Do you know that you are a cis-male?” comedian Norm Macdonald asked a flummoxed Stephen Merchant, the co-creator of The Office, nine years ago. Macdonald explained of the peculiar “cis” prefix: “It’s a way of marginalizing a normal person.”
At least that amounts to the intent. The result of such terms marginalizes the speaker, at least when in mixed company. Self-marginalization does not work in politics. Some Democrats only recently learned this.
Cisgender, Latinx, pregnant person, undocumented worker, equity, oligarch, and intersectionality amount to but a few of the buzzwords and buzzphrases used by Democrats more to announce themselves better than everyone else than to win a majority of everyone else over. This clique races not for votes but to see who can use the most characters, and know what each one stands for, in their version of LGBTQIA2S+.
“I’m empathetic and sympathetic to a child trying to figure out their pronoun,” Rahm Emmanuel told the Wall Street Journal in an interview, “but it doesn’t trump the fact that the rest of the class doesn’t know what a pronoun is.” (RELATED: Democrats’ ‘Trans’ Intransigence)
Other Democrats also grasp the futility of all this for a political party. They are speaking out — all at the same time and saying the same thing because Democrats do it like that — against the wisdom of herdspeak jargon for a 50-plus-one endeavor.
“Some words are just too Ivy League-tested terms,” Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona told the Washington Post. “I’m going to piss some people off by saying this, but ‘social equity’ — why do we say that? Why don’t we say, ‘We want you to have an even chance’?” (RELATED: Shapiro v. Clooney: Two Democrat Parties)
Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, worries that Democrats sound like professors. They do not run for the faculty senate, after all. Why do they say “substance abuse disorder” instead of addiction, he wonders. (RELATED: Elitist Libs Remove the ‘Demo’ From the Democrats)
“It makes Democrats or candidates using this speech sound like they’re not normal,” Beshear told the Washington Post. “It sounds simple, but what the Democratic Party needs to do is be normal and sound normal.”
That nearly explains the key to the current president’s success. Donald Trump does not so much sound or act “normal.” Often, he does not. Normal, even in politics, is overrated. He does, as Ringo once sang, “act naturally.” He speaks in a natural way, too. Democrats do not appear comfortable in their own skin. Do you blame them? If you had AOC, the Vassar women’s studies department, Bluesky hall monitors, and Rachel Maddow closely surveilling your every word, you might speak in a stilted, scripted way, too.
“This is another stupid word, ‘Oligarch,’” James Carville said on his podcast. “Who in the f— knows what an oligarch is? As opposed to a very acceptable word I’ve talked about before is ‘fat cats.’ Everybody knows what a fat cat is, everybody talks about what a fat cat is.” (RELATED: James Carville v. David Hogg? Yes, Please!)
They took too many classes in departments that use the word “studies” in their title.
Democrats listen to NPR the way teenage girls listen to Taylor Swift (or Chappell Roan or Sabrina Carpenter or Olivia Rodrigo or whoever is currently hot — it’s hard for a dad to keep up). They took too many classes in departments that use the word “studies” in their title. They internalize the lessons imparted by one of the 16 diversity, equity, and inclusion officers employed by corporate in what amounts to the progressive mafia’s idea of a no-work job.
This look-at-me-I’m-better mentality stems from the same place that inspires people to place an “In This House We Believe in Science” placard on their front lawn, ditch the American flag for something that I recently learned goes by the “Progressive Pride Flag” moniker, wear a mask well into 2029, and hear “Merry Christmas” as an insult involving their closest female relative.
The problem is not new. Not just Norm Macdonald but Triumph the Insult Comic Dog hilariously ridiculed all this nine years ago. “Now, instead of saying the word ‘poor,’” he explained to students at the University of New Hampshire, “you say, ‘person who lacks advantages that others have, low economic status related to a person’s education, occupation, and income’ — it’s as simple as that.”
Only now do Carville, Beshear, and the rest get the joke — and understand that Democrats are the punchline. One wonders whether other party people can ever speak English instead of Academese again.
A subset of the Democratic Party values victory over purity. Republicans should fear them.
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