust people who try to deconstruct language, Derrida style. I don't like how they take words, turn them around, and proclaim they have a different meaning than they used to. The white is black and red is blue kind of guys.
They only do that to manipulate naive people and gain power from promoting lies.
Deconstructing language like this can’t give you extremely clear signals, but it’s still information, so ignoring it is not the best idea. Think of it like body language. We don’t condemn or acquit based on that, but if you were a detective looking for clues, or just a friend or lover navigating difficult conversations, then of course you can’t ignore it.
Unlike body language though, linguistic stuff changes faster and moves virally through populations thanks to ubiquitous media, etc. but that extra noise doesn’t mean there’s no signal.
And word meanings do change based on usage of course.. I won’t demonstrate the deconstruction but if you look at a label like “operation enduring freedom” and you refuse to even try to read between the lines.. you’re going to have less understanding of the world than someone who can read between the lines.
If someone says he votes for "America" why should we assume it's "White America" or "Multicultural America" unless we want to introduce a divide and fuel hate.
In the 1970s and 1980s when someone said he "voted for America" that affirmation was taken at face value, no one asked "which America" and no one assumed that there is more than one American.
I am not an American, so please correct me if I am wrong.
In the political sphere of America, It echoes back to the southern strategy all the way back to the civil war, slavery, and the fundamental racial divide.
Staunchly racist Americans have alls existed as large key demographic for coalition building. I used to be in the '70s and '60s. It was in the Democratic party, simply because Republicans were the ones that invaded the South and the civil war.
Around the time of the Nixon election, Republicans pivoted to the southern strategy to use the civil Rights act of of the Lyndon Johnson administration to turn racist Democrats into racist Republican voters.
To do so such large shifts in voting allegiance requires substantial election/ linguistic /propagandistic engineering over decades.
Trump is AMAZING at such linguistic engineering, amazingly while making no actual structural linguistic sense. It's abhorrent to smart people,but speaks right to the core of dumber voters.
I mean, there were literal white supremacists back then; not in a pejorative sense, but, like, in the “white people are genetically superior” sense. There were absolutely people voting for a non-Irish, Italian, catholic, Jewish, or god-forbid dark-skinned America, in direct contradiction to the state’s founding principles.
> in direct contradiction to the state’s founding principles
"adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
(I mean, I'm on the side of "all men are created equal, ... with certain unalienable Rights,... among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" but it's hard to deny that that other language is right there as well. Logical implication and noncontradiction do not seem to have been among the founders' strong suits.)
"Freedom" for example in the political sphere ultimately comes down to what aspects of opposed politics you want to oppress. Like the actual fictional meaning of libertarianism, it really is defined as the freedom to do what you want, but regulate anything that people may do to you.
So much of rhetoric is linguistically clarified by gender swapping to reveal sexist double standards, or appending "white" to key words to make the racist undercurrent component more apparent.
I know this is incendiary, but for example in huge amounts of right wing rhetoric like something as basic as "I'm voting for America", a classic vapid pseudo patriotic statement that somehow marks a divide between parties, if you translate it to "white America" on the right vs "multicultural America" on the left, all of a sudden the organizing emotional undercurrents become clear.
Obviously loaded rhetoric exists on the left. Oh course my opinion is that it is far more pervasive on the right however.
Such is the media universality we exist in, the assault of media advertising, we often aren't even aware of the loaded meanings.
So let organizing linguistic phrasings, which becomes psychological worldviews, are compounded with deeply complex and layered visual and audio aspects: stalwart conservative white man with authoritative voice., for example. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.
I find Trump's often smorgasborg of word political salad instructive often because such ramblings are actually a mass deconstruction of right wing rhetoric. It removes the framing and just goes to the loaded words