As a artificial liberal (with added vitamins), I have rather a large problem with mormonism, based on personal experience with it. But the thing is, as I’m not an ostracized minority, I have dick-all reason to whistle around the bush when I call him a mormon. (Or, er, however I would slur that. Wait, is “mormon” a slur now?)
Thought I think you’re hinting towards a possible source of liberal whistles with your scotsmanning - subcategories of liberals that outsiders and perhaps even some other liberals might not approve of. One that lunges to mind is drug use. I get that some people are stoned and proud, but mayhap the culture includes some terms that at least originally were intended to be meaningful only to those in the know and not, say, the po-po.
I can’t answer this myself, because I’m a boring person who doesn’t use, but it seems possible to me.
You do seem to be misunderstanding the concept here a bit. Dog whistles are how you address a crowd, an audience. It is not how one person addresses another.
So, the entire point of them is that they are not secret. Their meaning may be, but the words they use are not. Do you have examples of things that you think are dog whistles of the left? That may be more productive than trying to get us to come up with some for you.
I remember when Jimmy Carter spoke about maintaining the “ethnic purity” of neighborhoods… But that was a liberal mouthing essentially a right-wing dog-whistle, not really a left-wing one.
I agree, that’s what holistic SHOULD mean. But I’ve been to plenty of places advertised as “holistic” that were selling a load of crap.
My point is that the plaeo diet has very little to do with what is “natural” considering the fruits, veggies, and animals they eat have no semblance to what our paleo ancestors ate.
You got me there – these are more common on the left but not the purview of liberals, as I said in my post.
Mormon is not a slur but is also not what that faith has asked to be called and I try to respect that. Also, I try to capitalize a faith name such as Mormon, Catholic, Islam, as a gesture of respect.
Avoid using the abbreviation “ LDS ” or the nickname “ Mormon ” as substitutes for the church’s name , as in “ Mormon Church,” “ LDS Church” or “Church of the Latter-day Saints.” Refer to members as “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” or “Latter-day Saints,” not “ Mormons .”Aug 16, 2018
Well, putting aside the fact that I have no respect whatsoever for mormonism (or any religion, really), I tend not to even capitalize months or days of the week. If you’re a person then I’ll capitalize you (unless you have a username that doesn’t include a capital (like mine) in which case I’ll respect your lack of capitalization) but if you’re not a person then whether I capitalize is somewhere between a crapshoot and ‘forget about it’.
Hey, I’m willing to entertain the idea that there might be certain classes of left-winger that have phrases and symbols that have specific meaning for the in-group but which seem innocuous to the out-group. I particularly suspect that the hippie/drug using subculture might have had some of that.
I get that by calling it “dog whistle” it’s sort of implying that those who use them are animals, but I figure I can ignore that implication. I’m willing to accept that there might be liberal subcultures that had secret codes, like the racist conservative subculture had before it just became “conservative culture”.
Well, I think, yes, sorta… The common meaning is just “scum.” But the secret meaning is “conservatives,” the kind the Obama said cling to guns, religion, and antipathy to others.
I still think it kinda counts, because it is “euphemistic.” It isn’t overt. It codes one group of people with another.
k9bfriender I gave one possible example, so your charge that I’m taking “any words that anyone left of center has ever uttered” is more than a little hyperbolic.
ETA, the original quote was overt, but if the word is used today, it can be code-language.
There is no chance that anyone has forgotten what “deplorables” refers to.
Let’s just make sure we’re on the same page here - a dog whistle isn’t just a word with a euphamistic meaning. It’s something that is made so that only the dogs can hear it. Which is to say, it’s a word or symbol that has meaning to a subset of people who are in the know but which goes unnoticed and remarked upon by the average person - and the fact that it works this way is part of the reason to use the word or symbol.
For example, an ID ten-T error could perhaps be considered a dog whistle in computer circles. I’ve read lists of other ‘codes’ used in other industries to alert employees about things without customers noticing. The question is whether there liberals, or liberal subcultures, have similar private codes that only they recognize.
First of all, it was Hillary Clinton, not Obama. Second, she defined exactly what she meant when she said it: people who cling to their religion and guns. There was no secret meaning that only liberals understood.
There needs to be a specific term for “reverse dog whistles”, where an idea’s opponents insist that a well-defined concept has a secret, hidden meaning that one should engage in histrionics over.
E.g:
“Basket of deplorables” → Every conservative ever
“End of life planning” → Death panels
“Any kind of immigration reform” → Open Borders