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United Semantics of America: the BULLSHIT Coup

Dude, Where's My Karma?

While liberals and conservatives alike have been engaging in debates over the degree of Palin’s presidential-grooming (bride-ing?) experience, and whether or not Wasilla is the 2nd largest city in Alaska, we’ve overlooked a coup d’etat! It was staged by these critters called Semantics and their cousins: the Political Framings and The False Dichotomies. They’ve been creeping up on major news sources for years now, but never have they posed such a risk.

BULLSHIT (Bureau of Unjustified Lies, Linguistic Shifts, and Heinous Insinuations of Truth), which all three of the monsters above work for, has long ago usurped the concept of “family values” and is now re-selling the manufactured product more forcefully than ever. The following are just a few examples:

1) “The ‘Mom’ Talk.” There’s been discussion in and outside of the Sun concerning Sarah Palin representing a new form of feminism. However, what Palin espouses emphasizes and gives strength to our society's existing gender binary and its defined roles: highlighting the fact that she, SUPERMOM, has been able to “both” have her career and be a “normal hockey mom.” This has been Dr. Semantics’ brain child, monopolizing on the fact that in our country today, a man is still expected to have less stake in the care of his children than a woman. Barack Obama, no matter how much he emphasizes his children, no matter how much Michelle showers praise on him for his familial connectedness, sounds disingenuous in comparison.

And yet look around at Republican families who have utilized each of their members to play a different archetypical role. Dr. Semantics needed no impetus to describe Michelle Obama as Barack’s “baby mama” earlier in the summer, but that same subversive Semantics character — always operating with the meaning of words — has turned Bristol Palin’s pregnancy into a symbol of her mother’s typicality and relatability. Doubtlessly, if it were one of Barack Obama’s daughters who were pregnant, BULLSHIT would be singing a very different, racially-tinged tune.

Palin’s youngest, Trig, became the model of “making a choice,” while that choice would, in Palin’s dream world, be revoked from millions of other women. Track became the model of the proud American, off to serve his country — with, of course, the implication that Barack’s family is less patriotic. And from the McCain camp, Bridget McCain became the epitome of charity, with Cindy’s beaming face describing her altruistic adoption. Note the different, more proactive role that BULLSHIT took with Republican families this year as opposed to with Bush/Cheney. What role could Mary Cheney have filled?

2) “Pro-life”. This is my friend Mr. False Dichotomy’s historical brain child because it is so damned brilliant! If you’re not pro-life then you must be pro-death, right?

I wish I could ask Mr. False Dichotomy: Pro-what life? Whose lives are we “pro-oritizing”? Certainly Sarah Palin is not pro-life for any creature with four legs. Certainly Sarah Palin is not pro-Iraqi Civilian Life (death toll: 87,000 at its lowest estimates). Certainly Sarah Palin is not pro-womens’ lives who would inevitably die if Roe was overturned from antiquated medical procedures. And while guns do not kill people — it is true that people kill people — it is nonetheless disturbing that the most fanatical “pro-lifers” tend to be loyal to the NRA and to the death penalty. Clearly, “pro-life” is some diet, exclusionary, falsified version, but it works for Mr. False Dichotomy and for many Americans.

3) The “Average American” schtick: Now here’s the question that BULLSHIT posed to its employee, Ms. Political Framing: How do we discredit our opposition so that every time we mention him, we subliminally mention his elitism? Well, Ms. PF went to work, and came up with a masterminded rhetorical tool. It is difficult to deny that Obama chose community organizing instead of working for a high-paying law firm...but community organizing can be denigrated to a worthless position, and he can look like a bigger folly than Seward for choosing it! And though he chose a worthless position (one with “[no] actual responsibilities,” my favorite lipstick-ed pitbull commented during her first major on-stage debut outside of former beauty contests), he is still most certainly an elitist because he and his wife went to these universities in the first place! Ingenious. (Pssst … Ms. PF kindly requests that we refrain from discussing Mrs. Cindy McCain’s $200,000 outfit at the RNC … It simply is not relevant to any discussion of elitism.)

So there you have it. You can be terrified of the fact that Sarah Palin thought the dinosaurs died 4,000 years ago. You can shiver at exclamations which back her “foreign policy experience” based on Alaska’a “geographic proximity” to Russia. But the point is, BULLSHIT has such a hold on this country that these things — debates about qualifications and policy — don’t even matter. It’s tempting on the outside to label the three overworked, aforementioned monsters as cute Lorax types — “mere” or “just” Semantics — but really, these three critters demonstrate the most basic, most frightening underlying assumptions in our nation and the rhetorical tools that define them.

Unless we stop digesting what Dr. Semantics, Mr. False Dichotomy, and Ms. Political Framing are concocting for us, then we’re in for an unfathomably BULLSHIT-strewn, Big Brother next eight years.

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