Conservatives Accused of 'Verbal Jiu-Jitsu' for Living in RealityBy Bonchie
August 20, 2023
I regret to inform you that Republicans have done it again. They've gone and pounced, this time regarding the use of language in politics.
According to CNN, conservative Republicans have mastered the art of "verbal jiu-jitsu."
Republicans are masters of verbal jiu-jitsu. It’s a form of linguistic combat in which the practitioner takes a political phrase or concept popularized by their opponent and gradually turns into an unusable slur. Like the Japanese martial art known as jiu-jitsu, its devotees avoid taking opposing arguments head on and instead redirect their opponents’ momentum to beat them.
If this sounds abstract, consider the evolution of “woke.” The word is defined as being “actively aware of social injustice.” But it has been transformed into a contemporary scourge, one that a politician compared to a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”
As someone who writes about politics every single day, I can firmly say that the above allegation is completely false. "Woke" has not been transformed into anything. Rather, Republicans use it to mean exactly what liberals denoted it to mean in the first place, which is being "actively aware of social injustice." The mockery comes in when you consider that Democrats attempt to turn everything into a battle over supposed social injustice. That's on them, not those of us who point out the wokeness of that pursuit.
For example, a conservative would call transgender ideology "woke." Why? Because the battle over transgenderism was started by Democrats as yet another facet of supposed social injustice. Where's the "verbal jiu-jitsu" in that?
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Source:
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/08/20/republicans-accused-of-verbal-jiu-jitsu-for-living-in-reality-n2162846
