“Make no mistake. These aren’t just a few errant, later-regretted remarks, the kind that people tend to blurt out in the heat of campaigns. As this article shows (free reg req), it’s a calculated and scurrilous effort to suggest that anyone who questions the Iraq debacle is unpatriotic.”
Link: Dan Gillmor’s article in San Jose Mercury News
It boggles my mind how anyone can think that opposing the Iraq war, or at least the stated reasons for going there, is unpatriotic. To swipe a line from Princess Bride:
Bush&Co: Unpatriotic!
Sane People: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
*taking deep breaths* This political stuff tends to get my dander up. I will try not to rant.
I will point you, however, to George Lakoff at UC Berkeley who has had a lot to say lately about the way Conservatives phrase things so as to win public opinion. Lakoff is a cognitive linguist. I have a couple of his books, (one of which is Moral Politics) but I have not read them yet. From what I gather, one of his main premises is that the language and catch phrasing that the Republicans use are putting them far above their opponents…and that Dems and Liberals are going to have to fight back at the same linguistic level if they want to reverse the effects.
www.berkeley.edu…