Not sure that you mean it quite this way, but words in the political lexicon don't mean what they used to mean. This is what happens when the culture comes to value feeling more than thinking, when "authenticity" becomes the highest value, epithets become the coin of the realm and the understanding words becomes less important than arousing emotions.
Racism, which is a doctrine that postulates a hierarchy of races, becomes conflated with bigotry, which is disliking or discriminating someone because of their race. Nationalism somehow gets the word "white" attached to it. This then conflating a nationality - German, Italian, Polish - with race - white, black, yellow.
For that matter, on the other side of the aisle, liberal becomes an epithet - when liberalism is the Enlightenment idea that rights inhere in man and that it is the job of government to "secure these rights" to borrow the words of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, liberalism becomes conflated with socialism, somehow conflating the idea that the welfare state - which was more or less invented by conservatives - is the same as socialism - a doctrine that says that man is nothing more than a product of economics as expressed in the dialectic of history.
Indeed, where conservatives are concerned, conservative is conflated with populism. A true howler given that conservatism places an emphasis on the institutions of society in securing a stable culture and recognizes that man is deeply complex. This set against populism, which distrusts complexity, exalts the common man for his own sake and is deeply hostile to established institutions.
So it goes. Does racism mean anything anymore? Of course not. How could it in an intellectually lazy culture that has no sense of temperateness and has largely forgotten its own history and the pedigree of the ideas it claims to espouse.
So all that is left to this ignorant, self-satisfied and pathetically uneducated culture is to find words that can be sinister so that they may be employed as weapons to attack one's opponent. This because the sole purpose of words is not to convey ideas and meanings but to provide catharsis and a sense of one's own virtue.
This is what is left when culture is thinned out and the mediating institutions of society - what Burke called the "little platoons" - are dying out and all that is left is politics. Grant it a politics devoid of any purpose save power for its own sake.
Liberals? You've got to be kidding me. The person who called Trump a racist for this was a writer at the Washington Post. A liberal? Seriously?
But if you want to know the truth, this is the problem we have these days: it's not that people on the left over-use the term "racist", it's that people on the right are not ashamed of being racist anymore, which means (actual) liberals are forced to call them out constantly. Let's take Congresspeople like Steve King who literally called Latin Americans "human dirt". And "there's a lot of dirt coming from Mexico". Or Neonazis in Charlottesville screaming: "The jews will not replace us". A few decades ago, these would have been gigantic, national scandals because conservatives back then were still decent people and they had morals like everyone else. Nowadays I listen to Trump supporters and I just think: "damn, these people really don't have a filter." We live in a time where many right-wingers are quite literally proud of saying outrageously racist things. And that's why liberals are forced to use this term a lot.
That said, again, the author of this Washington Post article is definitely not a liberal. Not by my standards anyhow.
Nice lie, this literally never happened. Here's five minutes of actual research:
A guy named Chris Richards wrote an article for the Washington Post -
www.washingtonpost.com/.../...9f1166f9d_story.html
- criticising Trump's lack of imagination and understanding towards modern culture in giving Elvis the award. The article makes the following point:
"a little nod to the good old days, back when black visionaries could invent rock-and-roll, but only a white man could become the king."
Which is referring to the fact that Elvis' appropriation of black musical styles and almost direct, uncredited ripoffs of specific black works were a big contributor to his fame - everyone suddenly started liking it now that it was coming from a white guy. That's not a criticism of Elvis himself, it's simply an acknowledgement of how the times were.
So, one guy wanted to have a conversation about yet one more display of Trump's ignorance because of course Trump would throw another medal at a white cultural icon from his youth, who's already one of the most celebrated musical figures in modern history. He's a music critic, which means he probably has a background in music history (as do I), and the circumstances surrounding Elvis' fame are common knowledge in the field and plenty worth discussing.
And that's all it is, a conversation; people are allowed to bring up conversation topics, and now seemed plenty appropriate since Elvis was in the spotlight. Aren't conversations good to have? How ironic is it that people who blame "liberals" for "getting offended at everything" are so offendable themselves they'll completely misread an article by ONE journalist of UNSPECIFIED political leaning and attribute it to "liberals"? People need to understand that this isn't even a vocal minority, because this "vocal minority" itself is a fabrication of people like this thread owner.
Haha The liberals and far left are nothin but a hound dog.
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Really wish people would stop lumping all liberals together... I'm left leaning but I love elvis and there's nothing racist about him winning an award
*libtards
And it's B all the way, no one uses that word more than a libtard, they use it way too much and mainly in situations like this where racism is generated by people (pardon me: libtards) as no indication of race is found on the song ghetto, but they make it be through their assumptions in hope to fulfill whichever evil-driven reason they have to do so. If you ask me, they are the real racists.
Racist is still a meaningfull term in my opinion. I do agree that many liberals use it too liberally and it does muddy the meaning, it's constantly getting more vague and less personal/meaningfull when it's said to you. As a liberal myself, I try to avoid such terms unless I feel like the person is being seriously hateful and ignorant.
"Racist" is the term the left uses because they don't have any actual ideas or points to make. So they use it as a distraction from the national discussion since they are losing it so badly. If you can't win, distract, and that is all the left does 24/7/365. I'm sure the left is as sick of shouting racist about EVERYTHING as the rest of the country is of hearing it. But they don't have anything else to offer. That's it. Their ideology is completely bankrupt and in its death throes.
This is exactly why the charge of "racism!" these days can't be taken seriously anymore. The idea that honoring Elvis Presley with a posthumous Medal of Freedom is "racism!" is ludicrous. To the deranged and insane Left, "racism!" is anything and everything under the sun that they disagree with, which in this case is the mere fact that President Trump honored a white man who was one of the founding figures in rock and roll.
Yeah, coming from someone who has racist behaviors, and rhetoric... now liberals calling everything racist, is like some woman crying #metoo for everything... or conservatives calling all immigrants or minorities, rapist, murdering, not he greatest people, shitty, thug people.. oh way, guess no matter who you all call out, your all hypocrites!!! Go figure... lol
First of all I’d like us to stop calling liberals, liberals and call them Bolsheviks instead, cause that’s what they really are.
EVERYTHING is racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamaphobic or in some way offensive to someone now. I think all these offended people should get some Monostat 7 to cure their yeast infections.
Also can someone explain to me why exactly the left hates whites so bad?
Irresponsibly using deeply impactful labels such as racist, misogynist, and especially NAZI, has diluted their meanings to the point where they no longer carry the weight they deserve. Our shameless excess of such designations kinda leaves us nowhere to go in terms of effective language
It isn't anything to do with liberalism which really doesn't mean what you think it means anyway
There is a lot of predominantly younger people who have taken to using the term as a generalized catch all term for any bigotry or anything that even resembles bigotry
It is used as incorrectly as the term liberal is and it is just a little silly
Not familiar with who said what but apparently elvis was mixed race, mostly white, but also part cherokee indian.
I dunno. I love Elvis. I have songs of his on my phone.
Not even sure of what your point is. You claim, no one should judge "Conservatives" by the things a few folks who claim to be Conservative say or do.
But you are all to happy to do that to supposed "Liberals".
Racist will always mean something, however the definition of all words change. Some loose their original meaning, and some hone in on it
*margarita in one hand, peanuts in the other*
There's nothing racist about him getting an award. It's celebrating the achievement of someone, and celebrating them doing something worthy of receiving said award. I'm pleased that it went to someone based on merit, not box ticking by PC bureaucrats.
Simples...
I don't know if it's racist I wouldn't have given Elvis a freedom medal because he was a singer not a soldier, speaker, humanitarian, etc.
For what? Singing songs and spending money on clothes and cars? How about someone who is alive and is making a difference, no matter what gender or color?
I agree with the OP's that state STOP calling these Stalinist's " liberals " they are very far removed from liberal. Cultural Marxist indoctrinated , with a Stalinist attitude to those that do not agree totally with their Communist views.
He should have just pardoned a bunch of criminals and turned them loose on the streets like that last guy that was slumming around in the White House for a few years did.
From how sensitive people are these days, anything is racist.
Liberals destroy the meaning of every word they touch. Including "liberal."
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