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Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War is not principally about that war. Instead, it is a broad sweep of American history on the theme of the struggle between democracy and oligarchy – between the vision that “all men are created equal” and the frequency with which power has accumulated in the hands of a few, who have then sought to thwart equality.What she terms the “paradox” of the founding – that “the principle of equality depended on inequality”, that democracy relied on the subjugation of others so that those who were considered “equal”, principally white men, could rule, led to this continuing struggle. She draws a line, more or less straight, between “the oligarchic principles of the Confederacy” based on the cotton economy and racial inequality, western oligarchs in agribusiness and mining, and “movement conservatives in the Republican party”.More specifically, she writes that the west was “based on hierarchies”. California was a free state but with racial inequality in its constitution. Racism was rife in the west, from lynchings of Mexicans and “Juan Crow” to killings of Native Americans and migrants who built the transcontinental railroad but were the target of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.There, aided by migration of white southerners, “Confederate ideology took on a new life, and from there over the course of the next 150 years, it came to dominate America.” This ranged from western Republicans working with southern Democrats on issues like agriculture, in opposition to eastern interests, to shared feelings on race.Does American democracy somehow require the subjugation and subordination of others?Once Reconstruction ended, and with it black voting in the south, Republicans looked west. Anti-lynching and voting rights legislation lost because of the votes of westerners, and new states aligned for decades more “with the hierarchical structure of the south than with the democratic principles of the civil war Republicans”, thanks to their reliance on extractive industries and agribusiness.For Richardson, Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was thus not an electoral strategy but a culmination of a century of history between the south and west, designed to preserve oligarchic government in “a world defined by hierarchies”. Richardson sees Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the reaction against it as “almost an exact replay of Reconstruction”. What she terms the “movement conservative” reaction promoted ideals of individualism – but cemented the power of oligarchies once again.But isn’t America the home of individualism? Richardson agrees, to a point. The images of the yeoman farmer before the civil war and the cowboy afterwards were defining tropes but ultimately only that, as oligarchies sought to maintain power. Indeed, she believes, during Reconstruction, “to oppose Republican policies, Democrats mythologized the cowboy, self-reliant and tough, making his way in the world on his own”, notably ignoring the brutal work required and the fact that about a third of cowboys were people of color.These tropes mattered: “Just as the image of the rising yeoman farmer had helped pave the way for the rise of wealthy southern planters, so the image of the independent rising westerner helped pave the way for the rise of industrialists.” And for Jim and Juan Crow and discrimination against other races and women, which put inequality firmly in American law once again.The flame was never fully extinguished, despite the burdens of inequality on so manyYet ironically, as in the movies, the archetype came to the rescue: “Inequality did not spell the triumph of oligarchy, though, for the simple reason that the emergence of the western individualist as a national archetype re-engaged the paradox at the core of America’s foundation.” In the Depression, “when for many the walls seemed to be closing in, John Wayne’s cowboy turned the American paradox into the American dream.” (Wayne’s Ringo Kid in Stagecoach marked the emergence of the western antihero as hero.)Indeed, the flame was never fully extinguished despite the burdens of inequality on so many. In Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans fought for equality for black people. The “liberal consensus” during and after the second world war promoted democracy and tolerance. Superman fought racial discrimination.In all it is a fascinating thesis, and Richardson marshals strong support for it in noting everything from personal connections to voting patterns in Congress over decades. She errs slightly at times. John Kennedy, not Ronald Reagan, first said “a rising tide lifts all boats” (it apparently derives from a marketing slogan for New England); she is too harsh on Theodore Roosevelt’s reforms; and William Jennings Bryan – a western populist Democrat who railed against oligarchy even as he did not support racial equality – belongs in the story. More
Donald Trump
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It’s hard to think of a public figure with an image further removed from rock’n’roll than the former US president Jimmy Carter. “With his cardigan sweaters and devout Christian faith, he doesn’t come off as a particularly cool or hip guy,” said Mary Wharton, director of a new film titled Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President, to the Guardian. “He wasn’t even a part of the rock generation. But he was curious about it.”Enough, in fact, to inspire him to take a deep dive into his son Chip’s Bob Dylan albums, absorbing both the honesty of the sound and the meanings behind the songs. It helped that Carter already had a significant knowledge of every genre that influenced stars of the rock generation, including blues, R&B, folk and most profoundly, gospel. His belief in both the beauty and the sociological impact of all those styles helped Carter forge an improbable bond with the biggest rock stars of the 70s, a connection that became central to his ascent to power.The core of Wharton’s film argues that stars like the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash, as well as outlaw country artists like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, played a crucial role in getting Carter into the White House in 1976. The Allmans took the lead, performing concerts to raise money for his run for the Democratic nomination when he had scant funds and no national name recognition. “I was practically a non-entity,” Carter says in the film. “But everyone knew the Allman Brothers. When they endorsed me, all the young people said, ‘Well, if the Allman Brothers like him, we can vote for him.”Even so, the power of the youth vote was just being tested at that point. The previous presidential election, in 1972, in which Republican incumbent Richard Nixon squared off against Democrat George McGovern, was the first national election that saw the voting age drop from 21 to 18. Yet, Nixon won in a landslide. Four years later, in a country weary from Watergate and Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford, there was a far clearer mandate for change. “The youth vote that time was massive,” said Chris Farrell, the movie’s producer. “Eighteen- and 19-year-olds voted for Carter. Then it spread way beyond that.”Though Carter wasn’t especially young at the time, at 52, his team were, led by head press secretary Jody Powell, who was 23, and chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, then 32. After Carter won the White House, Rolling Stone put the two staff members on their cover, calling them “The White House Whiz Kids”. “They were young people, speaking to young people,” said Farrell.Still, the level of support the rock stars gave Carter represented something new. In the late 1960s, when rock became the cutting-edge force in pop culture, its stars were more likely to support a vague notion of revolution, while lobbing the occasional epithet at Nixon. “For them to associate with a politician wasn’t seen as cool,” said Wharton.But by the mid-70s, rock had become more mainstream, and magazines like Rolling Stone were eager to flex their growing power by backing candidates more aggressively. While many politicians were eager to court the icons of the rock generation, Carter had a distinct advantage. “The fact that he was an independent thinker appealed to these musicians,” Farrell said. “He wasn’t just following the party line for politicians for the last 30 years.”More importantly, Carter’s connection to music’s top names far pre-dated his presidential run. As governor of Georgia, he invited Dylan to the state mansion. “When I met Jimmy, the first thing he did was quote my songs back to me,” Dylan says in the documentary. “It was the first time I realized my songs had reached into the mainstream. It made me a little uneasy. But he put my mind at ease by showing me he had a sincere appreciation. He was a kindred spirit – the kind of man you don’t meet every day and that you’re lucky to meet if you do.”Around the same time, Carter befriended Gregg Allman, whose band had shepherded the huge “southern rock” movement, along with acts like the Marshall Tucker Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Together, the bands presented a fresh image for the south, a wave that paralleled the ascent of politicians like Carter, who, in the early ‘70s were heralded as part of the “new south”. In one of Gregg Allman’s final interviews before his death in 2018, he talked about first meeting Carter in Georgia, describing him as “this guy with an old pair of Levi’s with holes in them, no shirt, no shoes,” he said. “I thought, ‘Who’s this bum hanging out at the governor’s mansion?’ That was Jim.” More
In the early 1960s, one of the most popular series on American television was “The Twilight Zone.” This was a time when television, even in the United States, was still in black and white. Most of the show’s episodes were riveting, poignant and, in a number of cases, scary as hell — starting with the haunting tune at the beginning of each episode.
“The Twilight Zone” reflected the anxieties and fears of a generation faced with the horrifying potential of technology capable of obliterating humanity. At the same time, it was informed by the equally terrifying capability of humans, if given the chance, to commit the most horrendous atrocities against other humans as long as there was a political regime that both sanctioned and encouraged them in the name of some kind of narrative, based on religion, race, class or superior insight.
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It might not come as a surprise that in recent years, there has been an upsurge in references to “The Twilight Zone.” As the author of a 2018 article put it, the “anti-fascist, anti-racist themes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ are more relevant today than ever.” So are the themes referring to environmental catastrophes which also featured prominently in the series.
For me, however, the reason “The Twilight Zone” has increasingly popped up in my mind lies elsewhere, in the way many of the episodes were constructed. A person wakes up in the morning in his or her familiar setting. A few hours later, he or she enters a fundamentally different reality, finds him or herself “in the wrong movie.” This is how I feel when I read American newspapers today and expose myself to the latest news. What is most striking in today’s America is the fundamental disjointedness, for lack of a better word, between realities.
Episode 1: The Case of the Racist USC Professor
A couple of days ago, the idyllic world of American academia was rudely awoken by an egregious case of blatant racism in the classroom or, rather, in the virtual space of Zoom-enhanced higher learning. A widely-known and celebrated business communications professor at the University of Southern California, which is generally better known for its prowess in college football than its academic achievements, repeatedly used the N-word — or at least what appeared to be the N-word — during a lecture.
Commenting on the importance of filler words in communications, he used as an example the expression “nei ge.” The use of the expression caused much distress among African American students, resulting in the demand that the professor be immediately sanctioned. The university complied, putting him on administrative leave.
As it happens, my wife is Chinese. When she speaks to her relatives and friends, every other sentence is interrupted by “nei ge.” It appears to be one of the most common expressions in Chinese, much like an English “um” or “uh,” allowing the speaker to take a pause to find the appropriate words to finish the sentence. In today’s victim culture, however, an innocent expression is turned into a signifier of racism, given the phonetic similarity between it and the N-word, much to the bewilderment of those like my wife who come from the culture that has used the expression for centuries (apparently a similar expression exists in Korean).
In the end, there is no easy way to resolve the issue. It would be easy to demand that Chinese speakers in the United States show a modicum of sensitivity when using words that might cause offense. At the same time, however, Chinese speakers have a just cause to demand that others show a modicum of sensitivity to them, give them the benefit of the doubt and abstain from assuming evil intentions.
The controversy reminds of the brouhaha over the word “niggardly,” which is the synonym of “stingy,” and has nothing to do with the N-word. Yet on several occasions, it has provoked accusations of racism, grounded more in the accuser’s unfamiliarity with the intricacies of the English language than the evil intentions of the person who dared to use it. To be sure, there are good reasons to avoid using the word. It is largely outdated, and “stingy” is a perfectly appropriate equivalent. At the same time, it is preposterous to sanction a person for the single reason that he or she uses a word that might evoke phonetic associations but which has absolutely nothing to do with the offensive term.
Episode 2: The Case of the Racist Romance Novelist
Romance novels are big sellers. In fact, they outsell most other literary genres. Its readers number in the millions, not only in the United States but worldwide. Most of the authors are women — as are the readers — and most of the women authors happen to be white. As a result, most of the stories revolve around white women getting involved with white men of either the affluent or the dangerous variety. Romance novels are replete with millionaires and billionaires just waiting to fall in love with single moms and members of motorcycle gangs with a soft core falling for the “sassy girl” next door.
There are relatively few women of color who have made it in and into the genre. One of them is Alexandria House. Her novels center around some of the strongest women the genre has produced. In fact, Alexandria House’s stories are every feminist’s dream, and for good reason. Her heroines refuse to take shit from anyone, and particularly from good-looking, cocky African American men. Her heroines are strong, ballsy women who know what they want, and they have no problem asking for it and pursuing their goals with determination and verve.
And then there is this: One of House’s best novels is “Let Me Love You,” with a Goodreads score of 4.6 out of 5. The setting is the hip-hop scene, and the main protagonists are top performers making millions with their songs. The novel has all the drama and heartache one would expect from an outstanding romance, and it delivers in a big way. This, however, is not the point. What is particularly striking to a reader sensitized to the intricacies of racist language is the fact that the novel’s author has absolutely no qualms using the N-word throughout the story. In fact, thanks to Kindle, the precise number of the N-words is easy to ascertain — 39 times, to be exact.
To be sure, things are never as clear-cut as today’s hypersensitized purists would like us to believe. The debate about the N-word, in its two versions, has been going on for decades, and it has hardly been conducted in as straightforward a fashion as one might expect. To be sure, it does make a difference who uses the N-word. In fact, as has been pointed out, used on the part of an African American author, the word has a different connotation — including expressing a sense of endearment, which, I presume, is House’s intention — than used by a white author.
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In a recent essay in The Atlantic, John McWhorter from Columbia University has discussed the question at great depth. One of his conclusions: “Even when discussing rather than wielding the word, people —including black ones — might avoid barking out the word any more than necessary. (Or avoid writing it more than necessary, as in this very essay.) Surely, its history means that it provokes negative associations; it doesn’t sound good.”
McWhorter starts his essay with controversy at Columbia following a white professor’s evoking the N-word in reference to James Baldwin’s 1963 public statement that he was “not a nigger.” One of her (white) students objected to her uttering the word, the administration agreed and put her under investigation. Ultimately, she was cleared of suspicion that she had violated the university’s anti-discrimination rules.
For McWhorter, the very fact that a professor would be sanctioned for exploring the question of why James Baldwin would have chosen to say what he did is a clear indication of what he calls mission creep, “under which whites are not only not supposed to level the word as a slur, but are also not supposed to even refer to it. That idea has been entrenched for long enough now that it is coming to feel normal, but then normal is not always normal. It borders … on taboo.”
This brings me back to the main topic of Episode 1. Here is a case that goes even further than the “mission creep” McWhorter alludes to. It surely is a case of that “hypersensitive to injury so abstract,” so inane, it should never have become an issue of controversy. To make the point quite clear: This is not about the use of Alexandra House’s use of the word. It is about the controversy generated by the use of “nei ga.” As said before, Alexandria House is one of the very best authors of romance novels. Her rather frequent evocation of the word is largely owed, I presume, to her attempt to reflect the realities of the setting of the novel, the hip-hop scene.
At the same time, however, in light of the controversy over the use of “nei ga,” it opens up legitimate questions that are not easy to resolve. In any case, it is probably a blessing that most college students don’t read romance novels. They might find themselves in the wrong movie.
Episode 3: The Case of the Conspiracy Theory to End All Conspiracy Theories
On August 31, during a mass protest against the German government’s draconian measures (i.e. wearing a mask) to combat the spread of COVID-19, dozens of Germany’s new freedom fighters managed to break through police lines to storm the Reichstagsbebäude in Berlin, the seat of the German parliament. For many of the demonstrators, having to wear a mask, according to one sign, was “inhuman,” almost a crime against humanity.
As it turns out, many of the freedom stormtroopers were inspired by QAnon, which has taken the white global biosphere, from the US to Germany, from Australia to France, by storm. QAnon is the new all-encompassing master narrative for all those eager minds who want to know, but for whom Marxism is far too sophisticated, Nostradamus too obscure, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion too parochial (a Jewish cabal? So 19th century!), and Scientology far too expensive. To be a QAnonista, all you need is a sign with a big “Q” and you too can sow terror and fear among the elite.
From what I understand, QAnon is a “theory,” albeit a conspiratorial one, postulating that whatever happens today is the result of the evil designs of obscure forces, from the World Economic Forum to powerful individuals such as George Soros, Bill Gates and, why not, Elon Musk. As Mike Wendling describes it for the BBC, “At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, unfounded conspiracy theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.”
In the world some of us inhabit, theory is a bunch of ideas that only gain value if subjected to an empirical test. A famous example is the Ptolemaic system, which postulated that the Earth was the center of the universe. It sounded good at the time but turned out to be completely false. The theory was debunked to be replaced by a new theory that made sense. Today, apparently, the word “theory” has a different connotation — at least among the growing number of those who believe there are dark forces at work seeking to manipulate and, ultimately, control humanity. Today we know because we know, because it makes common sense or because we’ve read it somewhere.
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This is why creationism — the notion that the Earth was created some 10,000 years ago — is a viable theory, on a par with Darwin’s theory of evolution. (Creationism is absolutely true. I saw pictures of Jesus riding and petting dinosaurs. Or the theory that the world is flat, and if you are not careful, you’ll fall off the edges. Absolutely true, too. I read it in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, the ultimate source of scientific knowledge for sophisticated endeavoring teenage minds.)
In today’s populist world, where science is scorned (it’s just so last century) and scientists loathed, something is true if enough people believe it is true. QAnon is the perfect example. According to a recent poll — unfortunately based on scientific method and therefore prone to fake news-ism — one in three Republicans believes that the “theory” is mostly true. A further quarter thinks that some parts of it are true. That leaves only a bit more than a tenth who think that it is not true at all. Against that, among Democrats, a three-quarter majority hold it not true at all — the definitive proof of the pernicious influence of living in the real world.
The “success” of QAnon “theory” is symptomatic of the utter bizarreness of the schizophrenic state of reality in today’s world. For many of us, the fact that Donald Trump was elected president already evoked a strong sense that we had somehow passed into the twilight zone. Over the years of his presidency, this sense has gotten stronger and stronger. Like COVID-19, the Trump virus — that mixture of fear-mongering, appealing to raw emotions and a dose of paranoia — has slowly been infecting growing parts of our world, as recently demonstrated during the siege on the German parliament, inspired by claims that Russian and American troops were on their way to deliver the German people from its tyrannical government which forced them to wear masks.
At the same time, the fact that a professor’s reference to one of the most common expressions in the Chinese language would provoke charges of racism suggests that bizarreness is hardly confined to the right. Add COVID-19 to the mix, which has created a new dimension of parallel realities, and the scenario for a brand new “Twilight Zone” series practically writes itself.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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A New York Times interview with controversial rapper and ex-convict Tekashi 6ix9ine offers a rich catalog of the curious values that characterize contemporary US culture. What emerges from the feature is a series of reflections by both the interviewer and the interviewee on some of the driving forces in today’s society, including ambition, fame, money, commercial media, tools of influence, law and social rules, and freedom of expression.
Some may wonder why the Gray Lady — aka The New York Times — should take such a serious interest in a scandal-ridden rapper. The answer to that question tells us quite a lot about the values that now dominate, even in what are deemed the most serious media. Scandal, crime and celebrity have moved up several notches in the priority list of “all the news that’s fit to print.”
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What appears to make the interview worthy of coverage by The Times is a spectacular scoop. The interviewer, Joe Coscarelli, gets 6ix9ine to admit that, if allowed to vote, he would go for US President Donald Trump. This meets an essential criterion for New York Times stories in this election cycle. An article that associates the extreme, manifestly irrational personalities of marginal celebrities with a taste for Trump’s politics is a strong argument for voting Joe Biden in November. It has the twofold advantage of confirming that Trump’s fans are marginal freaks and suggesting that the president himself implicitly shares the criminal instincts of those freaks.
This approach to the news could be called “divisive,” though not in the sense that the word is used by The Times itself and the intelligence community to characterize Russian interference in US elections. It implicitly divides Americans into those who think and make serious decisions — a category that would include all readers of the New York Times — and those whose sole interest is to express their irrational impulses.
To Coscarelli’s question, “You feel like the art you’re making is adding to the world?” the rapper answers, “Of course.” The interviewer then offers this critique of 6ix9ine’s music: “Maybe it’s fun, it’s turn-up music, but it’s not introspective.”
Here is today’s 3D definition:
Introspective:
An attitude attributable to people who deserve to be taken seriously not just because of their success, but because they sometimes stop to think things through and weight their own responsibilities
Contextual Note
US social and political debate has become so divisive in recent years that society can now be separated into two groups: those who, like Barack Obama, pronounce the second syllable of “divisive” with a short “i” sound (as in “it”) and those who pronounce it as a full diphthong (as in “eye”). Alas, this distinction cuts across all boundaries of political and cultural orientation.
The question of introspection highlights a more telling distinction in US culture. Over the past two centuries, self-reliance and atomistic individualism have risen to the level of a philosophical ideal. This became a central message of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influential philosophy. This ideology initiated a tug of war between assertive action and introspection.
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P.T. Barnum, the 19th-century founder of the Barnum and Bailey circus and the man who said, “Never give a sucker an even break,” set the tone for Emerson when he proclaimed, “Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.” Initiating the great American tradition of giving to those who need it least — as exemplified in recent government bailouts as a response to the economic crisis — Barnum added this thought: “The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.”
Ever since Barnum established the principle that success belongs to the assertive, the very idea of assertiveness flipped from being seen as a moral weakness — or moral traditionally, as the capital sin of pride — to becoming the supreme personal virtue that separates the rich from the poor.
In the hierarchy of values that regulates US culture, being assertive does not necessarily exclude introspection. For Emerson it even required it. Introspection allows the ambitious individual to assess and correct any of the weaknesses that may undermine a veneer of assertiveness. But for at least half of the population, if introspection exists, it should be hidden because the average person (the suckers) will perceive it as a weakness. For the other half of the population, it still stands as a moral virtue.
Effective assertiveness thus implies the skill of hiding the reality of introspection to create the appearance of certitude based on the person’s unwavering convictions and self-confidence. It is only when the assertive person is caught out for being too assertive and must apologize after a glaring mistake that it becomes necessary to invoke the virtue of introspection. This typically translates as the standard cliché of confused denial: “That is not who I am.”
The half of the population that dismisses or hides introspection from view correlates roughly with the Republican Party. Trump stands at one extreme, thanks to his apparent total absence of introspection. As president between 2001 and 2009, George W. Bush may have been capable of introspection, but he carefully hid it from view. He projected an image of resoluteness and unwavering conviction even when faced with facts that contradicted his stated beliefs. He won the 2004 election by accusing his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, of flip-flopping.
Democrats prefer to maintain their faith in introspection as an intellectual and moral virtue, setting themselves apart from the rabble. Their defense of introspection enabled Republicans in the 1950s to term them “eggheads,” people who prefer thinking to acting. When Hillary Clinton called Trump voters a “basket of deplorables” in 2016, she was implicitly accusing them of being incapable of introspection.
Historical Note
After two centuries that have seen the growing dominance of the idea of assertiveness in the US, what is the status of introspection in today’s culture? The interview with Tekashi 6ix9ine confirms the division highlighted above between the Democrat-aligned Times and its belief in the virtue of introspection vs. the rapper who identifies with the Republicans and Donald Trump and dismisses introspection as irrelevant.
In the interview, Coscarelli affirms his belief in the value of introspection. He appreciates that the late rapper Tupac Shakur “grappled with his demons” and said, “I’ve done good, I’ve done bad, I want to be better.” Coscarelli implicitly condemns 6ix9ine for not including self-criticism to his repertoire of artistic sentiments.
But rap thrives on extreme, borderline criminal assertiveness, unlike traditional forms of black American music: blues, jazz, soul, and rhythm and blues. Traditional black music focused on sophisticated musical form and ironic expression in a complex cultural context. It contained at its core a pair of emotions: humility and love. The player was always less important than the music, even in the case of dominant figures admired for the power they built into their performances, such as John Coltrane or James Brown.
In the 1980s, the rise of rap and hip-hop as the dominant if not unique form of black music consecrated the triumph of assertiveness over introspection. The music industry — run essentially by white executives — saw this revolution as a godsend. Rock and roll — which took root in the 1950s — had already lowered the bar of musical complexity and introspection for the white community, making it easier to produce highly profitable hits. But it maintained the link to humility and love.
Rap provided another advantage for white record producers, who defined it as the culture of the ‘hood. Music took a back seat to extremely individualistic aggressive intent. In the Ronald Reagan era, this helped to consolidate the white community’s perception of black culture as essentially criminal and antagonistic to traditional white values, even though white youths enthusiastically purchased the records. Rap made money for its star performers, producing a new generation of rags-to-riches heroes. For the first time, they were black males who embodied, in their way, the Reaganian ideal of the self-made man recognizable by his financial success.
6ix9ine is right when he contradicts Coscarelli’s apparent belief that simply because he wants “to do better,” Tupac Shakur was introspective. Coscarelli’s take reflects the political orientation of The New York Times and its minimally introspective Democratic Party ethos. The neoliberals have done bad but want to do better. Which means doing the same thing but fixing it on the edges. “Vote Biden” is the message.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
