What the Hell Happened?

First of all, screw you, Nate Silver.

In 2012, every state that you identified as leaning or likely Obama actually DID vote for Obama. What the hell happened this time?!!

Thanks a lot for the false reassurance.

Secondly, on a completely different track, I’d like to pose a question: how is Hillary Clinton like the Dalai Lama?

No, she is not a beloved Buddhist pacifist, but she is a person who is widely admired around the world yet disliked at home. Because of her political skills and her work on behalf of children and families, she is one of America’s most well regarded figures on the international stage. The Washington Post, for example, published the results of a survey showing that she would win anywhere from 73 to 97 per cent of the votes if people from countries like Mexico, Canada, Germany and Australia could vote for her. But in the U.S. she is unpopular. And she is unpopular because the Republican Party, supported by Fox News and right-wing talk radio have spent decades portraying her as a hideously evil and conniving liar.

Same thing happened to the Dalai Lama. The Chinese government has spent decades smearing him to the point where he, like Hillary Clinton, is admired around the world, but despised in his own country. (The Chinese government, by the way, had its reasons for trashing the Dalai Lama’s reputation, but I won’t go into them here.)

My point is that you can destroy a public figure through gross misrepresentations if you control the media (as in China), or you control a huge chunk of the media (as conservative Republicans control Fox News and talk radio) and if you don’t mind making stuff up.

Hillary Clinton, like all politicians, can be criticized for some of her actions, but she is nothing like the bizarre caricature of a villainous monster that the right-wingers have succeeded in conjuring up; and our allies in countries like Germany, the UK, France, etc., know this.

Unfortunately, enough Americans have bought the evil Hillary story that her presidential bid was doomed. I promise you that were the Dalai Lama to run for president in China, he would do far worse there than Hillary did here. Character assassination works.

My third and final point is that racism continues to be a useful political tool. We have been repeatedly warned that many voters are enraged and they want change. This is true, but why would a longing for change result in votes for a man who opposes raising the minimum wage and wants to give more tax cuts to the wealthy - the very individuals, in other words, whose control of the economy has made life hard for the working class?

One answer to this, I believe, can be found in Arlie Hochshild’s recent study of working class Louisianans, Strangers in Their Own Land. An important point that Hochschild makes is that though the economic and environmental problems these folks face are a result of corporate policies, their inclination is to blame their troubles on people from other countries or of different races. This, of course, is one key to Trump’s victory: he encouraged people to direct blame at “those who are not like us” and thereby inspired a turbulent uprising.

But if Trump’s policies don’t help these troubled Americans (and I don’t see how they can), what then? Don’t ask me. I don’t know any more than Nate Silver does.

But, in the meantime, I suppose the best advice I’ve seen lately is that offered by David Leonhardt of the New York Times. He says that whatever else happens over the next four years, we need to concentrate on working with Republicans who believe in global warming to advance policies that can thwart this looming disaster. So…back to work, everybody.

       And, oh all right. I forgive you, Nate.

               (Thanks for the image, New Yorker)

When You Think of Bullshit...

Some people are saying I wrote an “important article” on a topic in sociolinguistics. The modesty for which I am so well known prevents me from making this claim myself, but I can’t help what other people are saying, right? To be specific, linguist Michael Adams, in his recent book, In Praise of Profanity, wrote this: “In an important article, ‘On Swearwords and Slang,’ Robert L. Moore (2012) attempts to distinguish slang from profanity.”

Admittedly, the issues that linguists consider important might be different from those that the linguistically benighted deem worthy. Some people want to end world hunger, others want to distinguish slang from swearwords. Chacun à son goût.

My interest in this topic was provoked when an anonymous reviewer of an earlier article admonished me for putting slang and swearwords into a single lexemic category. So, looking at these two kinds of words closely, I was struck by the way they were so often linked but also by the fact that they were clearly not exactly the same thing. So, I sought the help of a number of Rollins students who dutifully filled out questionnaires asking them to categorize some of the words and phrases found in expressions like these:

“Who boogerbooing?...Jig, I don’t have to. Talking about me with a beat chick scoffing a hot dog! You must not of seen me…”

And, in a more poetical vein,

“He banked the six and seven cross-side

He took the motherfucking eight for a goddamn ride”

Based on what my students indicated, and backed up by what a similar sample of Chinese responses from Beijing students showed, I came to the conclusion that slang and swearwords are universal categories that serve separate universal social/psychological functions. The latter is prototypically used to express intense, often negative, emotion, while the former is prototypically used to inspire an ethos of egalitarian informality. These linguistic categories overlap in usage, largely because they share an emphasis on informality and the expression of affect. But they are prototypically separable and linked to specific design features of human sociality.

Anyway, it is nice to know that somebody has read one’s work and approved of it. Also, it occurs to me that if I write another 10 or 20 “important” articles on swearwords, I could become an academic big shot in linguistics; a kind of Jane Goodall of dirty words. If that happens, I intend to assume a cool slangy nickname like Badass Bob. Actually better than a slangy nickname would be a catch phrase. I’m open to suggestions, but right now I’m toying with this one: “When you think of bullshit, think of me.”

       Family Tree of Indo-European Languages 

Trump Speaks at Gettysburg, November 1963

In the fall of 1863 Abraham Lincoln spoke briefly and eloquently in a ceremony at Gettysburg, dedicated to honoring the men who fell in that terrible battle. But what if it weren't President Lincoln speaking? What if it had been President Trump?


       President Trump’s Gettysburg Rally

Four score and whatever our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that some day it could be made great again.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether America, or any nation can long endure unless it is led by an astonishingly healthy and smart guy like me. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives. But should we do this?
 
In a larger sense, a really huge sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground because these men are losers. They’re dead and buried. I like soldiers who don’t get killed. We’re not going to whip the Rebels if our guys keep dying by the thousands! The brave men, at least the living ones, who struggled here, have consecrated this battlefield, but not as much as my speech will. The world will little note, nor long remember what they did here, but it can never forget what I’m saying here. Cause I have the best words. Now it is for us the living to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far advanced – my re-election. It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—a Trump victory in 1864! From this battlefield victory (which I would have won even sooner because I know more than the generals) everyone should take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that I get four more years. Only in that case will these dead men (losers!) not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of greatness—and this government shall not perish from the earth, this government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Oh, who am I kidding? I mean government of the people, by the people, and for me, Donald Trump. 

Believe me.