With this post title, you may have come here looking for a different subject, but co-opting ethnic and cultural hot button terms is something we know works. From doomsaying the nuclear holocaust, warning of godless Islamofascists and bemoaning the current state of political apartheid. We're always willing to hijack controversial historical events to both patronize the affected and conflate our own issues with prepackaged emotions. For example; to get to the promised land we're going to need a governmental reformation or renaissance combined with a liberal diaspora or exodus and we'll let health care be their Waterloo. By dropping a couple of overloaded events, a word paints a thousand pictures.
Iconic emotional manipulation saves time and makes talking point crusades easier to remember. Who needs a tsunami of boring platform issues when aligning yourself with the targets of an inquisition or ethnic cleansing will bring everyone to your side without any knowledge of your position. Thankfully, most people don't know what a blood libel is because if they knew Ms. Palin was equating our position with the wrongly accused Jewish people using the blood of children in ritualistic ceremonies, their heads might explode. Between the outrage of using a blatant fear-mongering emotionally charged example and the association of our righteous political posture with the condemned Judaic tradition, their reactions would be mixed. The beauty of commandeering and compromising these idioms over and over is that they become associated with our cause instead of the original. We can systematically co-opt culture and spread like a black death pogrom. That might be a little harsh. Maybe it's more like global warming.
We all know that matso doesn't contain (unkosher) kid's blood. They have to use ground puppy bones.
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