Nonsense language and the Republicans

I remember a clinic staff meeting 20 years ago, during which a friendly fluent blowhard, Dr. Bob, expounded for a couple of minutes on an issue controversial to us. When he finished, there was a half-minute's complete silence. Then Dr. Tom, a quiet man and one of the world's truly bright people said, "Bob. What you just said makes no sense," and chuckled benignly.

I remember that incident when I hear certain Republicans speak. GW, the former Mayor of Wasilla, R. Limbaugh for example.

Today I read a lovely long commentary on this in the British magazine The Liberal's book review section, at the end of which the author, Sarah Churchwell, quotes HL Mencken (
http://www.theliberal.co.uk/issue_13/reviews/churchwell_help!mom!.html
http://www.theliberal.co.uk/issue_13/reviews/churchwell_help!mom!2.html
http://www.theliberal.co.uk/issue_13/reviews/churchwell_help!mom!3.html
http://www.theliberal.co.uk/issue_13/reviews/churchwell_help!mom!4.html
)
"...the remarkable journalist H.L. Mencken wrote in 1920:
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre – the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
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Not a moron, but a fool; our last president, who was remarkably unconscious of the social principles of government, who appeared to see government not as the complex enduring web of personal accountability which it is at its best, but a panel of switches to be flipped.
We will pay for two generations for his foolishness, and of course the Republicans have no monopoly on nonsensical speech; we simply cite here some of its most ardent practitioners.