WHY CONSERVATISM ISN'T

Years ago, there was a strip joint near my neighborhood in Sherman Oaks, California that Id drive past (past, not to) called The Classy Lady Gentlemens Club. Im pretty confident that, other than The, not one word on their sign was true. There was nothing Classy about it, no Lady or Gentleman had ever entered it, and it was only a Club in the sense that anyone who walked in was a member. The power of Irony, Duplicity and Advertising is such that, given enough time, English words will come to mean the opposite of their original intent (I once saw an elegant restaurants dessert menu that featured Disgusting Chocolate Cake).

So, other than the vague suggestion of prostitution, what does The Classy Lady Gentlemens Club have to do with politics?

Well, at the last meeting of my Sherman Oaks Indivisible Group, a member mentioned: Why should we call modern conservatives conservative when theyre actually radical right-wing extremists? Thats the type of thought-provoking wake-up call you can get from your Indivisible Group. And it motivated me to check out the definitions of conservative to see if any applied to our new President Auric Goldfollicile and his team:

CONSERVATIVE, adj.:

1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change. Lets see, his minions have already stated they want to DESTROY our existing traditional institutions of democracy, so thats a no.

2. cautiously moderate. HA HA HA HA HA!

3. traditional in style or manner. Not even a little, whether its his Fireside Tweets, or his embrace of Putin to the point of trying to grow his hair into a Russian fur hat, or his ties worn so long they look like theyre trying to escape his face.

4. having the tendency to conserve or preserve. Um like what? Certainly not democracy, dignity or natural resources.

I had to agree with my fellow Sherman Oaks Indivisiblers suggestion: if theyre not conservatives lets stop calling them that. It gives them the cloak of those safe, stodgy Republicans Of Years Past behind which to hatch their scary-crazy agenda. Theyre the Radical Right. Right-wing Extremists. American Oligarchs. Authoritarians. Pick one, but make sure it means to your audience what you mean it to mean.

George Orwell anticipated our current linguistic madness in his novel 1984, which depicted a dystopian society with its warped language called Newspeak. The Government agency that promoted propagandistic lies was The Ministry of Truth, while The Ministry of Peace waged war, and The Ministry of Love tortured people. All examples of blackwhite, the Newspeak word for accepting the self-contradictory ideas presented to you by Big Brother (the decidedly un-brotherly Authorities).

So, for a bonus 5 points, can you name some examples of modern-day Newspeak used by our current President Genghis Con?

How about describing Trumpcare as something terrific when its actually something terrible, or more accurately, nothing.

Immediate youll be surprised to learn means probably never when our Dear Leader is describing health care. And everyone means 24 million fewer.

Promoting renewable energy is in Trumpian fantasyreality a War on Coal.

Fake news is, in fact, the Administrations own fake news accusing truthful news of being fake.

And then theres alternate facts. Even Orwell didnt see that one coming.

Other blackwhite terms my Sherman Oaks Indivisible members pointed out include Pro-Life, which means anti-abortion but rarely the support for any program that promotes human Life after its born. Citizens United is a handful of dark-money citizens (probably) who are only united by their desire to disenfranchise the 99% of the citizens who arent billionaires. Wallbuilders wants to destroy the constitutional wall between church and state. And the American Family Association is an organization that hates gay people, modern women, and non-Christians, but just LOVES the Family of Big Oil Companies.

Which brings me to the reason why I take all this so personally: I was raised in the Bible Belt by Christians. Now, if youre picturing angry, hate-fueled racists waving Bibles at women outside an abortion clinic, thats the reason. Because my parents were actual Christians, in that they tried to live by the teachings of Jesus Christ, which, boiled down to their essence, consist of: loving your enemies, practicing non-violence, and not worshiping money. But the extreme Right-Wing hijacked the name of an entire religion to promote policies of bigotry, war and greed. Of course, they can call themselves Christians if they want, the way I can call myself Doctor Brainiac the Australian Hot Air Ballooning Champion. But if Im not any of those things, you arent required to call me that. So we dont have to call those whatever-they-ares Christians. We just need to think up a new word for them. One that means: Someone who pretends to be Christian but in fact isnt.

Here are some candidates:

Christi-uns (looks good on paper, but it just sounds like regular old Christians when you say it out loud). Crypto-Christians (sounds pretty good, even though crypto means secret, as in someone pretending to be non-religious who is secretly a Christian, instead of the other way around). McChristians (has a nice ring of fakey-ness, but anything that conjures up hamburgers and colored ball pits isnt malevolent enough). Chrystialins (like a chrysalis? The pod in which an insect incubates thereby symbolizing the duplicity of oh, never mind, it already needs footnotes). Then theres Camo-Christians, Contra-Christians, and Counter-Christians (all alive with alliteration). And since these people should always be written about as Christians, how about Air Quote Christians? But maybe the cleanest, simplest choice is: DisChristians.

Anyway, pick one. Or make up your own. But please, lets stop calling Right-Wing Radicals conservatives, or calling DisChristians the Christian Right. Theyre not Christian, and while they may be Right, theyre almost never right.

As a TV writer, Im in the Words business, so I know that, as elusive and ephemeral as words are, theyre pretty much all we have to, as Tom Stoppard wrote: build bridges across incomprehension. Using words, especially English words, is like trying to make pictures with smoke. Their meaning keeps changing, but if smoke signals are the only way we have to communicate, throw more sticks on the fire, bend down and keep blowing.

And join an Indivisible group. It may make you think, the way it did me.