Gramscian Dems Play Word Games with GWOT

Although we wander about a bit, the major mission of HazZzMat is to keep you informed as to the subtle but devastating way that America's Socialist Party, the Democrats, uses language and culture to weaken and destroy American culture. This, allegedly, will reshape the argument in such a way as to destroy capitalism, devalue private property, and turn the administration of the U.S. over to the Wise Persons in the U.N. Ultimately, however, in the early part of the 21st century, these tactics are more likely to result in an American defeat in the Global War on Terror, aka GWOT.

One of the favorite tactics of the left is a gradual redefinition of national and cultural terminology to better support socialist hegemony rather than a prevailing capitalistic and democratic hegemony, a tactic much favored by Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci.

One of the ways this gradual transformation is accomplished is by the over-use of hype, such as in a radio report I heard yesterday identifying an "epidemic" of overweight children. "Epidemic," in its original sense, describes rampant diseases caused only by various microorganisms. Thus, the broadening of this nomenclature to describe social or nutritional maladjustments is scientifically absurd, though highly effective in scaring the public into focusing on the leftist agenda of the week.

The use of "epidemic" here in this sense is absolute nonsense. Kids overeat because they're underexercised and undersupervised. But calling this an "epidemic" makes it a "disease" which then enables this or that university research facility to troll for taxpayer funds like all good socialists do. These in turn will fund "studies" that will, of course, add phony statistics and research reports with foregone conclusions that will be used to bolster demands for "Federal Programs" to combat the "epidemic" of childhood obesity—a condition that, in Wonker's day, was headed off at the pass when mom turned off the TV and told us to go out and play baseball in the back yard. Tomorrow, it will "take a village" to do this—one funded by the Feds.

A more political flavor of terminology redefinition has recently surfaced, as the Dems try to undermine what support is left for the GWOT by altering how it is described. Check this out:

The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.

This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committee’s Democratic leadership doesn’t like the phrase.

A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”

The “global war on terror,” a phrase first used by President Bush shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., should not be used, according to the memo. Also banned is the phrase the “long war,” which military officials began using last year as a way of acknowledging that military operations against terrorist states and organizations would not be wrapped up in a few years.

"Colloquialisms," eh? Tell that to the bits of bone still scattered around the World Trade Center site. With Islamofascist terror cells scattered across the globe, what the hell else should we call what's going on? Tea time in Mecca? Apparently, a term like "long war," which accurately describes what we're involved in whether we like it or not, is also a "colloquialism," while presumably the much-hyped and falsely substantiated "global warming" ideology is not. How do you split the difference? Well, let the Socialists tell us themselves:

Committee staff members are told in the memo to use specific references to specific operations instead of the Bush administration’s catch phrases. The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”

“There was no political intent in doing this,” said a Democratic aide who asked not to be identified. “We were just trying to avoid catch phrases.”

Okay. Let's get this straight. "Global warming" is not a "catch phrase" but "Global War on Terror" most certainly is. You see the game. The problem with GWOT is two-fold. The term is accurate. But it was coined by a Republican Administration. Therefore, it is not an accurate description of this conflict. It is a "catch phrase." While "global warming," trumpeted by the former Veep of the Socialist Party, is most assuredly NOT a catch phrase.

What's really being said here is that the only acceptable way of describing people, places, or events is to employ terminology developed and vetted by the Democrat Party apparatus—terminology that is carefully crafted and shaped to promote their big government, socialist agenda for the U.S. No other entity, and most certainly NOT the Republican Party or its President, are allowed to craft and put in common use, terminology that supports their arguably more rational viewpoint. Thus, the absolute hypocrisy of the "Democratic aide's" proclamation that there "was no political intent in doing this." Dear readers, ANYTHING Democrats do has a political intent. Always.

The Democrats, frankly, have been brilliant over at least the past half-century in undermining the language in order to force everyone to support their world view by default. They have entirely internalized Gramsci's tactics whether they've ever read his dense prose or not.

The most phenomonally successful deployment of the tactic of redefinition in recent memory was the Clinton Administration's insistent substitution of the term "investment" for the more accurate term "spending" when describing what the Federal government does with all the money it steals from you each year. "Spending," which is what they're really doing with it, is abhorrent. It's our money, and we should be spending more of it ourselves.

But hold on there Baba-Looey. The Clintonistas patiently taught us that they're not "spending" our hard-earned money. They're "investing" it in, well, "investments," like critical studies of bovine flatulence. So now we can feel better. Because if you "spend" money, you tend to waste it. But if you "invest" it, you get something back. Or at least that's what our minds are trained to think. After all, we do it all the time ourselves to buy a house, send junior to college, or put something away for our retirement in case the Dems spend the rest of the Social Security "Trust Fund" (which doesn't exist).

By its insistent use of the term "investment" to describe the governmental redistribution of assets, the Clintonistas sanitized this activity, quietly manipulating the unthinking into resisting any hint that we might be so foolish as to cut back on "investing" in America's future, i.e., by cutting taxes. Hey, that would hurt us, right?

The reason you're getting this dissertation today is that, as we've just sketched out, the Dems are now trying to transform America's legitimate Global War on Terror into discrete, regional "conflicts" like Iraq, that somehow have no bearing on the whole. In so doing, they can further reduce the "Conflict in Iraq"—which is actually now the ground where we are facing down Al Qaeda en masse rather than in the streets of Manhattan—to "Bush's War," a small, idiosyncratic "skirmish" that they can de-fund and terminate without consequence.

Employing this proposed terminology will thus make it easier for the Democrats to sanitize their "cut and run" strategy for America's defeat, much the way they accomplished this when they abandoned Vietnam. Once having done so, they will presumably reduce "investments" in the military so that they can use the money to increase "investments" in pork barrel projects designated for Democrat-voting Congressional districts, the better to buy votes to win in 2008. After all, Clinton showed them how to spend, I mean, "invest" the "peace dividend" that occurred when the Reagan-Bush I combo ultimately caused the Berlin Wall to fall and the Cold War to conclude.

These dudes never quit, do they? But now you know. Never accept a Democrat's efforts to redefine terminology. In so doing, you will accept their Socialist premises which will make it easier for them to lighten your wallet in 2008. They're working on it already.