I agree with this. Social programs and a strong federal government were tolerated (due to fear among conservatives) in the US a lot more during the Cold War. Now there’s a free-for-all to dismantle the barest hint of socialism, especially (or primarily) if it benefits non-Whites, non-Christians, etc.
Until Trump himself starts showing some signs of cracking mentally, his supporters are going to continue to back him. And, he has supporters in all three branches of government.
Short of you voting for Trump and needing health care or something why would they be telling you that?
I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
You mean moreso than he already does? I have trouble imagining what more signs would be needed for this to happen.
He himself set the standard: shooting someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight.
I think in that case his hardcore support would plummet to, say, 28%.
I worked with a guy a whiles back (~2000) in the northeast, it just boggled my mind… He was a programmer, technically smart… but he’d listen to Rush Limbaugh non-stop… I always thought it was just a one-off, I mean I always believed that people just pretended to love that shit but didn’t actually buy into it… But then again, another guy at that company was a full-on Jehovah’s Witness, and I really liked him…
The strength of being surrounding by affirmed ignorance is stronger than I ever thought.
Support for Nixon among Republicans never fell below 50% - and that was before the extreme partisanship we have now.
The WaPo attempts to answer the question posed in the original post:
A little late to the party, but this isn’t a code word. It’s literally the original meaning of hysterical. Hysteria - Wikipedia
Well, my greek is a little rusty. So is my egyptian and latin. So you are saying I should never use that word because of it’s root meaning in another language that has nothing to do with how 99.9% of the people use it now?
Damn, there has to be a newsletter or e-mail alert I can subscribe to learn this stuff. Any other trigger words I may have missed that I should never use again?
Scuzz, it’s been the “root meaning” in English as well. I don’t have any interest in playing PC police and think people are often overly sensitive, but you’re being a little obtuse here. :)
It’s the same root as hysterectomy. It’s pretty clearly emblematic of a quasi-scientific medical term that’s heavily gendered. I don’t think in this case backing off its use is a case of PC witchhuntery.
Well, I think it is crazy to make a big deal over someone’s use of the word hysterical, especially when literally all anyone knows about the guy they probably learned in that short article.
It’s part of a larger narrative about people shushing Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. A bit overblown, maybe, but these are tetchy times.
It’s more that he’s calling a woman hysterical for really no reason beyond the fact that she is a woman who is strongly expressing her opinion.
This.
Yes, exactly this. I don’t think hysteria needs to be some sort of trigger word we need to keep people safe from. It was the context of its usage that I found a little demeaning. I don’t get irritated when an African-American comedian uses the n-word casually in a routine, but I do when I hear a white hillbilly refer to black people that way. It’s the context.
And you know that for sure because? Because he is a right winger and she is a woman? Is that the only reason you know that to be true?
And the fact that she wasn’t hysterical?