Since the Capitol riot on January 6, Republicans seem to have realized that making demonstrably false claims is not a winning strategy, and so the geniuses in the GOP appear to being trying out a new game plan. Instead of making affirmative claims that are as preposterous as they are refutable, right-wingers in Congress and the media have taken to simply denying easily verifiable facts.

This tack is just as likely to fail as the previous course. …

Since the Capitol Riot, pundits and political insiders have speculated about the possibility that the Republican Party may split. First there was the possibility that the Trumpists would form a far-right populist Patriot Party. Then, in the run-up to Senate Republicans’ shameful vote to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial, it was reported that dozens of prominent conservatives were in talks to form an anti-Trump offshoot of the GOP.

This narrative about an impending political realignment was made stronger after Mitch McConnell’s fake-principled speech on the Senate floor condemning Trump for inciting the Capitol Riot — a speech which…

Linguists are scientists who seek to describe and then explain language phenomena, and so they are generally not in the business of telling people how to speak or write.

Nevertheless, there are certain concepts from linguistics that can aid the writing process. Below I explain two such concepts and show how you can use them to take your writing to the next level.

Information Structure

In linguistics, information structure has to do with how sentences relate to what audiences already know or don’t know. In general, utterances can be broken up into two parts, one part linking the sentence to information that…

In 2020, Donald Trump’s deadly combination of negligence and malice in response to the coronavirus pandemic led to the rise of the phrase death cult as a descriptor of the Republican Party.

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote about how tribal politics led conservative Americans to eschew masks, endangering themselves and their families out of loyalty to Trump. The Los Angeles Times’ Matthew Fleischer similarly lamented the impossibility of working with a right-wing party seemingly hellbent on ensuring that the pandemic is far deadlier than necessary. …

You gathered in the halls of the government
You took a cowardly stand to voice your fake dissent
For power, for fame
We’re writin’ your name down in the book of shame

So the mob stormed in ’cause the president
Commanded them to fight and they knew what he meant
His words were plain
So we’re writin’ his name down in the book of shame

Then the gallows was built and the fires were lit
They even killed a cop but you don’t give a shit
It’s fair, you claim
So we’re writin’ your name down in the book of…

Politics

A striking thing that you notice as you watch the House managers make their case for convicting Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial is just how sober, deliberate, and collected are their speeches and presentations. The managers rely on hard evidence from social media posts, television appearances, and security camera footage as they demonstrate that Trump spent months selling his followers the stolen election lie and encouraging them to “stop the steal,” beginning before the election even took place. …

The case for convicting Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial is clear: Trump incited the deadly mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to overturn the November presidential election. He provoked the rioters in a speech to them immediately before the attack on the Capitol, and he also provoked them for months running up to the attack by spreading stupid lies about a stolen election.

The Republicans’ primary defense strategy is to lie. Here are the three main lies you will hear throughout the trial.

You can’t convict someone who is no longer in office

This is probably the lie we’re going to hear more…