One of the things that always sets off alarm bells for me

is a love of euphemism. When people are constantly renaming something, it generally tells me they are shady and very likely liars. So, for instance, the constant goal-post moving that lies behind global warming climate change global climate disruption tells me that a swindle is in progress. Similarly, the BS behind rebranding torture as “enhanced interrogation” tells you all you need to know about the filthy liars who authorized it. Not unlike the BS by which Soviets rebranded “murder” as “liquidation”.

Sometimes, a euphemism will break down and simply become another synonym for the reality it was meant to befog. So, for instance, “abortion” was intended as a sort of gleaming scientific euphemism for what used to be “child murder”. Now it just means “child murder” again. “Waterboarding” was meant to sanitize the more blunt “simulated drowning”. Now they are having to call it “dunking” because “waterboarding” is recognized to mean “simulated drowning” and “drowning” means “torture” not “enhanced interrogation”.

In a similar vein, the shady utopians called Neoconservatives are busily scurrying like roaches from a kitchen light and trying to pretend that there is no such thing as a neoconservative. That whole big political movement of the past decade that launched a war to End Evil and remake the Middle East with the salvific power of democratic capitalism at the point of a gun? The one that spawned books by and about self-described neoconservatives telling you all about their glorious Project for a New American Century?

Funny thing that. Once the whole thing led to disaster and the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter returned, all of a sudden the old standard bearers for neoconservatism want you to believe they never existed. The ongoing disaster of our wars of empire. The ineptitude of the “deficits don’t matter” crowd. It never happened and they didn’t cause it during the eight years they were running the show. Of course, they don’t want you to stop supporting their ideas or making excuses for their disastrous failure. In fact, they very much want you to cheer for them as they continue to present those ideas (under some new brand name) via the newly elected Bourbon GOP, which remembers everything and learns nothing.

The point is, you can trust them.

Recommended reading: Politics and the English Language.