The Official English - Democratish Lexicon

I really let my guard down while enjoying a cup of coffee recently with my close friends James Carville and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  

Debbie – that sweetheart – gently prodded me, “Hey, Steve-o, why the long face?”  

I thought for a minute before confiding that I was discouraged, really discouraged.  “You guys are so good with words,” I explained.  “Why, oh why, are my guys never as good with rhetoric as you guys are?!”  

James smiled broadly (like the Grinch did when concocting his plan to steal Christmas from the Whos, but in a genuinely warm way), put his arm around me, and, in a voice I’d not heard him use before, said: “Stephen, old chap, because of your good name, I’ve decided to let you in on a little secret, a peak behind the kimono, so to speak.”  “You see, it’s not so much our rhetoric as how we define terms and words…” 

“De-define, w-w-words?” I interjected incredulously. 

“Naturally,” James continued.  “In fact, I’d be happy to give you a copy of the DNC’s Official English - Democratish Lexicon, as long as you don't share it with anyone objectionable.”  

Debbie, never one to marginalize the down-trodden, nonetheless became notably concerned: “Jimmy, dear, is that really a wise choice?  I mean, Steve’s a great guy, and I love our discussions about B1G football and everything, but he’s…well…he IS one of ‘them’, after all.”

“Now, Deborah,” James reassured, “Stephen’s not going to share this with those rascals.  Just relax and eat your scone.”

Of course, I simply couldn’t promise James – kind gentleman that he is – that I would honor his expectations.  But, friends, I hope you’ll understand the urgency of my request to keep this lexicon between us.  If it ever gets back to James & Debbie that I shared this with you, some of my deepest friendships might be in jeopardy. 

I share with you now, and with some apprehension, The Official Lexicon of the Democratic National Committee:

Big Oil: an industry that pays an average of 45% of its profits in taxes, which is about 55% too low.

Capital: something we don’t really understand, but which the banks should make more available to nail salons and un-creditworthy personal borrowers. 

Change: something we regularly confuse with progress, and base entirely on visceral reactions to unpleasant stimuli.

Clinton, William Jefferson: a serial philanderer who will always remain a champion for women’s rights.

Constitution, The U.S.: a terribly dated historical document which consistently gets in the way of our legislative ambitions. 

Corporations: groups of people who have acquired their wealth illegitimately, almost exclusively by robbing widows and orphans, and by exploiting their employees.

Crime: the necessary result of not implementing big enough social programs (See also “Social Safety Net”).

Defense: that part of the Federal budget which is always permissible to cut.

Economic Growth: the natural intermediate and long-term trajectory of market economies, but which we also fantasize wouldn't really happen without our meddling and, therefore, provides us a consistently excellent opportunity to distract voters with make-believe promises of "creating jobs."

Europe: a group of social democracies which rely on US defense spending to protect cradle-to-grave paternalism, and the primary antidote for our self-loathing.

Fair Share: any amount of money the majority is able to confiscate legislatively from wealthy people.

Forward!: careening, but said in a way that stokes our hope (See Also: “Hope”).

Gay Marriage: a political lever pulled by President Obama during the summer of 2012 to shore up our base, but which is – under no circumstances – to be understood as a ‘flip-flop.’

Government: a large, public kibbutz financed by a relatively small number of people who are neither welcomed by, nor interested in joining, our collective.

Guns: objects not covered by the Second Amendment.

Hope: wishful thinking.

Hurricane Katrina: a series of events in 2005 through which a sadistic President Bush was able to force African-Americans into the miserable conditions of the Superdome.  

Investment: a government expenditure made by people who don’t understand investing.

Iraq War: a military conflict lost by President Bush, but won by President Obama when he withdrew U.S. troops.

Islam: a theocratic political system which, because many of its adherents have brown skin, must be tolerated more so than Christians groups, whom we understand to be comprised almost exclusively of ignorant southern crackers.  

Israel: An annoying little country of 8 million people, which we imagine consistently oppresses the 200 million Arabs surrounding it, but to which we must also give lip-service support because her offspring are one of our key constituent groups.   

Labor: the people actually doing all the country's real work, in 40 or fewer hours per week.

Leading from Behind: Not leading, but couched in a way that seems like leading.

Liberal: socially permissive, economically totalitarian.

Liberty: freedom, as long as freedom actually means equality.

Lie: a means of deception used frequently by Republicans.  (Note: deception used to usher in our preferred societal order is not lying, but persuasion.)  

Macroeconomics: a collection of complex mathematical models which can be easily bent to support our political goals.

Market, The Free: an evil institution which can be made to behave through enacting new laws.

Middle Class: anyone for whom President Obama claims he will not raise taxes.

NPR: National Proletarian Radio – one of our news outlets which, along with the New York Times and the New Yorker, helps us convince ourselves that big words equate with clear thinking. 

 

Poverty: a measure of how much one person has compared to another person.  (Note: this term is never to be construed as having inadequate means of obtaining the basic necessities of life.)

Racism: the sole explanation for white people not voting for President Obama.

Red Tape: a terrible impediment to true recovery during a natural disaster, but absolutely crucial to true recovery during an economic disaster.

Revenue: taxes.

Rights: any of our desires, wishes, or preferences which, when we speak of them frequently enough, long enough will cause others to believe that they actually are rights.

Rock the Vote: a strategy to help largely uninformed and primarily left-leaning young adults exercise their right to select our nation's leaders.

Social Safety Net: the primary mechanism through which we acquire votes. 

Socialism: a term we hate, but which also aptly characterizes the implications of those economic policies we hold dear.

Stimulus: any government expense intended to raise aggregate demand sustainably, regardless of whether it accomplishes its intended goal.

Supreme Court: that bothersome third branch of the Federal government which should be, but isn't yet, subject to the legislature, and which is needlessly fascinated with the Constitution (See Also: "Constitution, U.S.").

Taxes: a means not of meeting public expenses, but of funding social programs (See: “Social Safety Net”) and placating our driving sense of guilt (See Also: “Europe”).

Tax-payers: primarily those individuals not bearing the burden of paying a meaningful amount of the total tax.

Undocumented Immigrant: someone who is living here illegally but is, nonetheless, not breaking any laws.

Unions: anachronistic mechanisms once useful for improving working conditions but which have long since been supplanted by numerous laws and bureaus like OSHA and the Department of Labor.  Such organizations also purport to be authentically patriotic while paradoxically espousing Marxist ideology.  Most importantly, they are a crucial means of securing votes for our party. 

Vice President: the ceremonial title given to a crazy old white guy whose presence, though terribly embarrassing, we hope (See Also: "Hope") will assuage the concerns of rational voters appalled by President Obama’s utter lack of executive leadership ability.

Voter ID Laws: a Republican strategy to prevent us from voting on behalf of the deceased, who clearly would be voting for our candidates if they were still able, and thus are at risk of becoming disenfranchised simply by their inability to access life with a reasonable effort. (Note: may also be used in concert with “Racism”).

Wall Street: a collection of deeply-hated financial institutions that do things we 1) truly don’t understand but nevertheless must 2) always regulate more thoroughly. 

War on Women: one of our most successful recent attack tactics, premised on the paranoid notion that defending a young human’s right to life is tantamount to misogyny.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: threats which we (along with the British, Russians, and French) genuinely believed were real, until we discovered they weren’t real, at which point we convinced ourselves that we had never believed that they were real, and that the Republicans had lied to us about their existence.