For liberals, there is no absolute truth. There are only competing "memes," which--through the alchemy of language--insinuate themselves into human brains in the form of religion, ideology, and various forms of false consciousness masquerading as common sense.
Conservatives, on the other hand, acknowledge and seek absolute, transcendent Truth. Therefore, the very idea of "memes," which I gather are akin to linguistic viruses, are either anathema or...beside the point. There is only Truth and unTruth. Ideas must be evaulated in terms of how True they are.
Anyway, that's just a longwinded way of saying that your attempt to dismiss an opponent's argument by calling it an "anti-Semitic meme" is obfuscatory.
And your use of liberal verbal strategies makes me, at least, suspicious of your motives.
Right. That isn't my framework however. I'm merely struggling to find a word that successfully captures the idea of "a unit of information, including not only what is said but enough assumptions to make the statement intelligible."
A bad example is if someone refers to ZOG. Of course one knows immediately that he's an antisemite who believes the Protocols are real, and who believes that Jews control the world. But in this case the word itself suffices to convey that information, because hardly anyone even knows the word who isn't an antisemitic conspiracy kook.
Another example is the word "meme" itself, but again that's a piece of jargon that most people don't know, so the word itself is enough information.
A slightly better, but still not great, example, is the word "Zionist." It has fallen into such disuse that honest-to-goodness Zionists hardly use it much anymore. But Arabs use it all over the place; for them it's a synonym for "Jew", but usefully (for them) gives the impression that they don't hate all Jews, only the "bad" Jews known as "Zionists." Very often, anyone who uses the word will turn out to be acting under the influence, to a greater or lesser extent, of anti-Israeli propaganda originating with the Pali movement itself.
What makes that a better example is that the word "Zionist" itself carries none of that baggage directly. If you use it, you might in fact be a Zionist. Or you might be a hisorian, discussing Zionism. Context will identify those two cases reliably. The remaining cases are exceedingly likely to show taint of Pali propaganda, and you'll spot elements of it in the context--for example, the speaker will almost certainly invoke various revisionist historical claims advanced by the Palis themselves. It isn't the word itself; it's a package of information larger than the word. The mere fact that they're using the word, for example, suggests that they spend time in intellectual circles where the word is more common than it is in the rest of the community--namely, amongst Arabs.
Anyway, that's just a longwinded way of saying that your attempt to dismiss an opponent's argument by calling it an "anti-Semitic meme" is obfuscatory.
Negative. Mr. Acts stated that "Israeli blood is more precious than American blood" to many Freepers. I inquired, "What blood," and he replied, "The blood they want us to spill in Iran."
That statement, in a thread about Jonathan Pollard, is unintelligible: since he refers to blood that "they want us to shed," it has clearly not been shed yet. In what sense can one be outraged about unshed blood, as if it were in fact already shed? There are only two ways the statement can make sense: first, if one believes that the future shedding of blood is certain; second, if one believes that one's protagonist shares Israel's alleged desire to shed American blood in Iran.
If the former, then the person is saying that Israel somehow has the power to make its wishes reality--in other words, that Israel can indeed cause America to go to war with Iran.
If the latter, one is at least asserting that Israel has a wish that goes against America's interests, and that many Freepers share that wish and the concommittant disregard for America's interests. However you slice it, that's a powerful assertion that Israel is pursuing a malevolent policy with respect to the United States.
But that isn't everything contained in his statement. What does "the blood Israel wants us to shed" mean? He seems to think there's something we both know about, and that it involves shedding blood in Iran. Clearly, he's referring to Iran's current nuclear rumblings, and the American counter-rumbings which suggest that Iran may be the next target in the WoT.
In other words, America is taking a warlike stance against Iran... and Mr. Acts doesn't attribute this to the fact that Iran is a scary hotbed of terrorists with nuclear ambitions. He doesn't indicate that the United States has a real stake in containing the threat of Iran. Rather, he insinuates that the US has no interest in Iran, apart from Israel's interest. After all, if our invasion of Iran is inevitable in our own interest anyway, then why grumble that other nations are glad to see us do it?
The bottom line: the statement by Mr. Acts is only comprehensible if you realize that it rests on the assumption that (1) Israel has an interest in America invading Iran, (2) America doesn't have an interest of its own in invading Iran, and yet (3) the shedding of American blood in Iran is likely despite the lack of American national interest in doing so.
See what you made me do? You made me go into a long-winded analysis of his statement, to capture precisely why he agrees with Cindy Sheehan, David Duke, Ahmedinajad, and others, that the US is heading toward war in Iran, against its own interests, because Israel is somehow tricking us into it.
It's much shorter to say, "This brand of antisemite is easy to spot," and leave it at that. If you want a fuller explanation, I'd say, "He is echoing today's standard antisemitic talking points precisely." But then you'd point out that this is only implied by his statement. Which leads us to struggle for a word to describe the complete informational content of his statement, going beyond the precise words.
Which leads us to my ill-fated decision to use the word "meme", for lack of any other word to capture this notion. I'm looking for something in the territory of "implication," "implicature," "assumption," etc.