Despite assurances from deconstructionists – read, destructionists and nihilists – that the world and everything in it is devoid of fixed meaning, dictionaries are available to which the confused and befuddled may repair for enlightenment.
Offered below, with a caveat, are some few brief definitions
of postmodern – read, confusing – political terms. To be wide awake and
politically active in the postmodern 21st century is to be confused
much of the time.
The caveat is this: Politicians suspect, correctly, that the
bulk of their constituents are much too busy making a living in hard times to
press to their eyes jewelers' loops with which they may closely examine bills
streaming through legislatures or, just as fraudulent, self-serving pronouncements
issuing from ad-men politicians.
For this reason, politicians are careful in naming their
bills, and the names, many of them designed to appeal to emotions rubbed raw –
“American Rescue Plan Act of 2021”, “For the People Act of 2021”, “Equality
Act”, "American Dream and Promise Act of 2021", and the like --
are clever emotional appeals to the angels of our better natures. The names of
such bills are, in a word, self-serving political ads purposefully fashioned to
draw into a populist net the affections of people distracted by life’s
imperative demands.
Some words often used by politicians should be attached, as
are cigarettes, with suitable warnings: “This bill IS the disease it purports
to cure.”
Bipartisanship –
In theory, bipartisanship is a door opening upon a democratic Eden. In
practice, bipartisanship, a peaceful coming together of partisans united by a
common effort, means that the party in power extends to a minority party
certain frivolous courtesies – but only on condition that the minority party
enthusiastically supports major initiatives embraced by the majority party.
Usage –In his campaign
for the presidency, Democrat Joe Biden offered a bipartisan hand of friendship
to the Republican minority. He was indicating that his administration would be
a refreshing change from that of President Trump the Terrible.
Almost immediately upon election to the presidency, Biden,
with the indispensable aide of Majority Leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer and
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, then proceeded to strong arm Republicans and
finally resorted to partisan governing, the same path forged by Democrat political leaders in Connecticut.
Far from being interested in pursuing true bipartisanship,
Pelosi focused much of her attention on assuring a permanent Democrat majority
in the House, Schumer nodded his assent to this in the Senate, and Biden used his
presidency to enact quickly a political program that would not alienate the far
left wing of his party, as represented by socialist Senator from Vermont Bernie
Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Unsurprisingly, this aggressive and unfriendly behavior
alienated most Republicans and, Republicans suppose, that slender portion of
the Democrat majority that had not gone over to the dark socialist side
supported by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.
The Biden-Schumer-Pelosi political strategy bears the same
relation to true bipartisanship as does a lightning bolt to a lightning bug.
The difference, Mark Twain wrote, between the right word and an almost right
word is the difference between a lightning bolt and a lightening bug.
Clever, Machiavellian politicians, occasionally with the aid
of a “too clever for its own good” media, devote a great deal of energy
avoiding precise distinctions. Twain also cautioned people against lying: Tell the truth, then you don't have to remember what you've said.
Race – Initially,
race was a biologically determined predicate. It is proper -- though somewhat
chancy, owing to a historical mingling of races – to refer in common speech to
the German race. Adolf Hitler did it all the time. Sometimes “race”, as the
word is commonly used, overleaps nation boundaries, which also change, as when
one refers to the Jewish race, a people for many years of the diaspora. Race,
like love, is one of those things we know when we see it, but it lacks hard and
fast edges.
Was former President Barack Obama black or white? Both, many
would say. But a thoroughgoing lexicographer might remind us that the terms
“black” and “white” are colors, not race designators.
In the postmodern world, the term “race” and its variants, often
used as rhetorical weapons to wound and destroy, have become dirtballs of
political abuse hurled at those opposed to any number of half-baked, utopian
political schemes.
Useage – The notion that racism -- increasingly in the United States a tendency to unmelt common matter in the melting pot for the purpose of setting one artificially constructed tribe against another -- may be defused by changes in zoning regulations is a half-baked, utopian political idea. And yet, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker recently sought to stain the escutcheon of wealthy Greenwich, Connecticut by charging that the town’s zoning practices indicated “structural racism.”
Elicker was asked to apologize for the unmerited dirtball –
35 percent of Greenwich’s population is minority -- at which Elicker’s stiff
upper lip hardened into cement.
“I will not apologize,” returned Elicker. “We live in one of
the most segregated states in the nation. There is a history of explicit racism
in all towns in our state – Greenwich and New Haven included. Today structural
racism persists throughout our state. The difference is that some communities
like ours in New Haven are working to address it and other communities like
Greenwich and many other Connecticut towns are fighting to protect zoning
regulations that perpetuate structural racism. Whether intentional or
unintentional, policies that hurt the disadvantaged and keep certain people out
are inherently racist. Instead of fighting these policies and each other, let’s
work together to address them.”
Redlining, the refusal of loans or insurance to people who
live in areas deemed to be poor financial risks, might be an example of
structural or inherent racism. Redlining could conceivably be incorporated into zoning
laws, but Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act in 1968
made redlining on a racial basis an illegal practice. There was some
evidence as late as 1977 that redlining persisted in the Hartford
region. But that dragon has been slain across the state for nearly a half
century, even in wealthy Greenwich.
Really Elicker, are we not better than this?
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