Jonah Goldberg on auto bailout: "You can call it corporatism, you can call it socialism, you can call it fascism, what it is not is liberal democratic capitalism"

Nine times out of ten, when you hear someone use a word that has the suffix "-ism" at the end of it (such as "corporatism"), you're listening to someone who is pretending to be knowledgeable, as though they had insights into the Principles of whatever subject matter the "ism" word would come under (in the case of "corporatism", the subject matter is Economics I guess).

And the pretense is as much worked on the person who uses those words (as they might actually think themselves to be saying something substantial), as on those who simply hear them.

People who use "ism" words, and especially people who use those words repeatedly, are in truth just describing to you the vague and undefined nonsense that exists inside their head, which they take to be not only be some real and true impression of the world, but (oftentimes) something insightful, as though it were a Principle or fundamental truth.

There are entire Academic careers built on this fraud, on this pretense, that exhibits itself in speeches cluttered with nonsense words all ending in the suffix "-ism".

True.

I'll give you an example, or illustration really, of real world people dealing with real world problems and real world soulutions, and see if you can appreciate what I'm talking about.

Imagine for a moment you are not only visiting the Police Department, but specifically the Homicide Division or Bank Robbery Division (and of course only big city Police Departments have such special divisions).

You sit down with the cops there, and you get to talking about the day's and week's and year's events (crimes of murder or bank robbery) and investigations and prosecutions.

Now, do you think those cops, on the job and getting it done, talk about "murderism" or "robberyism"?

Do they talk about "crimeism" or "victimism", or even "lawisms" or "copisms"?

Do they ever say "evidenceism" or "witnesism" or "gunism" or "knifeism", or "Policeism" or "Courtism" or "Guiltyisms" or "Prisonisms"?

They never talk like that! Ever!

They cannot afford to waste their own time and the time of others, descending into strange words that describe only the dim and vague impressions of the world, that the intellectual fraud pretends to understand, when they prattle on in words that end in "-ism".

Again, those words in truth are nothing but the description of the dim and undefined impressions that a person has of the world, when they use those words.

Otherwise, those words never come up and have no application at all, in addressing the real problems of the world, or in solving them, or in even describing the real world, and anything in it.