Tag: rhetoric
The Contradiction of Republicans’ Rhetoric of Freedom
For decades Republicans have marketed themselves as the party of freedom. During the 1990s and early 2000s, conservative activists took up the description of the GOP coined by the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist as the “leave us alone” coalition, so named because it consisted of voters whose stated aspiration was to live without government interference. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Republican governors led by Ron DeSantis in Florida gravitated toward unbending opposition to business and school shutdowns,
The Rhetoric of Pop Psychology
A couple of years ago, just one simple quiz could determine how racist you are. Such was the sudden ubiquity of the implicit association test, or IAT, a diagnostic tool purporting to measure one’s unconscious biases. While it can be calibrated to gauge any number of hidden prejudices, the
How a Trump Critic Fell Back In Line
Nancy Mace was on a mission to find a gun that would fit inside her purse. It was the first Friday in March, and we’d come to a shooting range in North Charleston to try out the Sig Sauer P365. She strode to a shooting lane, her high-heeled leather boots clomping across the concrete, slapped a magazine into the squat black pistol, and fired a few rounds at the human outline on the paper target in front