The GOP Is the Party of ‘Fuck You’
There is an apocryphal belief that among the Indigenous people of the north there are more than 30 words for snow. Well, I’m from New Jersey and I can tell you that in America’s great Garden State we don’t need so many words. In fact, along our stretch of the I-95 corridor there are probably 30 different ways we deploy just a single two-word phrase: “Fuck you.”
It can be a greeting, an expression of disbelief, a paroxysm of surprise or awe, an expression of affection, a reaction to a particularly delicious meal, and an expression of anger in its many different forms. You get the idea.
All of which is to say, I am an expert in the use of the term. And, because I also am a denizen of Washington, D.C., I have come to understand how it has become central to the politics of our moment.