Is the recent proliferation of insane epithets (Nazi, Stalinist) a sign of the below:

[MrModerate]

Even a few years ago, the mere use of the term "Nazi" ended debate, with the utterer immediately consigned to rhetorical hell as a jackass. "Commie" was risable and "socialist" used dispassionately to describe the public policies of Sweden. "Stalinist" most people couldn't pronounce and didn't have much of a clue who it referred to.

Now these words are as common to protest as the letter "e." Sure, the morons using them are jackasses, risable, and clueless, but they have no shame in tossing such terms around.

What happened? How did the political equivalent of "cunt" become OK to be issuing from wingnut grannies' mouths? And does this degradation of debate indicate the death spiral of the American system? And most fun of all, who's most at fault? The right or the left?

[rucky]

1. I can handle stupid. I can handle mean.

but stupid and mean together is a lethal combination.

[GTurck]

2. The under-educated...

have no idea that their name calling will have real world effects. I meet too many who think they have found a way to massage their fears as they engender fear in others.

[Hannah Bell]

4. the "under-educated"? glenn beck got into yale,

this is political theatre.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. If Bush did, why not Beck?

Bush is a dumb as a rock.

[orpupilofnature57]

3. Kkkarl ,Blabba ,an Rust Limpblah have turned Freedom of Speech..

into a harmful weapon ,especially when their audience has no interest in History or Discernment.

[TheCowsCameHome]

5. Words have lost their meaning.

Nothing is shocking anymore.

[The_Commonist]

7. I voted for Frank Lutz...

...because words like those words losing their meanings did not happen by accident.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Caveat:

'Nazi' is not an insane epithet when actually discussing Nazis, and those who share their twisted ideals.

Words DO have meaning - and the invoking of "Godwin's Law" has done as much to undermine the meaning of Nazi and fascist and Hitlerian precepts as anything, because it short circuits all discussion of HOW one wing of the republican party resembles the nascent Nazi party of the 20s and early 30s.

Simply turning 'Nazi' into a 'bad word' is EXACTLY what the far right needed to now call Obama and the left wing of the Democratic party Nazis, because the invokers of Godwin's Law have ensured that nobody today knows who the fuck the Nazis really were.

[MindPilot]

11. I don't agree -- the problem lies somewhere else.

I'm not sure where exactly the problem lies, but many of the people who are invoking the Nazi epithet are old enough to have actually lived through WWII or their parents did. They know exactly who the fuck the Nazis were which makes their comparison of an African American to Hitler all the more insane.

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. I disagree. They DON'T know who the Nazis were. Most those who

actually fought the Nazis are in their 80s and 90s now, and then, as now, a 20 year old grunt doesn't need to know any more about the other side than the fact that they are shooting at him. They were 'the enemy', and easily supplanted by the evil commies a decade later. As a HS sophomore in '68 I got 1 1/2 pages in World History devoted to all of WW2. It was as simple as US = Good / Nazi = Bad.

If they EVER really knew what the Nazis were, could they ever equate them with socialists?

I think it is up to us, those who know better, to remind the world what fascism is, what the Nazis believe, and draw appropriate parallels when we see them.

[Berry Cool]

14. You have a good point.

Godwin's Law actually made a lot of sense in the early days of the Internet because a) so many people back in that time who actually had Internet access were well educated and b) many of them were old enough to have some actual memory of WWII or for their parents to have a vivid memory of it, to the point where they knew damn well what a Nazi was and who Hitler was and that it was foolish to throw terms like "Nazi" and "Hitler" around too lightly. All you had to do was ask them to stop and think about it before using those terms, and their own consciences would kick in and make them think better of it.

As the Internet expanded and grew to the point where access was more democratic and more and more younger people got online--people without the institutional WWII memory or parental connection, who would have learned about it only in school or maybe from their grandparents--other things were happening in the culture, such as Rush Limbaugh coming up with "feminazi" and Jerry Seinfeld coming up with the "Soup Nazi." "Nazi" was beginning to enter the popular culture as an OK term to use for anyone with restrictive views and a nasty attitude, and Republicans were in the ascent as they gained control of Congress through scare tactics and namecalling. And it wasn't before long that civilized argument began to disappear from the Internet and it became routine to throw any name at people you saw fit, from Nazi to Hitler to whatever, and invocation of Godwin's Law just made the arguers laugh. It was like yelling "Order in the court! Order in the court! Speak, Monkey, speak!" at two bickering children. It might have worked back in the day when kids were afraid of being ridiculed for being the "monkey," but now, it just meant they'd roll their eyes and go on arguing.

[Cid_B]

9. As far as "Nazi" goes, the desensitization began 8 years ago...

Honestly, how many Bush=Hitler ( and the like...) posters, comments etc... etc..

The impact of the word has been lost and has been downgraded to the equivalent of "big meanie-head"

[MindPilot]

10. Most of the disruptors with the misspelled Nazi/Socialist signs

appear to be my age and older which means they finished high school in the fifties and sixties. Not only was the real horror of Hitler and WWII very recent history they actually had to take and pass real civics and history classes.

This has got to be some kind of mass Alzheimer's. These people aren't just voicing political differences, they are completely out of touch with reality.

[Berry Cool]

12. I say it's a combination.

Americans are getting stupider, the hyperbole of the Internet is expanding, and the words are losing their meaning. Rushbo helped it along with phrases like "feminazi" and others climbed aboard the bandwagon to the point where "nazi" became a term to use to describe, not just fascists who engaged in the routine genocide of an entire group of people, but anyone with restrictive views and a mean temper. It really didn't help when Jerry Seinfeld came out with "Soup Nazi" and codified that concept once and for all. From there on we got "grammar nazis" who upbraid us for our spelling, "parking nazis" who hand out tickets for crookedly parked cars, etc. "Nazi" no longer meant what it used to, and from there on it became easy to let other terms like "fascist" and "socialist" and so on slide as well.

No one knows how to do this better than Republicans, because during the '90s, they learned the power of labeling your opponent with a nasty name and repeating it frequently. Their principle is that all you have to do is come up with a nasty term for someone and use it repeatedly in order to get it to stick. So, wherever convenient, they labeled their opponents "Nazis" and "fascists" and "socialists" and "Communists" and "radicals" and whatever. And they proved that yes, all you have to do is keep repeating the term and it will stick. This became a favorite way to argue in Internet discussions (much easier than learning to argue according to rules of logic--just call your opponent a name) and it worked for Republicans in frightening voters to choose them over Democrats.

And part of the reason all this works is because Americans really are getting dumber. They're not paying attention in school when they're taught what a true Nazi or socialist or fascist or Communist is. All they know is that those are "bad people" whose ideas they DISAGREE with. From there it's a short hop to labeling everyone you disagree with a Nazi socialist fascist communist whatever.