A Call to Linguistic Arms: #CallThemDaesh
Much of the world is expressing their solidarity with France in the aftermath of last night’s vicious attacks. Yet many of us (including heads of state and news organizations) continue to refer to the...
View ArticleImagine if leaders said after 9/11: "We're going to be free from energy...
A few weeks back New York Times Magazine asked the question: Could you kill baby Hitler? via Twitter and it’s made it to the point where presidential candidate Jeb Bush has weighed in. The question...
View ArticleFraming Climate Change Action Now: An Update
Framing Climate Change Action Now: An Update by Susan C. Strong As the coming Paris U.N. Conference on Climate Change picks up a lot of temporary media attention, we all need to upgrade our climate...
View ArticleThe Chair Theory of arguing, revisited (with applications to Sanders/ Clinton)
The “Chair Theory of arguing” is something I discovered quite some time ago in a composition textbook, Jack Rawlins’ The Writer's Way. (I am working with pages 374 and 375 of the Fourth Edition...
View ArticleMessage testing for legislative elections
Cross-posted at MN Progressive Project.“DFL” stands for “Democratic Farmer Labor Party”, the Minnesota Democrats. The state senate district where I'm the DFL chair happens to be deep blue, not one...
View ArticleLeaderless Resistance in the name of their Deity
It is called Leaderless Resistance or plausible deniability. It is a tactic that has been used by the (mostly white) allegedly Christian terrorist’s to murder doctors and burn clinics for the past 25...
View ArticleCongressman: 'Call terrorism, terrorism ... fueled by the extremist rhetoric...
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of the 8th congressional district in New York did not mince his words. He articulated something many of us have been saying for a long time. What he said about the...
View ArticleWho framed George Lakoff?
Not long ago, a good friend and I had an e-mail thread about framing. He took issue with one of my definitions of framing as “genuinely communicating your beliefs.” In his words: "Framing" is when you...
View ArticleThe Language of Dehumanization & Genocide
Daily Kos Friends,One of the most terrible things about a national security crisis, real or imagined, is that xenophobic leaders, instill fear and terror about people who are different from the...
View ArticleGOP dances hard to blame shift their stochastic terrorism
Over the past few months we’ve seen repeated attacks against violence enabling rhetoric. People have stood up against politicians who, they argue, have cowed those who seek to protect and serve the...
View ArticleDonald John Trump is exactly the candidate the GOP deserves
Loud. Brash. Rude. Pig Ignorant. Neo-Fascist. Billionaire Skinflint. Racist as a mack truck with Confederate mud flaps. Generally these would be considered character flaws and completely disqualifying...
View ArticleOn Politically Correct Language
I am an interpretive exhibit designer and have been in the profession for over 20 years. As a designer, primarily for history museums, I have seen the hand-wringing that rightly goes into making sure...
View ArticleThe Campaign "Privatization" undermining the Bill of Rights
Yesterday’s events involving a federal agent assaulting a photographer who was foolhardy enough to lean over an enclosed barrier to cover a story, and the 30 black students who were escorted out of...
View ArticleExplaining Trump's Broad Appeal
Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee and perhaps the next president. Democrats have...
View ArticleHelp Progressives Win — Progressives of #WA State — 03/12/2016 Edition
Help Progressives Win is a WEEKLY column,posting at 9 am Pacific Standard Time each Saturday.There are thousands of Progressive candidates running for office across America in 2016, and they need your...
View ArticleLanguage Reveals The Speaker's Intent...
Let’s go back to the roots of the language that erstwhile, wannabe “leaders” use to manipulate and attract unthinking supporters. It’s something you probably weren’t taught in English class in school...
View ArticleStudy says Donald Trump has worst grammar of any candidate—5th grade level
Make America Great Again. Four words. Each word is pretty simple, although “America” is three syllables! A new study done by Carnegie Mellon found that the Donald’s speeches were the lowest among a...
View ArticleI think we have the next President.
Not because of delegate math either, which reminds me of what Douglas Adams talks about referring to the way numbers work on a waiters check; just not applicable to the real world of math at all.No,...
View ArticleYou too can become fluent in Sarah Palin. All you need is uber-conservatism...
I just watched Sarah Palin’s speech from April 1st in Wisconsin. It was uncomfortable to watch, because it appears she knew from the outset that these people wouldn’t get her rhetoric, and they...
View ArticleArguing with the Right Wing: Recognizing Their Five New Favorite Fallacies
Fox and other right-wing outlets have always used certain “go-to" logical fallacies in their ideological arguments: ad hominem, straw man, and non sequitur. (Actually, if you listen to any one of...
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