by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n Barack Obama once warned, \u201cDon\u2019t tell me words don\u2019t matter!\u201d He was right. They do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n These days, financiers and investors are a \u201cbunch\u201d of \u201cfat-cat bankers.\u201d When your 401(k) tanks, surely a \u201cbunch\u201d of \u201cfat-cat\u201d miscreants who run a \u201cbank\u201d did it. I have a fat cat \u2014 and nothing is more unpleasant than to see this lazy pet sleep all day, yawn, and then turn over on his rolls of fat.<\/p>\n \u201cI make a lot more money if I take this kid\u2019s tonsils out,\u201d the president also warned, speaking in the voice of an unscrupulous pediatric surgeon. Note the use of \u201ctake out\u201d instead of \u201coperate.\u201d Obama preferred also \u201ckid\u2019s\u201d for \u201cpatient\u2019s.\u201d Presto \u2014 a surgeon performing a carefully considered tonsillectomy becomes a swaggering chopper who carves out a tonsil or two from an unlucky child for an exorbitant profit.<\/p>\n Note a similar reference: \u201cIf that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that\u2019s 30,000, 40, 50,000 dollars immediately the surgeon is reimbursed.\u201d In the dysphemic (\u201cspeaking with bad words\u201d) world of Barack Obama, profiteering surgeons also waltz into operating rooms, needlessly lop off a slightly infected foot or two \u2014 and within hours (i.e., \u201cimmediately\u201d) a check for $30,000 to $50,000 is in the mail.<\/p>\n In the healthcare debate, insurers were \u201cfilling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads\u201d and \u201cfunding studies designed to mislead the American people.\u201d I think that means they ran advertisements to counter pro-administration advertisements, and that they fund research as their opponents do.<\/p>\n Recently, new government estimates suggested that the healthcare-reform bill will cost more money, not less. Yet the president, on the eve of its passage, blasted opponents with more dysphemism: \u201cIt\u2019s smoke and mirrors. It\u2019s bogus. And it\u2019s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription.\u201d Opposition is \u201csmoke,\u201d \u201cmirrors,\u201d \u201cbogus,\u201d \u201call too familiar,\u201d \u201cphony\u201d \u2014 and never worthy of legitimate debate and counterpoint.<\/p>\n Las Vegas is a favorite tar-and-feather term. Big companies blew our money, but they will not be able to do this any longer, in the Age of Obama, \u201cYou can\u2019t go take that trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers\u2019 dime.\u201d And later: \u201cYou don\u2019t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you\u2019re trying to save for college.\u201d<\/p>\n According to one participant in closed-door healthcare meetings, Obama warned Democratic fence-sitters, \u201cDoes anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down healthcare?\u201d Americans who are worried about deficits and who evoke the events leading up to 1776 are \u201canti-government\u201d and reduced to the moral equivalent of the sexually adventurous.<\/p>\n If a news organization is often critical, then it is not \u201clegitimate\u201d \u2014 as in the denunciation of Fox News by former White House communications director Anita Dunn: \u201cWe don\u2019t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.\u201d The president himself added, \u201cI\u2019ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.\u201d<\/p>\n Note again the language: \u201cI\u2019ve got,\u201d suggesting a simple bipolar client relationship between Fox and President Obama. \u201cEntirely devoted\u201d implies that every show on Fox News on any topic attacks the president.<\/p>\n But Obama is also fond of using good expressions. Euphemism (\u201cspeaking with good words\u201d), of course, is the opposite of dysphemism, and yet it similarly distorts realty.<\/p>\n For example, once supporters of big-government cap-and-trade programs changed the term \u201cglobal warming\u201d to \u201cclimate change,\u201d we knew that everything from the Indonesian tsunami to the Haitian earthquake could be chalked up to human sin. Furthermore, \u201cclimate change\u201d might resonate in a way that \u201cglobal warming\u201d would not to people freezing through the coldest winter in recent memory. Whether you are roasting or shivering, no matter \u2014 \u201cthey\u201d caused both, and everything in between.<\/p>\n Consider the more general way dysphemism and euphemism interact in discussions of some of the nation\u2019s most pressing problems, such as spiraling illegal immigration, terrorism, and the national debt.<\/p>\n The majority of Americans worry about porous borders and illegal immigration in ways our elites find illiberal. So they are demonized as \u201canti-immigrant.\u201d That\u2019s personal; they don\u2019t like Juan or Herlinda, rather than not liking the Mexican government\u2019s following a safety-valve policy that will lead to more remittances for Mexico City, fewer dissidents, and a large expatriate community; or not liking employers\u2019 using cheap labor to undercut American workers\u2019 wages; or not liking millions of people ignoring U.S. law as they see fit.<\/p>\n \u201cIllegal aliens\u201d is an accurate descriptive term for foreigners who cross the border unlawfully. So, naturally, we hear instead of \u201cundocumented workers.\u201d In this formulation, you see, the newcomers are all employed, and they merely forget to bring their documents. Thus the problem in the Southwest is one of memory, not legality.<\/p>\n \u201cComprehensive immigration reform\u201d has nothing to do with rewriting the immigration laws. Indeed, to close the border we need only enforce existing laws; we do not need to make new ones. Instead, this is a euphemism for a politically toxic idea: a blanket amnesty.<\/p>\n Who can be against \u201ccomprehensive\u201d anything (think \u201ccomprehensive healthcare reform\u201d versus \u201csocialized medicine\u201d), or \u201cimmigration\u201d per se (as in the law-abiding recent immigrant Ph.D. in computer science from Taiwan), or \u201creform\u201d (as in changing something that is bad)? Put the three together, and the resulting whole is greater than the sum of its parts \u2014 so how could anyone understand \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d as meaning to deem what is illegal legal?<\/p>\n Many of our policymakers also flinch at the notion that the United States is still in a war against Islamic extremists nine years after the September 11 attacks. In the last 15 months, the Obama administration had scrapped the terms \u201cIslamic extremism,\u201d \u201cIslamic radicalism,\u201d and \u201cjihad.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of real enemies, we are mobilized against \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d; now we can hate oil slicks and Congolese famines rather than the misunderstood and underprivileged from the Middle East. \u201cOverseas contingency operations\u201d means that all those carrier groups are really intended for tsunami relief.<\/p>\n After all, there are no longer threatening \u201crogue states,\u201d but only \u201coutliers.\u201d The problem is not that some nations act in dangerous ways, but just that they lie somewhere out there beyond Australia.<\/p>\n We need worry no more about another Major Hasan or Christmas Day panty-bomber, or the would-be Times Square bomber, than we fret about our noble fight against climate change. And once the \u201cdetainees\u201d at the \u201cclosed within a year\u201d Guantanamo Bay detention center were no longer called \u201cunlawful combatants\u201d (i.e., enemy soldiers without uniforms caught on the battlefield), we knew there was no longer a war. Who, after all, worries about \u201cdetainees\u201d any more than we do about the DUI suspects held in the drunk tank on Saturday night?<\/p>\n Barack Obama, in just 15 months, has turned George W. Bush\u2019s financial misdemeanors into felonies. If unchecked, his grand eight-year plan will almost double the national debt, to almost $20 trillion. Rather than freeze or cut government outlays \u2014 which would involve scaling back his ideological agenda \u2014 President Obama here too prefers a linguistic cop-out.<\/p>\n Obama did not invent \u201cstimulus,\u201d but he has used the nice word as never before to cloak reality. We do not hear that we are borrowing $3 trillion from Japanese, Chinese, and American bondholders to bail out the auto unions, or to offer sweetheart deals to crony banks and investment companies. Instead, we are \u201cstimulating\u201d the economy.<\/p>\n \u201cFiscal responsibility\u201d means an occasional speech or two about the unmentionable unsustainable borrowing. It most certainly does not mean spending only what we take in.<\/p>\n Better yet is a \u201cjobs bill.\u201d Who is against \u201cjobs\u201d? And \u201cbill\u201d sounds like something out of the 1930s, when no-nonsense congressmen smoked cigars and brought home the bacon to out-of-work constituents. A congressman can now put his name on any building or bridge he wants. That is hardly a \u201cpork-barrel\u201d project: It is an \u201cearmark\u201d that \u201ccreates jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n More important, who wants to hear about the \u201cunemployment rate\u201d? Aren\u2019t more people working than not? So let\u2019s look positively at the effects of \u201cstimulus\u201d and count instead \u201cjobs saved\u201d or, better yet, \u201cjobs created.\u201d Is anyone against \u201csaving\u201d or \u201ccreating\u201d anything? I know I am irked by \u201cunemployment\u201d and anything to do with the word \u201crate.\u201d<\/p>\n What are we to make of the new dysphemism and euphemism?<\/p>\n Note the pattern. Americans who are successful are reduced to limb-loppers, fat cats, and phonies; they enjoy jetting to Vegas and the Super Bowl at our expense, and they seem to be \u201canti-immigrant\u201d and eager to lock up Muslims \u2014 as opposed to those who wish to save children\u2019s tonsils, save jobs, save the economy, save the Mexican poor, and save the planet.<\/p>\n True, on rarer occasions, the president has dropped the demonizing and whitewashing and simply spoken from his heart. Earlier he once talked of \u201credistributive change\u201d and \u201cspreading the wealth around.\u201d More recently, he remarked, \u201cI do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”<\/p>\n But don\u2019t misunderstand. That is not \u201csocialist\u201d talk, but merely the language of \u201ccommunity organizing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Barack Obama once warned, \u201cDon\u2019t tell me words don\u2019t matter!\u201d He was right. They do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[589],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-q3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2062,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/orwell-couldnt-make-this-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":1615,"position":0},"title":"Orwell Couldn’t Make This Up","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Our Moments: Today's Paradoxes Various Norwegians are said to be miffed that Laureate Obama snubbed the traditional lunch with their King Harald. Are they surprised? Presidential bows these days are reserved for non-European royalty, whether the Japanese emperor or Saudi monarchs; Western kings and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1649,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/who-are-these-fat-cat-few-at-the-top\/","url_meta":{"origin":1615,"position":1},"title":"Who Are These Fat-Cat Few at the Top?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at \u201cthe few at the top,\u201d who do all sorts of bad things. A few months ago, we began hearing of the \u201c1 percent\u201d who are responsible for the current economic mess. \u201cThey\u201d apparently make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3420,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-hamlet\/","url_meta":{"origin":1615,"position":2},"title":"President Hamlet","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services More than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a riveting tragedy about a young, charismatic Danish prince who vowed to do the right thing in avenging his murdered father. That soon proved easier said than done. As a result, Hamlet couldn\u2019t quite ever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1980,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/postmodern-class-warfare\/","url_meta":{"origin":1615,"position":3},"title":"Postmodern Class Warfare","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When President Obama's polls hit 40 percent approval, he fumed at \"billionaires and millionaires,\" \"fat cat bankers\" and \"corporate jet owners.\" In his sloppy targeting, Obama doesn't care much that a billionaire has 1,000 times more than a millionaire \u2014 or that his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":307,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-obama-be-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":1615,"position":4},"title":"Let Obama Be Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services After his party's devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was re-elected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the Dream Act amnesty for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":160,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-the-real-fat-cats-pay-their-fair-share\/","url_meta":{"origin":1615,"position":5},"title":"Let the Real Fat Cats Pay Their Fair Share","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not \"paying their fair share\"? The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500 million)? The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50 million)? 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