Soapbox

Understanding Right-Speak: A Republican Primer

I have always been a progressive, but I used to at least understand, if not agree, with what conservatives were saying. No more. Frankly, it sounds like they are contradicting themselves all over the place! And yet, they say they’re not. What gives?
Well I think I have finally figured out why so much of what I hear right-wing politicians and pundits say these days doesn’t make any sense! Apparently, certain words have had their definitions changed recently, and liberals were not notified. To make it easier, I have compiled a short list of terms to improve our understanding of what in the hell Fox News is talking about.

Criminalization of Politics
A lot of crazy liberals think that what criminalizes politics is politicians committing crimes. Turns out, it is pointing out and investigating those crimes that criminalizes politics. Who knew?

Pro Life
Believing that we should execute people who we are pretty sure have committed terrible crimes (and the quicker the better) is pro-life. But pay attention: believing in the right to abortion, even if you would not choose it yourself and want to make it rare, makes you part of the culture of death. But, trying to prevent abortions by providing birth control to underprivileged families is also anti-life. Don’t ask why, you left-wing loon; it just is. Also, trying to save lives by improving childhood nutrition (WIC) and guarantee access to good health care for poor children is not pro-life; it is socialism.

Activist judges.
These guys are evil, evil evil…if they are moderate, or registered democrats. BUT, if they are conservative supreme Court nominees or have ruled in favor of your political or business buddies, then they are just upholding American values and it’s a smear campaign to oppose them. By the way,

Smear Campaign
Progressives who are not in the know think that trying to make people believe something about someone that you know isn’t true (like suggesting that John McCain has an black love child) or outright lying to discredit them (like saying that their wife, who did I mention is a CIA undercover operative, got them their job assignment) is a smear campaign. Wake up! Smearing someone is now defined strictly as pointing out lies and crimes that a Bush loyalist has committed. Mark your dictionaries accordingly.

Christianity
Being a Christian is good, good good…except all those parts about taking care of the poor, shunning material wealth, accepting people as they are, working for peace and not making a public show of you faith. Those parts Jesus didn’t really mean and liberals who get hung up on that stuff are missing the point.

See, as long as you invoke the name of Jesus frequently, you don’t have to actually pay any attention to what he said. That’s why Reverend Rod Parsley can hope to convert people to the Prince of Peace with the phrase “Lock and Load”, the Reverend Pat Robertson wants to assassinate people who disagree with President Bush and Ann Colter suggests that we solve mid-east turmoil by killing Muslim leaders and converting all their people to Christianity.

Morality
To be moral today, you must be a Christian. Or say you are, anyway. (see previous entry re: parts of the Bible Jesus didn’t mean.)

Perjury
This is tricky. Is perjury a real crime, or is it just a political technicality used to smear someone? Pay attention. If the person lies about an affair, perjury is very, very serious and must be investigated to the Nth degree. If, on the other hand, one perjures oneself on matters of national security to cover up the president’s lies, it is making a mountain out of a molehill to even speak of it. Which leads us to-

Lying
Lying about sex: bad, bad, bad! Lying about your budget, your opponents, scientific data, lying about national security or lying about your lies about security is just trying to get the hard work of government done. And lies that were specifically tailored to start a war, lies that kill people’s children- why are you even bringing this up, you America-hater?

Tax and Spend
Why is spending the way democrats do it- ie. raising taxes to pay for it- bad, but the Bush spending is good for the economy? It’s because the bad part of this phrase is the “tax” part. Spending itself is great! Debt is good! You can spend til the cows come home, as long as you don’t use rich people’s money to do it! So spend away! By the time the bills come due, we’ll all have been wiped out by a hurricane anyway.

National Security
The best way to make the nation secure is to run up an astronomical debt, alienate traditional allies, threaten all our enemies and destabilize an area we depend on for much of our energy needs. If terrorists attack- start a war guaranteed to make the vice president rich. If an epidemic looms, move quickly to assure that your secretary of Defense makes out like a bandit on a drug that might not work. Things like securing the borders and ports, paying attention to intelligence information, careful planning for emergencies and providing first responders with functioning equipment do nothing for our security and need not be discussed here.

Scare tactics
Claiming that your enemy is about to use a weapon that you don’t really believe he has is NOt using scare tactics. Telling people that they will die if they vote for your opponent- that’s OK too. But enacting a senate rule to insist that congress get off it’s duff and investigate issues of national security- now those are scare tactics, and are utterly reprehensible!

Support Our Troops
This is a big area of confusion. Many progressives think that demanding that our soldiers be given proper equipment, decent pay and be allowed to leave the military when their tour is up is very supportive. Wrong! Wanting to know why our troops are giving up their lives is also very non-supportive. Ditto for being upset that the president screwed up the pre-war planning and watches the death toll rise without an exit strategy.
“Support for troops” simply means blind loyalty to the president and putting a yellow ribbon magnet on your car. That’s it. And as a two-fer, that also pretty much covers the requirements for “Loving your country”! How cool is that?

I hope this clears up just a bit of the confusion that has been dividing the country in the past 5 years. Once we all understand the new rules of the game, I”m sure we’ll all get along just great. Have a nice day.