Republicans have turned a number of previously neutral terms into terms of derision, like "woke" or "Critical Race Theory." What previously neutral terms will Republicans use derisively in the future?
I intend to keep this market open indefinitely, and only resolve a market when conservatives begin to use a term derisively. Because this market is inherently subjective, I will not participate in the market, and I will encourage discussion before resolving an answer to ensure that I do not make a significant mistake. For me to resolve YES I will need to hear more than five professional conservative commentators or politicians use the term.
I will likely remove terms which are already derisive.
1,000
3.00The right-wing use of "critical race theory" doesn't have much to do with the original academic use; and the right-wing use of "woke" is kinda-sorta derived from the derisive left-wing use "woke capitalism" rather than directly from the original AAVE meaning. Also compare "political correctness", which went through a brief period of use on the left as a way of poking fun at overly doctrinaire leftists, before becoming Rush Limbaugh's favorite expression in the 1990s.
Which is to say, don't be surprised if folks on the right decide that "transhumanism" means "transgender atheism" or something.
Not enough to resolve obviouslu, but some evidence decolonization is becoming derisive https://twitter.com/bad_histories/status/1722719701611012371
Alright, so after my poll I have decided to change the terms of the market somewhat.
1. I think I am going to make the closing date 2029. This will give some incentive to bet no.
2. I will create a separate market for the Republican nominees, which will expire at the election. This will probably be stricter in terms of what qualifies as derision, but less strict in that it will only require one item.
3. I am thinking that going forward, I will only resolve using utterances produced after the creation of the answer.
I hope this is satisfactory to most of you. I look forward to hearing any feedback people want to offer about these proposals!
UBI:
Tomi Lahren on Fox News (calls it a "pilot program to socialism"): https://www.foxnews.com/media/universal-basic-income-pilot-program-socialism-lahren
Brandon Smith on Info Wars (calls it an initiative within the WEF's Great Reset Agenda): https://www.infowars.com/posts/the-stagflation-trap-will-lead-to-universal-basic-income-food-rationing/
Matt Walsh ("the people on top are pushing it.. that's what they want"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pem2JnlM59Q
Alison Steinber on OAN (8:10, derisively calls it communism and those using it as crack-smoking, tent-dwelling homeless people): https://www.oann.com/video/alison-at-large-video/ivermectin-now-approved-by-nih-universal-basic-income-in-la-biden-says-were-fascists/
Dave Ramsey (says the policy is straight out of "Karl Marx's playbook"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZdJ7ITa-SE
Glenn Beck (says that COVID is a "perfect storm" for politicians to push for a UBI): https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-glenn-beck-program/universal-basic-income
Alex Jones (conflates UBI with microchip/surveillance conspiracies and Klaus Schwab): https://rumble.com/v3qi6el-microchip-tracking-is-here-as-wef-whistleblower-exposes-globalist-plan-to-s.html
David Knight (conflates the concept of UBI with Central Bank Digital Currency, Digital ID and Passports conspiracies): https://rumble.com/v2jo6z0-lockdown-pushed-both-ubi-and-cbdc.html
Easily can resolve to YES
@dittopoop I'm a little colder on this one for the following reasons. I will resolve this YES, but I want to voice some counterarguments just because I fear the paranoid style of conservative rhetoric makes it difficult to separate using a term derisively from deriding the concept.
I think the Jones, Smith, and Knight clips and Beck article are all clearly using the term derisively. I say this because they treat it as something bad in and of itself and link it with clearly conspiratorial thinking.
I think the Walsh clip is ambiguous. On one hand, he links UBI to a conspiracy to make society collapse. On the other hand, he is primarily giving (bad) arguments for why UBI is a mistaken policy. Similarly, I think Steinber and Lahren are more deriding UBI than they are using it derisively. That said, I think this still probably qualifies, because I definitely think that their goal in this case is not to say that UBI does not work, but that UBI is objectionable.
I do not think that Dave Ramsey's clip qualifies at all tbh. Yes, he says it is straight out of Karl Marx's playbook, and while Marx was critical of this, I do not think it is unreasonable for someone to say this. Yes he does mention communism in the same context, but it is not clear. Yes he does suggest that UBI is incompatible with capitalism, which is clearly false, but I do not think his goal here is to use UBI derisively. He even goes out of his way to say that if he thought it worked, he would support it. I am not trying to defend Ramsey here, but I do not think he uses UBI as a term of derision.
On a separate note, I should have realized this would force me to watch the lowest quality of conservative commentary, which I deeply regret.
@Nadja_L thanks for taking the time to go through my sources! I appreciate the effort you put into separating deriding a concept and using a concept derisively. It sets a clearer criteria to judge future suggestions/examples.
And trust me, it was not fun having to research and scour the web for instances of conservative commentators losing their minds over UBI. There were definitely way more instances of pundits critiquing the policy while not deriding it, so I really had to dig for times I felt they crossed over the line.
@dittopoop Yeah, I appreciate all the work you are doing on this! I feel a little bad that I structured this market such that it mostly serves as an incentive for participants to dig for conservatives saying dumb things, because no one wants to do that.
Two notes about this market:
1) Please be critical in your reviews of my resolution if you think I made a mistake. I want to know.
2) I feel like I have specified this market poorly and I deserve a fair bit of critique (thanks @Shump for helping me to see this.) I'm debating changing the terms so that it is which terms US conservatives will use derisively before 2030 or creating a new market. I've created a poll about this. In particular, I want to be sensitive to those who have already bet or given answers, given that my choice will directly impact you.
@Shump I agree with the first sentence. I probably should have time limited it by the year 2100 or something even sooner. Unfortunately, I did not.
@dittopoop Do you know of others besides Peterson and Rogan who have used the expression? I will resolve YES after discussion if there are at least three others who use the term!
@Nadja_L https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mark-harper-government-english-conservative-party-manchester-b2422383.html
I dunno if this counts, but the literal UK Transportation Secretary has been antagonistic to the concept.
@dittopoop It does not qualify. I specified US conservatives for a reason, and I addressed this in a comment below.
@Nadja_L https://www.glennbeck.com/radio/unesco-creepy-view-of-2030 (Glenn Beck)
I think this can be resolved given the fact that there are more than 5 examples (Rogan, Peterson, Gabbard, Jones, Beck and the Epoch Times)
@dittopoop I should clarify this, it cannot just be criticizing UBI, it needs to be using UBI derisively.
Would you classify this Michael Knowles tweet as derisive? or more so a critique? I'm just tryna know what kind of rhetoric would count as which so I can find examples that would match your criteria.
@dittopoop I think this is a critique. I say this because it is not used as an insult and it is not being associated with clearly conspiratorial ideas.
The reason the 15-Minute Cities idea was derisive was they were associated it with something which was clearly conspiratorial and unrelated to the actual term.
All this said, I'm feeling like this is beginning to get away from me, and while I knew this market would be subjective, I did not appreciate how subjective it would be.