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The only time I stoop to name calling is when I’m going for a particular comedic effect.

There’s nothing particularly clever, witty, or amusing about “American Taliban”, though, so I’d never use it.

Name calling is one thing. If you say a certain group of politicos are “Stooges,” “Keystone Cops,” or “full of bureaucrap” ... you can say you’re making a comedic point, and that if anyone is defamed by it, it’s the original Three Stooges (who get no respect at all).

But when you compare your target to Hitler, Stalin, or the Taliban, you are casting an aspersion of toxic and active inhumanity that does not apply, relate, or compare to anything in American Politics. It’s like equating the acts of Jennifer “Runaway Bride” Wilbanks with those of Charles “Helter Skelter” Manson. You are in effect whitewashing some of history’s worst crimes … in order to play a political word game.

I’m sick of it.

Just to be a semantic boob for a moment:

and it is unfair and dishonest to insinuate that anyone in this country is of the same mindset, no matter what their domestic politics are.

Actually, there are people in this country who think like that. I have no idea what the size or percentage is, but in a country of 300 million, chances are we do have people who think like this.

I don’t have any real qualms with “American Taliban”, because it’s the same type of “over the top for effect” phrase that everyone employs in politics. If you want to get your point across with impact and in a way that people will remember, you use these weird little phrases.

If nothing else, “American Taliban” is a good phrase, just from an impact POV. It’s short, flows off the tongue well, and is eaily remembered. It also gives an immediate word-picture of what you’re talking about. You could spend an hour and devote thousands of words warning about religious fundamentalists, or you could just refer to them as the “American Taliban.” Which one will people remember? Plus, there’s a real good chance that people will automatically know what you’re talking about when you say it, so it saves you the effort of explaining it and thus losing the original impact.

Now, I don’t agree with its use, unless I can use it to mock someone, but I can appreciate it for what it is.

and it is unfair and dishonest to insinuate that anyone in this country is of the same mindset, no matter what their domestic politics are.

Actually, there are people in this country who think like that. I have no idea what the size or percentage is, but in a country of 300 million, chances are we do have people who think like this.

(Darnit paul, I was going to say that.) I’ve met a few. Indeed, my stepmother occasionally (inadvertently) reminds me that the Nazis were elected.

But Ried’s general point, with respect to people that actually get elected, is correct. Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay don’t deserve to be compared to the Nazi’s or the Taliban, because they’re not. And Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich don’t deserve to be compared to Communists, because they’re not.

Even if one or two percent of the people who voted for them are.

Recall that J.B. Stoner (an _actual _ Nazi) still got 3% of the vote for Georgia Lieutenant Governor as little as fifteen years ago. Recall also that even Lester Maddux, who might himself tempt such a label, wouldn’t even talk to the guy.

Paul: “Just to be a semantic boob for a moment”

...and surely knowing I would respond accordingly…

“Actually, there are people in this country who think like that.”

Yes, you and Sir Fleshy are correct. There are indeed people who think like that. Just as there are people like Eric Rudolph. Does that mean it is accurate to condemn all North Carolina Baptists as theocratic terrorists? (keeping in mind you’re at the web site of … a North Carolina Baptist, born and bred)

“If you want to get your point across with impact and in a way that people will remember, you use these weird little phrases.”

Yeah, that’s my point, I will remember it. Just not favorably. It’s preaching to the choir.

“You could spend an hour and devote thousands of words warning about religious fundamentalists, or you could just refer to them as the ‘American Taliban.’ Which one will people remember?”

So, you’re saying it’s a form of lazy shorthand designed to quickly and easily impugn a group by comparing them to an emphatically worse group? And the important thing is that it saves them keystrokes, yet you still know what they mean?

But that’s pretty much what I’m saying. It is “shrthnd” (hey, I saved two letters, but you still knew what I meant!) that is intellectually lazy … to the point of being intellectually dishonest, a form of propaganda. Really bad propaganda, that, in my opinion, stains the memory of thousands of Americans (many of them Manhattan liberals, peers of those now slinging this phrase) who were murdered by those the Taliban supported.

But let me think. “Right wing theocrats” may be a more accurate phrase with similar impact, but it is 2 letters and one space longer than “American Taliban” ... maybe we can make it an acronym, RWT, like MSM … for everyone’s convenience.

Which reminds me of what you said about the label “MSM”. Remember? “I can’t help but think of the Soviet epithet ‘bourgeois press’ every time I see ‘MSM’ used. Actually, a lot of stuff reminds me of Soviet tactics and propaganda these days.”

Me, too. “American Taliban” sounds like something straight out of the Politburo.

Here’s a similar case of rhetoric raised above historical fact: Amnesty International is calling Guantanamo the “gulag of our times.” The Washington Post responds:

“Like Amnesty, we, too, have written extensively about U.S. prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, in Afghanistan and in Iraq [...] But we draw the line at the use of the word “gulag” or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime. Abuses there—including new evidence of desecrating the Koran—have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military. The Soviet gulag, by contrast, was a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin’s lifetime and whose existence was not acknowledged until after his death. Its modern equivalent is not Guantanamo Bay, but the prisons of Cuba, where Amnesty itself says a new generation of prisoners of conscience reside; or the labor camps of North Korea, which were set up on Stalinist lines; or China’s laogai , the true size of which isn’t even known…”

“Worrying about the use of a word may seem like mere semantics, but it is not. Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty’s legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies and weakens the force of its investigations of prison systems in closed societies. It also gives the administration another excuse to dismiss valid objections to its policies as ‘hysterical.’”

Yeah, for the most part, it’s political shorthand, but I don’t think it’s used to save keystrokes, as it’s something that’s obviously better said than written.

“MSM” is an ugly kluge that was tailor-built for text communication by someone with a lack of imagination or creative ability. It’s not an acronym that you can say like “NASA”, which makes its use in actual conversation awkward and clumsy. Plus, if you were to actually say “MSM” most people would look at you like you were nuts. You’d have to explain it, but by then you’ve lost the impact. The only people who would get it right off the bat are those who share your fishbowl.

Also, “MSM” is almost always used in a specific way for a specific purpose by a specific lot, pegging out the Soviet-O-Meter. I don’t think it’s wrong to recognize the forms, even if they’re not being used for the exact same purpose as originally intended.

“American Taliban” is different because you could say it just about anywhere and people will know what you’re talking about without explanation. It’s a concise, effective word-picture phrase. It rolls off the tongue and contains very few syllables. I can appreciate it even if I don’t like it; unlike MSM, which is about as ugly as the people who use it.

I agree that both are stupid, but I’ve heard “American Taliban” used a lot more often than “MSM” in real life. Personally, I call everyone monkeys so they’ll all hate me.

Soviets, Nazis, Talibans – why not go ahead and peg the hyperbole-ometer? Someone else is going to, and then you’re naught but a pedantic, semantic boob for bothering to think of something that’s less than demonic.

I’ve been working on a bad-ass tagline for you centrists, but you’re all just so lamely tepid that I’m completely stuck.

Paul: “MSM is almost always used in a specific way for a specific purpose by a specific lot, pegging out the Soviet-O-Meter”

Well, it looks to me like “American Taliban” fits that description perfectly. Plus, I’ve seen “MSM” used by those on the left and the right (poor media, no one likes them). But not “American Taliban,” it’s always “used in a specific way for a specific purpose by a specific lot.”

Scott: “Soviets, Nazis, Talibans – why not go ahead and peg the hyperbole-ometer? Someone else is going to, and then you’re naught but a pedantic, semantic boob for bothering to think of something that’s less than demonic.”

Sorry, this is the “Jimmy jumped off the Empire State Building first” argument. Or the “someday someone might stick a red hot branding iron up my ass, so I’ll do it first” argument. Plus, there’s a market for pedantic, semantic boobs like me.

You keep coming back, don’t you?

I understand the occasional steam vent in which you spout about whatever group has angered you. I do that myself. I’m talking about those whose tone and rhetoric is overheated pretty much anytime they approach the keyboard. The sites that are a diet of nothing but red meat. Don’t they know what that can do to your colon?

“I’ve been working on a bad-ass tagline for you centrists, but you’re all just so lamely tepid that I’m completely stuck.”

Unitarian Jihad has already somewhat explored this difficult issue.

“You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm!”

“We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other!”

“Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.”

Plus, I’ve seen “MSM” used by those on the left and the right (poor media, no one likes them). But not “American Taliban,” it’s always “used in a specific way for a specific purpose by a specific lot.”

But not in real life, which is what I was talking about. It’s obvious that MSM was conceived in, and is used for, a text-only medium, while “American Taliban” is suited for spoken-word communication.

I could spend all day dissecting “MSM” from different angles. For instance, one use of the phrase is a de facto admission that you’re on the lunatic fringe. Another interpretation could be the punk mystique and the disdain for anything generic and mainstream, which is odd considering that the people who use it the most are The Man and present themselves as having the will of the majority on their side (i.e., the Mainstream), yet at the same time bash that same mainstream when it comes to the media. It could be that the term “liberal media,” which they’ve used since their early KKK days, wasn’t really catching fire anymore, so they went with this new term.

It’s even more funny because, as you mentioned, people on the Left have started using it because they think the media is on the side of the Right! When you add in the fact that they believe themselves to be on the outside and not mainstream, you have a major case of cognitive dissonance just trying to wrap your head around this stupid little acronym and its uses.

And trust me, I’ve actually heard a fairly diverse group of people use the phrase “American Taliban” as well, but in real life as opposed to wacko pundit sites on the internet. It’s not as popular as “That’s gay,” but it is around the level of “I’m Rick James, bitch!” It also has a bunch of varations on the term, but the same theme is maintained. “Holy-Rollers” and “Jesus Freaks” are old and I think a lot of people are taken with the novelty of using a new term for moral busybodies. It’s not half as bad as things I’ve heard used about Muslims.

I assumed Scott was being ironic.

I was thinking more sarcasm, EF. I’m not bright enough for irony.

You sell yourself short, Scott. Knock it off.