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Old 12-13-2017, 07:33 PM
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ebacon ebacon is offline
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Slippery Slope - the devaluation of -ism

Language is powerful. We all know that. That is why we write with each other.

Tonight I noodle on how an -ism progresses from a joke to a movement. The sea change struck me tonight when I read the word Trumpism in the context of being a movement. WTF? Trumpism is a movement? I thought Trumpism was a synonym for exaggeration or craziness, or, if I wanted to associate a Trumpism with a Bushism I might have told myself that Trump is as concerned with conserving energy in his high rise tower as Bush is with conserving energy at his Texas ranch.

But damn. Being burdened with the mental fatigue of figuring out the difference between Trumpism and Bushism and emotions vs -ism movements and yada-yada-yada made me realize that the suffix -ism might be similar to the rightmost decimal figure of mathematics. If someone accumulates enough of those insignificant figures then they have a movement or, in the mathematical context, a beautiful integer.
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