Democrats who think that President Trump may have committed an impeachable offense for apparently trying to extort Ukraine are “human scum.” A Republican congresswoman trying to make a political point during said hearing is “lying trash.” Just as every person with an “R” next to their name became “racists,” and every person with a “D” became “socialists,” we have diluted the meaning of every word in the book as it pertains to politics, and now we’re reaping the rewards.
Barack Obama was not a socialist, a fact that we can surely all see with his recent demands that Democrats slow down their sprint towards Stalinism. But the Right abandoned all nuance when it came to the former president and his social-democratic ways. Now, legitimately socialist Bolshevik presidential candidates and rising superstars have radically shifted the party’s Overton window on policy. And conservatives no longer have the language to describe it.
