Abra-cadabra, Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo and Presto-Chango too!

Noted at another blog, and not verified for accuracy….the Donk debate at St Anselm’s in Manchester on Saturday tallied this use of the word “change”.

Edwards - 162 times

Clinton - 102 times

Obama - 108 times

Richardson - 31 times

All political oratory, especially of the campaign kind, is a dense aggregation of obtuse and prejudicial expressions and locutions. It isn’t intended to inform; its purpose is to confuse, generalize and to motivate people from the gut rather than the head.

As a conservative, I find lib-speak to be something other than language, a kind of incantation with infinitely flexible forms. “The people”, for instance, is broadly utilitarian to liberals. Used prudently, and in connection with what the people “want” (e.g. universal coverage), we can skirt the fact that “the people” also showed up in Red Square, at Kristallnacht and in Selma. They responded to the same compulsions, flogged along by the same sense of entitlement and deprivation manipulated by the flattering demagogue.

The people are a mighty beast, except, of course, when they respond to the siren song of liberals. Now people want “Change”, which is the boxed-and-released word-zombie in the progressive lexicon, because Change shambles out from time to time when the pheromone of discontent is in the air. Disgruntled? Worried about the future? Here’s your chance to sanctify your discontent. Ideologize your personal concerns and call for virtuous political “change”, not for yourself, but for all “the people”. Rot.

Progressives flutter over the idea of “change”, because they’ve appropriated all the successful social changes of the past 250 years as their own, even though the actors in those long-gone dramas wouldn’t abide the soft, mendacious poltroons who now claim to be their heirs.

Change is simply movement from one state to another; it means nothing by itself, but Hillary can get away with saying: “I’m not running on a promise of change. I’m running on 35 years of change”. There are more conceptual idiocies, lies and conceits per word in those two sentences than should be allowed by law, but leaving that fact alone, the sentences stand as a type of aspiration, a credential, a purple robe. Her husband had the same skill.

For that reason, Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat nominee. She can get away with such crap because the Donk Establishment is hypnotized by its own mumbo-jumbo, and because the guy who might actually CHANGE something, is Obama. They can’t have that. So stasis will become petrification, and the Democrats will lose next November.

Archived in: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Liberalism, Liberals, New Hampshire, Presidential Politics, Progressives