RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Trendy/hip political buzz-words

I've noticed a trend in the media, going back at least to the Clinton years, of the media introducing new political buzz-words, some of which are clever, but most of which are goofy from the start, and are repeated to the point they become deeply annoying, if they weren't annoying from the very start.


The one I'm hearing this week is technocrat, in connection with the military coup overthrowing Morsi in Egypt a few days ago, used to describe the pro-western moderates who will replace him.

Even reading the definition gives very little information about its intended meaning. It apparently means both political and business/technological leaders who know how to run a modern free-market economy. Which --again-- is goofy, because Morsi, however radical and over-reaching, certainly led a government with business and technological ability before the coup as well. The political wave that swept him to power certainly demonstrated exceptional use of modern social media and the internet. In a roundabout way, it seems to just imply that the new Egyptian government is just more pro-western, and will (maybe) demonstrate less aggression and more free trade with its neighbors.

Another trendy word in the media is gravitas.
Beyond its definition, it seems to imply a leader with the political weight or strength of personality to advance their agenda and not get walked on.

I first heard it used --with endless repitition-- about Romney during the 2012 campaign, constantly asking if he has the "gravitas" to deal with world leaders.


Interesting how little, if at all, that term was ever applied to Barack Obama dealing with world leaders, who entered in 2008 with absolutely no international diplomatic or military experience. And who is arguably, 5 years in, still a political novice, who has been used and discarded by Russia, China, Egypt, Iran and other hostile nations in the very recent past, and throughout his presidency.

I also want to include older political buzz-words. The earliest ones I can think of are "Clintonian" (implying a Clinton-like legalistic dodging of the truth with evasive wording, i.e., "it all depends what the definition of 'is' is.")


And more annoying for me from the Clinton years, "pushing the envelope". Metaphorically describing taking a risk to advance a political agenda. Explained as a number that's too large to discuss in a group meeting, so someone writes it down on an envelope, and pushing it across the table to the person who will either accept or reject it. And all through the Clinton years, the adoring media was constantly on every Clinton action saying "pushing the envelope, pushing the envelope..."
That, I think, was the first of these buzz-words that really grated on me.

"Technocrat", "gravitas" and "pushing the enevolpe" are all common English language words or idioms. "Pushing the envelope" sounds a little quaint to my ears.

"Gravitas" reminds me of when George Bush I complained that Clinton's saxophone-playing on MTV was "unPresidential". What he meant was it lacked gravitas (and I agree).

"Technocrat" is very commonly used to describe academics who are put into power, lacking political instincts. See "Super Mario", Prime minister of Italy, for an example of a successful technocrat.

I get more annoyed by silly terms like "hot-tubbing" (putting several experts into a room to be questioned on their divergant views), and euphemistic terms which obscure hard truths, like "friendly fire" (killed by your own forces), and "collateral damage" (deaths to innocent civilians), and acronyms like "GFC" (global financial crisis) which dilute the full measure of what it is (no one describes the life-ruining "Great Depression" as the "GD").

I forgot "Clintonian". The sex scandal is obviously a lasting impression. But, as a non-Amercian not exposed to the domestic economic buoyancy of the day, for me the lasting impression is the efforts at Middle Eastern diplomacy. "Clintonian" doesn't mean "legalistic hair-splitting to cover one's arse" to me. It means something a little idealistic and charismatic, yet flawed. Clnton is such a complicated character. I saw "The Comeback Kid" documentary on a plane recently. It was hardly sympathetic (I hadn't known the etymology of "Slick Willy") - it was a balanced look at the man's political instincts. Clinton strikes me as outward-looking, centrist and inclusive in a way that the equally charismatic Obama is not. Obama appeals to dangerous protectionist instincts and is pro-union in a way Clinton did and was not.

So, while a precise definition of "Clintonian" is hard, I do understand what it means.

what's the definition of "klintonian"?

A charmless day and age of pointless self-touching.

I would have said gay male irritability that resembles symptoms normally observed in female post-menstrual syndrome.

A more accurate definition: I default to yours.

Almost once a night, some pundit refers to the current political exchange betweeen Democrats and Republicans as
"kabuki dance" or "kabuki theatre", and despite the frequency of its use, I still have no idea what it means. I interpret it to mean fake posturing and putting on a show of conviction for voters.



Another annoying unclear term is "the third rail", or "touching the third rail", which again is a near meaningless but frequently tossed-around phrase.






Another that annoys me is "the fourth estate". Which is the media. And I understand that the media is considered the unofficial fourth branch of government that is supposed to keep the other three (Executive, Legislative, and Supreme Court branches) accountable to the voters. But I don't understand inclusion of the word "estate". It sure doesn't sound like a term for the news media. So why not just plainly say: News Media !

The latest trendy word for the last two or three weeks, related to Obamacare, is "death-spiral".

Which is basically a term for the predicted implosion of Obamacare due to its financial unsustainability, where only sick people sign up for Obamacare, and healthy people (who wouldn't sign up at regular rates) definitely won't sign up when forced to pay double or more what their normal rates would be. At which point the system collapses.

The alternative is another government bailout, where the federal government takes over funding the program with taxpayer dollars (with either further spiking debt or higher taxes to fund it). Which some think was the Democrats' plan all along. Although not in a way that cost them such a drop in the polls.

With this last David Jolly-Alex Sink special election for a Congressional seat in Florida, another annoying buzz-word is back in the news:




They couldn't just say "precursor" or "beginning of a trend"?

It somehow reminds me of another annoying trendy political buzz-word, windfall gains.

Annoying terms that have no visible connection with what they actually describe.



The Economist actually has a pretty clear and non-text-bookish definition of these terms:

I just learned that "crossing the Rubicon" refers to when Julius Ceasar crossed the Rubicon river during his power grab to turn Rome from a republic into an empire.

This whole thing of adults accusing each other of "bullying." "Bullying" has become anything that politician A says that's unflattering about politician B or vice versa.

The phrases I'm sick to death of hearing over the last 2 weeks, (regarding Obama's course of action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria) are:

1) "boots on the ground", the annoying term for whether Obama will limit U.S. military involvement to air-strikes, or will take the necessary step of sending in ground troops to complete the mission. Because no other potential ally in the region, such as Syrian resistance fighers or the Kurds, or Iraq, or Jordan, have the ground troops needed to do the job right.

2) "it's like three-dimensional chess", another annoying term for the complexity of the situation in Iraq/Syria, with no easy solutions.

This is the most buzz words I've ever seen in a single article !

http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/american-political-jargon



A commentary on the buzz words. I don't agree that the use of buzz words necessarily means they're engaging in partisan politics and not discussing the real issues. Some of the terms are just trite phrases, and not necessarily partisan.

Other terms like "dog whistle" are definitely partisan.

A word that's been bugging the hell out of me regarding the Indiana primary (which may or may not be Ted Cruz's last stand), is constantly calling Indiana "the hoosier state".

It's an utterly meaningless word that is repeated over and over, and adds nothing to the discussion. It's only with the vaguest of speculation that even an origin can be postulated for the word, let alone any meaning to it in a modern context.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hoosier?s=t



This one cracks me up:



Perhaps that's what one would have to be, to allow themselves to be labelled with such a meaningless word.


I also hate goofy terms like "Shytown" for Chicago, or "the Big Apple" for New York. And even state nicknames like "the Sunshine state" for my native Florida.

A few months ago, they were referring to one as "the Granite state" over and over during the primaries, which leaves most wondering what the fuck state they're even talking about.
One could, y'know, just say New Hampshire, so people actually know what state you're talking about!

The term "A.D." or Anno Domini (the year of our Lord) is lately being replaced by terms attempting to de-Christianize the standard time measurement, with terms like B.C.E. (before common era), which comes with its own set of problems, in eliminating the source-point from which time is measured.

But even A.D. has its problems. Even after Wikipedia's explanation, it still leaves an ambiguity and potential gap in time measurement, in not giving a "zero" starting point.
There's a question of how one measures time. The starting point is the birth of Christ. "B.C." or Before Christ is fairly easy, it just measures backward from the point of Jesus' birth.

But "A.D." is a bit more difficult. Jesus lived for 33 years.
So does 1 A.D. measure 1 year after Jesus' birth?
Or is it 1 year after his death (which could alternately be 33 + 1, or 34 A.D.)?
i.e., one year after His birth, vs. 1 year after his death. Which potentially leaves a gap of time measurement of 33 years of Jesus' life excluded from time measurement, measuring only backward from Jesus' birth (B.C., Before Christ), and forward from the point of his death (A.D., After Death).

Even Wikipedia's long-winded explanation doesn't adequately clarify that.

Fox News' 6PM Special Report assessed the most current polls and how that would break down electorally, that on the current polls would break down to about 175-360 in favor of Hillary Clinton. It was described as, if the election were held today based on these polls it would be a "Landslide victory".

I had to look that up to know precisely what that means
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landslide_victory

And I recall the 2010 Republican take-back of the House described as a "Wave Election"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_election

When I haven't heard these terms in a few years, I need a refresher course on what they mean.

The Washington Post has a slightly different electoral count although (liberal media, of course!) still favoring Hillary. But compiled from RealClearPolitics current average of polls in each state.

273-186 in favor of Hillary.
Just before the first debate, Trump was leading in most of these 13 battleground states. So it isn't over yet.

Another term that is somewhat gray in its paramaters to me (despite all my life being a Presbyterian Christian) is the term, as in political demographics, evangelical Christians.





The portion that rings most true for me:



Although that still leaves quite a bit of wiggle room and ambiguity, where you could include or exclude any denomination of Christians you want in how you define "evangelicals".

"Alt-Right"


I've heard it for a year or two, but have heard it a lot more since Trump named Steve Bannon (along with Reinz Priebus) as his co-chief of staff. Bannon is demonized by the Left as a racist associated with the KKK and so forth, and I really don't see any evidence of that.
The worst allegation is that Bannon on the Breitbart.com site he runs has used some tittilating and arguably racist/sexist headlines. Ridiculous. The idea is to use a headline that draws attention and gets clicks, right?

The liberal media uses this term to slanderously imply that anyone in this broad ambiguously defined movement is racist/dangerous/white supremacist, a KKK member or sympathizer, or otherwise right wing militant crazy.
That same liberal media, of course, ignores the ACTUAL Left wing militant craziness that is killing cops, threatening people and destroying property, while the Right (even if they were these KKK-like things, which I seriously doubt) are threatening no one.

Funny how the media loves to toss around "alt right" but pretends that BLM, Occutards, etc., aren't representative of the DNC these days.

Yes, and if you've looked at the Black Lives Matter website, their ideology is rabidly anti-white and openly advocates killing whites, even white babies, that is certainly comparable to the KKK's ideology, if not even more violent.



A term that has gained visibility in only the last week or so is "Deep state"



Which Wikipedia, clearly entrenched by the liberal media and liberal academics, poses in its linked description as a "conspiracy theory", "which they suspect asserts influence and control over public and foreign policy..." "that its adherents assert..." rather than acknowledging the reality that over 90% of bureaucrats in government branches like the State Department, the FBI, CIA, NSA, U.S. Justice Department, and IRS are Democrats who are strong advocates and campaign donors to the Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns, many belonging to public unions who donate overwhelmingly to Democrats, and are obviously the ones obstructing (and in the Obama administration weaponizing) their branches against Republican/conservative groups and political donors.

There is way too much evidence of this to dismiss the attacks on political opposition by Democrats in these federal agencies, abusing the power and national secrets of their position, secret FISA court warrants for surveilance, and releases of information calculated to embarass and undermine President Trump, compromising national security to do so, to dismiss it as merely "asserted" or just "a conspiracy theory".

With the attempted Obamacare repeal, some old terms are frequently referenced in the media again:

• Byrd rule
  
  Reconciliation process
  
  "Nuclear option"
  
  Cloture
  
  Filibuster

"strategic patience"

One I've only heard in the last week or so, as the Trump administration has pushed back firmly against North Korean aggression and threats.

Which is contrasted with the Obama administration's "strategic patience" (i.e., ignoring N. Korean threats and nuclear tests, in the plan to just let things calm down and not escalate, but which in reality just emboldened N. Korea and other bad players on the global stage to even greater levels of aggression.)

I never heard the term during the Obama years, although it seems to have been coined during that time, perhaps by the Obama administration itself.

I also just looked at Wikipedia's page for the word "gay".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay


Interesting to see the gradual evolution of the word. At first meaning happy or carefree, evolving to carefree uninhibitedness and hedonism, to a broad term for sexual deviancy, to in the mid/late 1960's increasingly used as a widespread euphemistic term for homosexuality.

I recall hearing it the first time in the early 1970's, in particular the first time I heard it on television was during an episode of the TV series Alice, circa 1975. Where she was dating an NFL player who she really liked, and asked after several dates why he didn't come on to her sexually.
He smiles and says "Alice... I'm gay."
With a stunned look and a smile, she said "You don't mean just... jolly gay, do you?"

It was a very funny line.

One I've heard repeatedly to describe the likes of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Robert Meuller and the other Deep State Hillary/Obama loyalists rigging the system against Trump is the term "Praetorian Guard".

The shoe definitely fits:



Those who are trusted to guard the system, are actually the ones undermining the system.

I hate the modern obsession with acronyms, and was just introduced to a new one, TEOTWAWKI.
(a k a, the end of the world as we know it.)

A term popular among doomsday preppers, end-time-prophecy Christians, and others apocalyptically inclined.




Another that annoys the hell out of me is "POTUS".
How is that any easier than saying "President"?

Relative to the Russia/Trump special investigation, I've heard it said the Russians use "Bots" or "ad-Bots" to stoke division on both sides through thousands of social media accounts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_bot

I still barely understand the concept. Except that it is a program that automatically sends out Twitter posts and re-posted content, to spread propaganda.

I was surprised that there are positive aspects too, such as a Wikipedia bot that notifies them when Wikipedia is edited by someone with a U.S. Senate/Congress IP address, or a British Parliament address. Although that could have a downside that it allows their political opposition to edit/propagandize Wikipedia in their favor, while not allowing government officials to do the same or respond.

Virtue Signalling



I've heard the term a lot in the lest few weeks. Laura Ingraham is the last one I heard use the term, in the context of Democrat posturing over the immigration debate. That they have demagogued Republicans as callously indifferent to the plight of illegals and DACA children. But in fact from 2006 on through the Obama years, when Democrats had control of the House, Senate and the Presidency, they never passed law or made a priority of dealing with the problems regarding immigration.

Within the last 6 months, Trump offered the Dems a great deal that would have taken immigration off the table as an issue, but generous as it was, Democrats refused it, as Trump knew they would. Because Democrats' priority is not solving the immigration problem, but keeping their Hispanic voter-base fired up and angry, in a way that they can scapegoat Republicans for the problem.

I still find virtue signaling not the clearest of terms, but essentially posturing virtuousness, without actually following through and doing the right thing.

I just ran across this term....


WW1WGA




I hate acronyms and text abbreviations. But what the hell, I looked it up:


https://medium.com/@martingeddes/wwg1wga-the-greatest-communications-event-in-history-698ba926df64



A lot more text, but that's the thesis of it.

There's a video too that explains. It argues that Trump's election is partly engineered by U.S. military and intelligence types to clean up the corrupt corporatist/globalist authoritarian takeover of our system. Through a psy-ops military type plan of attack.

The part about forcing the media and its corporate handlers to overplay their hand and destroy their own credibility is interesting enough. But there's a lot more beyond that.

I thought this would interest Pariah most of all, although he probably already knows about it, way more than me. It's 4-chan conspiracy type stuff.

kinderwhore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinderwhore



I found this word while looking at a listing about actress Carroll Baker, and a movie I haven't seen that was apparently her definitive role titled Baby Doll based on a Tennesee Williams story.

Carroll Baker is from Johnstown, PA, where both my parents and most of my family are from. She is roughly the same age as my parents, and probably attended school at the same time as them. Which sparked my interest in her, and the "kinderwhore" fashion trend is listed as a legacy of Baker's character in the movie. The term is roughly 30 years old, and yet the first I've heard of it.

I was looking at a book listing...
https://theslingsandarrows.com/housebound-with-rick-geary/
...and for categorizing the book they have some evaluation categories:



And one of the criteria is "the Bechdel test". What the hell?
So I looked it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

Pardon me while I throw up.
HUBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLCCCCCHHHHHH !

I think it's safe to assume that's criteria that doesn't matter to anyone except the most far-left liberal basket cases.

It actually annoys me because 1) Rick Geary's work in this case evaluated is fun lighter work, and instead of evaluating it "no" it should be evaluated "n/a" or not applicable since it's irrelevant to the type of story being told.
And
2) Rick Geary is a left-coast California hippie kind of guy who probably agrees with their agenda and would never marginalize women, so this irrelevantly defames him for arbitrary reasons as anti-women/anti-feminist.
3) Most of his stories are basically narrated without showing a man or woman, or giving any dialogue to either gender.
It's just ridiculous.

"White Savior narrative"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior_narrative_in_film



Man, I hate the Left. They performed some incredible mental gymnastics to make many of these films conform to their narrative. In "The Help" for example, it's really twisting the message to say that movie has a white supremacist message. It's powerfully critical of the South and the white supremacist notions of the region in that segregationist period.

Likewise, one of my favorite films, "The Last Samurai", is about the greatness of Japanese culture. Only touched on in the movie is how Japan went from a feudalist medeival society in the mid 1860's, and after being terrified of an ironclad U.S. warship that came to Japan and intimidated them into signing a trade deal with the U.S., its leaders set on a rapid program of industrialization and nationalizing Japan into a unified country (as only touched on in portraying Cruise as a hired military advisor). In less than 30 years Japan became a world power, that conquered and colonized Korea in 1895, and defeated Russia and sank half Russia's navy at Port Arthur in 1905. In the film, Cruise's character learns the Samurai culture, and at the end only reminds the emperor of Japan's own greatness and traditions, far from being a "White Savior".

The Left jumps through such incredible hoops to rationalize their own self-loathing, and to teach that self-loathing narrative to others. Along with other self-loathing terms like "institutionalized racism" and "white privelege".

"Liberal Orthodoxy"


As often as this term is used, I was surprised to see it did not have a listing, either in Wikipedia or in Dictionary.com

The best I saw was this listing:

https://haciendapublishing.com/articles/...uel-faria-jr-md

Which consistent with the Orwell/1984 example he uses, has been Deleted from the liberal media real-world version of the Newspeak dictionary, in an attempt to remove it from the list of acceptable terms, a term that gives focus to understanding the ideology of Political Correctness/Cultural Marxism, and a vocabulary term to oppose it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation


Basically, an apparent legal term term for racial mixing, inter-racial couples and inter-racial children, for which there are Miscegenation laws to prevent.
Till now I'd never heard the term.

Till now I'd only heard the terms "mixed-race" or "mulatto" The latter appears to be a latin-American term for people who are a mix of white and one or more other races.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto
Which either has become, or always was, an offensive pejorative term.


I came across Miscegenation in a Youtube comment where they listed a Twitter hashtag of:
#MiscegenationNation


A few others she had in her post were BBW (Big Beautiful Woman, women weighing upwards of 200 pounds)...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Beautiful_Woman
...and SSBBW (Super Size Big Beautiful Woman). That are not only terms, but are search categories of porn!

Somethin' out there for everybody, I guess...

Courtesy of one of Pariah's old posts


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude