I cringe when I read or hear someone, often an otherwise liberal reporter or lawmaker, refer to the looting Republican gangsters as “conservatives” fighting for “conservative” causes. To conserve means, according to Merriam Webster, “to keep in a safe or sound state” … to “avoid wasteful or destructive use” — a far cry from the Republicans who control Congress, the White House and 26 state houses who want to loot the treasury, heralding a 1% give-away tax scam bill that will add a trillion dollars plus to our deficit by 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Conserve the public treasury? No, this is generational robbery to lay the groundwork for the privatization of Medicare and Social Security, social safety nets House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and their fellow looters have no interest in conserving or protecting. Conserve federal department budgets? Hell no, unless it’s the Department of War’s (I refuse to call it “defense”) military budget, and in that case it’s not about conserving but expanding to become the most bloated military budget — 700-billion— in world history, 14 times larger than the Kremlin’s military budget and more than the military budgets of Russia, China, Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India and France.
We must stop referring to these plunderers, saboteurs and spendthrifts (too nice, but you get my drift ...) as conservatives, lest we lend legitimacy to their destructive schemes to undermine the U.S. government and federal departments created to protect our environment, workers’ safety, consumer rights, etc.
Calling someone who votes to gut the environmental protection agency and seize public lands a “conservative” is akin to describing a torch-burning hate-spewing Neo-Nazi as a nationalist.
We’ve got to stop using the same old rhetoric to lend credibility to those seeking to destroy our government and sabotage the social safety net. Think of how the nation’s mindset might shift if we—bloggers, social networkers, cable news anchors, Democratic Party lawmakers and candidates— were to choose a more honest frame to describe the Republican villains; if we were to invoke and repeat a new frame — radical extremist, public looter, government saboteur, poisonous polluter, wasteful spender, reckless thief, corporate shill, corporate parasite, authoritarian enabler — to describe the GOP collaborators.
Let’s ban the word “conservative” from our political discourse, until the meaning rightfully describes those seeking to preserve checks and balances, diplomacy, clean air and water, health care, women’s reproductive rights, the social safety net and the Republic.