Political Name-Calling

The far-right has long been enamored with personal insults. When losing on-line arguments, conservatives frequently retreat to stock juvenile responses like "Libtard, go find your safe space !" or "Well, you're a snowflake !".

So it was no surprise when Donald Trump, master of the second-grade insult, successfully took over the Republican Party. Rattling-off ironically-projective names like "Little Marco", "Low Energy Jeb", "Lyin' Ted", "Crazy Bernie" and "Crooked Hillary", Trump spoke to the party faithful at a level that they could understand.

Trump is by no means the first to introduce name-calling into right-wing politics. There is a tradition of name calling by conservatives. Years of vilification turned the perfectly-good and noble term, "liberal", into a sneering pejorative. Since 1940, many conservatives have refused to use the adjective, "Democratic", insisting on ignorant, nails-on-chalkboard terms like "Democrat Party".

No, name-calling by the right is certainly not new. However, the ascendance of Trump and his alt-Right supporters have taken name-calling to a whole new level. A entirely new dictionary of stupid invectives has entered our political discourse, making it even more difficult to hold a civil debate on policy. Derogatory names like "beta", "cuck", "libtard", "buttercup", "cupcake", and "snowflake" are common on chat sites where the Right congregates.

Use of the term, "snowflake" by the Right is especially ironic. A "snowflake" is someone who is too easily offended, or too fragile. By this definition the Right's leader, Donald Trump, is the most fragile snowflake of them all. He constantly complains about the people who are "mean" to him. At a Coast Guard graduation ceremony, Trump recently whined, "Look at the way I've been treated lately. Especially by the media. No politician in history has been treated worse or more unfairly !"

In an extreme example of projection, conservative darling Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke frequently uses the term "snowflake" in describing progressives. This is the same David Clarke who ordered his deputies detain a man at the Milwaukee Airport for looking at Clarke in a mean way.

One of the silliest of alt-right insults is the term "SJW", short for Social Justice Warrior. The alt-right sneeringly uses this term as an insult. This is absurd. What is wrong with social justice? What is wrong with standing-up for the oppressed, the weak, those who have no voice of their own? What is wrong with insisting that every group in society should have the same rights and freedoms ?

Some of the most admired people who ever lived were social justice warriors, standing-up for the oppressed. Abraham Lincoln was an SJW. Susan B. Anthony was an SJW. Father Damien was an SJW. Martin Luther King was an SJW. Gandhi was an SJW. Mother Theresa was an SJW. Jesus Christ was an SJW.

In the Right's new topsy-turvy reality, people who should be society's heroes, the best among us, are derided as "social justice warriors". Misogynists, racists, xenophobes, and traitors like our President are held-up for admiration. Such a scrambled view of the world is hard to comprehend.

In our deeply divided country, political discourse has become increasingly hostile. Our President has made juvenile name-calling seem normal. An entire slanguage of new insults has entered our debates from the alt-right. If we ever want to return to functional bipartisan government, if we ever want to return to civil discussion, the silly political name-calling has got to stop.