Asking For A Friend

On Page One of today's @nytimes: "Trump's Backers Use 'Devil Terms' to Rally Voters"@jenmercieca: "They are using what are called ‘devil terms’ — things that are so unquestionably bad that you can't have a debate about them" https://t.co/IBqOCQBHLR pic.twitter.com/SSeudXqqva

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 23, 2022

Terns like:

Liberal?

“Demonrat”?

Commie? Dirty Commie? Filthy rotten dirty Commie?

Socialist?

Fascist?

Nazi?

Dirty hippies?

Phrases like:

“America! Love it or leave it!”

“My country right or wrong!”

“N***** lover!”  Whoops! How’d that get in there?

Lots of nasty terms in American culture and politics. Labeling them “devil terms” is new. Nice way of defining things if your goal is to demonize (pun intended) or just define these as darker days than ever before. Because, things you can’t debate? That’s been done before.

Was Jefferson really expected to debate whether or not he was hermaphroditic?

pic.twitter.com/DKiaj3CzZz

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 23, 2022