By Roddy McCorley
"Bully," "narcissist," "racist," "fascist," "misogynist," "homophobe," "xenophobe," "liar" and "dangerous."
You have read them online. If you have gone to a Donald Trump rally, you have had them shouted in your face. You have even heard them uttered in the highest heights of mainstream "unbiased" journalism. They sometimes seem to be the main arguments mustered against the policies Donald Trump wants to bring to Washington. But what do these epithets really mean?
The goal of this lexicon is not to regurgitate mere dictionary definitions of these words, but to explore what they mean in a political context.
Bully
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Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was posthumously called a "profound bully" by a former CEO who had had to deal with him for decades. People who accomplish great things, especially things that are thought by many to be impossible, seem to get accused of being bullies. A lot.
Narcissist
In 2013, two years before Trump announced his run for the presidency, the well-regarded and non-partisan Pew Research Institute did a study of narcissism of all U.S. presidents. As it turns out, more than one-third of U.S. presidents had this would-be pathological psychological disqualifying condition. This list includes many Democratic favorites, including LBJ, FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson, who ranked first, fourth, fifth, seventh and 10th most-narcissistic respectively. Perhaps narcissism is an advantage to being a good president.
Liar, congenital
Some Trump haters assert that Trump "lies all the time" or even that "every word out of his mouth is a lie." But then if you ask the accuser to cite a specific lie, he or she cannot think of a single one. To give these people the benefit of the doubt, what they are probably complaining about is Trump's tendency to use exaggeration and simplification of complicated matters, in order not to overtax the attention span of the listener. They are basically chafing at how effective Trump is at getting out a message using his broad brush, because they know he might win doing it. This does not, however, constitute lying, which is "the deliberate misrepresentation of a known fact with the intent to deceive."
Republicans have not convinced 51 percent of the electorate to vote for its presidential candidate since the Reagan years. Part of the reason is that the Democrats' argument is so much less complex: "If it's a good thing, government will bring it. If it's a bad thing, government will prevent it." Trump is making sure that he does not fall into the trap that, for example, Mitt Romney fell into of being so conscious of factual detail that the American people never really get a hold of your central vision.
Fascist
Fascism was a short-lived, localized political philosophy that originated almost 100 years ago and died out very quickly. To revive fascism half a world away, almost a century later, in America, would be a tough assignment. But if one were to try to do so, one might begin by reintroducing the slogans of the fascist era that worked so well back then.
The word fascism was coined in 1919 and was derived from the Italian word fasces, meaning "sticks." In fascist Italy, "national and social unity was symbolized by the fasces themselves, the bound sticks being stronger together than individually." The Mercury Dime was accused of fascism for containing the bound sticks and was replaced by the U.S. Mint during the height of World War II. As a Wellesley political science major, Hillary Clinton must have known this association when she chose the same slogan as Benito Mussolini, "Stronger Together."
Racist
Race is difficult to define, but it is not necessary to agree on a definition of race to defeat this one – because it is easy to define what race is NOT. For example, race is not country. Race is not ice cream. Race is not religion. Mexico is a country, not a race. Islam is open to all races.
Xenophobe
Trump has often said, "We want immigrants, it's just that we want them to come in legally." Perhaps Trump haters who use this taunt are logophobes, i.e., afraid of law and order.
Dangerous
We'll let Scott Adams, who was the subject of an Aug. 19 story in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Dilbert Explains Donald Trump" take this one:
"Trump has five decades of acting rational in business dealings and getting along with people all over the world, including China and Russia. By now you would have heard stories of Trump being a loose cannon in his business dealings if such a thing had happened. We are hearing no stories of that nature. And people don't suddenly change character at age 70.
"How risky is Trump? Consider that Trump has never had an alcoholic beverage. He was against the Iraq war [unlike Hillary Clinton]. He doesn't want boots on the ground in Syria. He wants a strong military to discourage war. Trump personally gains nothing from war, but he has a lot to lose, including every building with his name on it."
Homophobe
It's rather rich. One minute, Donald Trump is being accused by Ted Cruz in the primary debates of having "New York values." The next minute, he is turned into a homophobe by Hillary Clinton supporters. But in order to disprove that Trump is a homophobe, one need not cite Cruz as an authority, fortunately.
Over the last 45 years, homosexuality has changed from a clandestine activity, like adultery, to an open one. Many LGBTQs congregate in well-advertised large groups such as pride festivals and 800-capacity nightclubs. This has made them the target of radical Islamic terrorists, in whose mother countries being openly LGBTQ subjects one to the death penalty. Although the word homophobia is not defined, it certainly has to include, somewhere among its tenets, that the mass killing of homosexuals is wrong. A true homophobe would want maximum saturation of immigrants from these countries, not fewer, so that homosexuals in America would be forever looking over their shoulders for an attacker.
Misogynist
This word entered the English vocabulary directly from Ancient Greek through the influence of 17th-century classicists. The word derivation is misos, "hatred," plus gunē, "woman." Thus, it seems tailor-made for the 21st-century Social Justice Warrior, doesnt it? That is, until you discover the sense in which the ancient Greeks used it. A first clue is that the Greek word that is actually the SJW's No. 1 favorite word, phobia, is missing in action. As it turns out, the Hellenes used the word misogyny to apply mostly to gay men. Uh oh! Bad wreck at the intersection of Feminism Place and Gay Road.
Not surprisingly, SJWs have scurried to "redefine" (I love that concept) misogyny to make it mean something better-suited to their purpose, yet still having that classical air that will delight white upper-class liberal pseudo-intellectuals plus avoiding overuse of the phobiaâ„¢ brand. The current "definition" Wikipedia uses actually hails from the 21st century. It is taken from Allan G. Johnson's "The Blackwell dictionary of sociology: A user's guide to sociological language." Judging from the post-colon clawback of this title, one wonders whether sociologists believe in fixed definitions at all. But, at best, the word millions are using to skewer Donald Trump is taken from esoterica.
Donald Trump is not gay. Nor can the word "misogynist" be hung on Trump in the way it was hung on Euripides, who after having two marriages to unfaithful women refused to marry again. Trump has been married three times and is currently happily married. This would satisfy the ancient philosophers – and should satisfy everybody else – that Trump is not suffering from hatred of women.
But even if we accept the sociological flavor-of-the-month definition, the media are like the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight when it comes to matching the actual facts with that definition. The lead anecdote of the New York Times' front-page hit piece on Donald Trump's treatment of women was false. Rowanne Brewer Lane, the contributor of the anecdote, said the newspaper took her words out of context to make the billionaire businessman look like a misogynist pig. "He never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way," she told Fox News. "He never offended me in any way. He was very gracious."
Personal message to Trump haters from the lexicographer:
I realize that you are in a bind. I know that the fearless leader, Hillary Clinton, has doubled down on the use of smear words in her alt-right speech of Aug. 25. And I know that your Pravda (Huffington Post) – in the process of destroying the whole journalistic concept of an "Editor's Note" forever – has for many months religiously carried the following screed after every story that name-checks Trump:
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims – 1.6 billion members of an entire religion – from entering the U.S.
But surely not all Never-Trumpers want to follow Hillary and HuffPo off the intellectual cliff.
If Never-Trumpers want to maintain any credibility, they must finally cease with the name-calling and, like the infants they have shown themselves to be at times, "use their words" to express exactly which policies of Donald Trump they are against, and why. Or, in the alternative, own that their epithets are empty of any semiotic content and just call Trump "a poo-poo head," thus saving us all time.
Roddy McCorley is a Midwest-based white-collar professional of Irish extraction who loves rock 'n' roll and juvenile memes perhaps more than a middle-aged father and husband should. He knee-jerkedly hated Trump with a passion for the first two months of his candidacy and now hates anti-Trump virtue signalers with a passion. His favorite movie of all-time is "Massacre at Central High." "If you don't get Trump you don't get the classic American Hero." He has taken his pen name in honor of an 18th-century Irish patriot who was hanged at Toome bridge.