I wanted to try something new with my postings. As TMV has a wide variety of writers and readers, I wondered what ‘centrists’ feel about the use of the word “un-American” in political discussion.
It has personally puzzled me because, as I see it, by its very construction the word operates on historically false ground. For example: How can a white-euro American call another white-euro American un-American if they are not histo-genealogically American?
Furthermore, the word seems loaded with malicious intent. Sorry for bringing party politics into a discussion which I hope stays apolitical, it seems this malice comes from the fact that the charge of someone being un-American stems from a right-leaning accuser (please see “Dick Cheney”).
But what has never been clear to me is what they are trying to communicate to the American electorate about the accused.
Recently being Un-American seems to mean the accused is a terrorist sympathiser (please see Dick Chaney) or suggesting that the President is Un-American seems to mean that, well let’s be frank, they are trying to stir racial tension. When the left (mostly blogosphere) uses the word Un-American (unsuccessfully may I add), it seems to suggest that the accused is infringing on their constitutional or human rights (see LGBT causes over the past decade).
It’s all so skewed, it has left me asking a couple of key questions – What does it actually mean to be Un-American, What does it mean to be American and does the buzzword Un-American do anything for the political discussion?
