The Republican Language: A Report From the Field

October 16, 2004
Satire by Jacob Owen

John Kerry is a flip-flopper. Or so I hear. The last person who told me that lost a finger. And while I casually tossed his bloody digit in the trash can behind the bar, I thought about the nature of being Republican. Do Republicans run away like this guy and leave behind appendages cut off in a knife fight or do they stay and hold their ground, demanding not only that I give his finger back but that I rush him to the hospital as soon as possible? Had he asked I might have done so, on moral grounds.

As I was saying, Democrats are moralists. We believe in helping the underdog, in Christian-like charity, in a strong, healthy society. Very nurturing. Republicans believe in natural selection, might makes right and the heavy hand of government not intervening to level the playing field. Very natural. There isn’t, for instance, a benevolent force to step in and save the family cat from being carried off by a great horned owl. After all, in the animal world the rule is eat or be eaten.

There is a fine line, though, between people and animals. A subtle yet important difference easy to overlook. When this concept is forgotten, the world seems a little off. Sometimes I hear noise from the Christian right made by forming their mouths around the concept, like a toddler trying to say its first vowel. It starts with an H, which admittedly is one of the more difficult letters to pronounce. But then the Right Christians give up on trying to say the rest and bombs begin to fall on poor people halfway across the world, or women’s health clinics “spontaneously” catch fire, or fire hoses get turned on and pointed at folks, or some other unexpected turn of events that are becoming less and less surprising. Amen, I suppose.

The very wealthy, some also know of this concept but many do not. Some learn from accidentally losing sight of the entrance to the Ritz-Carlton and getting lost in downtown New York. These adventures usually end when a kind, modest stranger hands them a strange form of currency called a quarter and leads them to a metallic community telephone encased in a large glass box. Their rescuers, quickly arriving in a town car, rush them back to the Ritz and cleanse off the dirt from the streets. The memory far from forgotten, those survivors of this experience often give a pinch of fortune to charity, pray that some trickles down to the kindly stranger and install more glass-house telephones so no wealthy person is ever far from help.

But overall my intuition is most Republicans simply do not have this idea in their nature. Whether they are born without it or it is never taught to them or they have it but then it atrophies like their mental dexterity, I don’t know. I base this analysis on my discovery of a particular pattern in their shared linguistics. It seems when you find one Republican talking politics, then the next Republican you come across eerily will say the same thing. It’s unsettling I know, but I am determined to find the cause even at the risk of life and limb. While investigating the mechanics behind it I have suspected ESP or alien involvement. In fact, I cut this gent’s finger off just to see if his blood was red or instead oozed out as green slime. My experiment shows yes, he was human so I have ruled out aliens.

Aside from a mechanical cause, the only explanation lies in the linguistic pattern itself. The Republicans like to use an obscure, antiquated form of speech called a stereotype, the name of which I discovered during an allergy-plagued search through old, dusty history books. Why this vestige of the past survives in their culture I do not know, but it survives and flourishes. In fact, one Republican seems unable to communicate to another Republican without using this speech pattern, sort of a lingua franca among strangers or maybe even the cornerstone of their civilization.

When two Republicans who are strangers exchange greetings, conversations involving politics, culture, economy and so on evolve through the use of these stereotypes. Examples include “All welfare recipients are lazy” or “Clean air is overrated” or “Aren’t we both rich, lazy bastards?” Once one Republican hears another Republican say such a statement, conversation then proceeds based on a sort of pre-judgment possessed by the listener. Within this framework Republicans can discuss large populations of people and efficiently analyze complex social issues with just a minimum of thought and verbosity.

So dear reader, when next you encounter a Republican speaking their mind, rest assured there is no need to go out behind the bar and remove portions of their body. I am already engaging that phase of the investigation, though sadly I fear, reaching a dead end. May I suggest instead you listen carefully for the speech pattern I have described and, if you like, notify them of the antiquity of their language. True, they may feel slightly embarrassed at their backward nature, but isn’t it better to help their kind progress in order to one day more fully participate in the modern world? In the end, such actions contribute to furthering the cause of humanity, a concept which regrettably some seem born without.

Yours,

Phineus J. Butterfeet