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[quote=TheManWithAUsername][quote=Anonymous][quote=TheManWithAUsername]I don't think the rank and file are employing a tactic. That's part of the sad reality. Relative to this, I'd group the Reps roughly as follows:
1) a small group elite leadership in government and media who employ these as tactics, though now perhaps habit or compulsion;
2) a very large group of people thoughtlessly believing it and parroting it, and therefore in great anxiety;
3) a smaller group of people outside of that process.

...

It's fairly easy to distinguish between 2 and 3, because people in 2 say ridiculous things like Obama hates business and vilifies business leaders daily. They also tend to use the Rep/Faux talking points, like "class warfare." That's not an assumption; it's a judgment, one with which you're free to disagree.[/quote]
Why are you so convinced about the nature of group 2? That would be a very hard thing to be sure of, it seems to me.[/quote]
Let's look at the situation. I encounter someone who, without any support, says that it "seems" to him/her that Obama vilifies business as evil on a daily basis.

This is a ridiculous, indefensible statement. (Well, the "seems" language in a sense makes it invulnerable, but that doesn't really change the analysis.) We ask ourselves where from where this idea may have come. Why do things "seem" that way to this person?

It's possible that the person somehow arrived at this conclusion on his/her own. I'd like to think that random insanity isn't as prevalent as it would have to be to explain the many people saying things like this. I also know that Rep political and media leaders have been pushing this idea for weeks on Faux, and that 40% of people rely on Faux as their primary "news" source. Are you seriously going to say that it's a leap to connect the two?

[quote=Anonymous]When a lot of people say "class warfare" I take them to mean something like telling average and low-income people that the wealthy are harming them somehow and should be better controlled or perhaps punished for their wealth. You may prefer another phrase but it isn't a content-free phrase.[/quote]
I don't know why we would take them to mean anything in particular, given the huge numbers of people who regularly abuse the term "socialist." But most clearly are not using it that way, because they accuse the Dem leadership of "class warfare" merely for proposing higher taxes.

I agree that it has slightly more content than "liberal" and "socialist," as used by Reps/Faux. Those terms basically just mean "poopie-head." They started abusing "liberal," but it lost its punch with overuse, so they ramped things up with this administration. I assume that the next Dem president will be a "communist," but I don't know where we'll go from there. But "class warfare" is still being warped beyond recognition, very deliberately by the Rep/Faux elite and recklessly by "group 2."

[quote=Anonymous]And if a lot of people use it because it came from a "talking point," well that's how shorter phrases that convey a larger idea are used. It's a matter of shorthand.[/quote]
Yeah - almost always, it's shorthand for "thing that Dems are doing to which you should object." And the specific term is carefully chosen by Frank Luntz for emotional impact, not meaning.[/quote]

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