Professor Verlan Lewis recently injected definitional sense — into American politics

© 2018 Peter Free

 

29 October 2018

 

 

I often put the words "conservative" and "liberal" in quotation marks — why?

 

The words have only vague and momentary meanings. Especially so, when used by people, who do not have a clue what they (purportedly) meant at varying historical times.

 

Most of the prattle we hear today about the right-to-left political spectrum comes from argumentative airheads. Meaning folks, who are more concerned with their reflexive tribal affiliations, rather than with sensibly thought out political definitions and orientations.

 

 

Recently, Professor Verlan Lewis made essentially the same point

 

He wrote that:

 

 

In reality, the very meanings of . . . ideological dimensions . . . are constantly being transformed.

 

Thus, it makes no sense to describe a party moving as moving “left” or “right” over a certain period of time when the very meanings and contents of “left” and “right” are themselves changing during that time period.

 

The transformation of the Republican Party is helping to reveal this conceptual and methodological blind-spot in the political science discipline.

 

When we ask whether the GOP has moved to the “left” or the “right” under Trump, we realize that there is no clear answer, and that this question is nonsensical.

 

Rather than moving the Republican Party away from, or toward, conservatism, Trump has instead simply helped to redefine what “conservatism” now means.

 

© 2018 Verlan Lewis, The Problem of Donald Trump and the Static Spectrum Fallacy, AllAcademic.com (August 2018)

 

 

Lewis goes on to provide historical examples of identical political terms coming to denote what was once their opposite. See his page 6.

 

He subsequently points out that individual Trump Administration policies can be labeled both conservative and liberal — depending upon which political group and moment in history one uses as a referent. See his page 15.

 

 

The moral? — A good deal of American political silliness comes from — the failure to define terms and their underlying assumptions

 

Tribalists that we are (by apparently genetic nature), we happily combine toddlerish ignorance with emoting thoughtlessness.

 

Our propensity for being psychologically manipulated is humanity's core problem. Thus, we struggle with successfully coming to grips with Elites-sponsored brainwashing.

 

Given the fog that these Powers intentionally cast — especially via their corporate control of the media — it is darn difficult to tell what is true. Much less determine how to correct the ills that these Plunderers intentionally create.

 

If you have doubts about this, watch the 2018 midterm candidates' television advertisements. In my region, most of these have no educational content. The ads are transparently aimed at pushing mindless emotion's buttons. For their creators, it is a matter of putting rings through the sheep's noses and pulling. After that, sheep brand themselves. And run in easily controlled flocks.

 

I suppose humanity's ideal would be the counter-wolf, dressed in sheep's wool. That's the one who thoughtfully takes the ring out of its own nose on sticks it (way far) up Elites' backsides. And then, yanks.