HR 127 - DOA

[friendly_iconoclast]

19. You offer little more than glittering generalities and superlatives in defense of HR 127

Generalities such as:

It has to do with responsible gun ownership and the application of an independent standard to ensure the 2nd Amendment far into the future. That bill is an excellent start to this process...

https://propagandacritic.com/index.php/how-to-decode-propaganda/glittering-generalities/

These are all glittering generalities. These words sound great, but they mean different things to different people...

...Alert readers will recognize that glittering generalities are the mirror image of name-calling words. One technique encourages us to reject ideas or people without considering the evidence; the other hopes we will approve of ideas or people without considering the evidence...

...Propagandists don’t want us focusing on specific details. They hope to see us bathing in these words’ positive emotional glow.

It is also important to consider a close cousin of the glittering generality: the superlative. Superlatives are adjectives used to describe something of the very highest quality. Words like amazing, beautiful, best, fabulous, phenomenal, strong, and tremendous are all such words. But what do these words really mean in the context of the speaker’s claims? What, specifically, makes the speaker’s idea so tremendous?...

Then there's the following passage from Orwell's ""Politics and the English Language" :

"The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like "Marshal Pétain was a true patriot," "The Soviet press is the freest in the world," "The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution," are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, liberal, reactionary, equality..."