Linguistic Blues cont'd

I enjoyed Heads-Up #3 from today's NY Times' obligatory "Republican Debate: Five Things to Watch" piece:

The moderators of the debate are sure to ask all of the candidates about their plans to create jobs and turn the economy around.

How can "tax cuts and deregulation" be said in eight different ways? And how can the follow-up question -- Haven't we already tried those? -- be evaded in eight different ways?

No matter. Notwithstanding tax-cuts/dereg's abominable empirical record, tax cuts/dereg will be universally presented tonight as the unObamian elixir. And not one of the GOP candidates, to a man or a woman, will utter this colossal claptrap with so much as a glimmer of embarrassment.

Reagan's enormous deficits and runaway corporatism and crowbarred wealth inequalities and George W.'s to match? Reams of economic evidence exist to puncture a Hindenburg hole in this, the GOP's gaseous swindle, and all of that evidence is out there, printed and published and broadcast repeatedly by even the sinister mainstream media. The efficacy of tax cuts/dereg has been routinely, irrefutably deflated, debunked and deprecated. Still, the GOP candidates will tonight grin and blare it, over and over, again and again, and they'll do so proudly.

On the other hand, "stimulus" has a remarkably positive empirical record, from FDR to Early Obama. No serious economist seriously disputes Keynesian pump-priming's power. The pro-stimulus evidence is there, it's out there, printed, published, etc. Its history of achievement is long and undeniable. So, naturally, as I related yesterday in a state of utter exasperation and disgust, "House Democrats have dropped the word 'stimulus' from their vocabulary."

Because Republicans, you see, don't like it -- "it" being reality. They even make fun of it. Oh my.

So what's a gutless Democrat to do? Why, stop using the word of course. That's what. Hell, what else?

Let's see, the pseudoconservative Word Police effectively banned "liberal" and "liberalism" years ago; that is, the Dems allowed them to do it. Now they've cowered the Dems into fleeing from the perfectly admissible word "stimulus." Next they'll decide "progressive" should go; then, unclassy warfaring terms such as "wealth inequality." 

Democrats? Write on them what you will. They're happy to lie down and take it.

Comments

[Bulworth]

I sure hope there's another "raise your hands" question tonight...