If Sanders beats them, the taboo will be broken.
Complicating matters: What was socially acceptable even 48 hours ago may now be taboo, as government officials race to contain the virus with ever-expanding circles of social isolation.
What explains the current taboo on topics regarding the coronavirus?
Similarly taboo was questioning the notion that everyone who died with COVID-19 died because of it, even when the dying and the deceased were not tested for the virus and the methodology of ascertaining causes of death seemed too often reinvented or changed weekly.
More Taboo Questions
One reason it remains taboo in the mainstream to label Donald Trump a fascist is that Trump is uniquely American.
The IMF, which once considered capital controls taboo, now sees them as potentially useful stabilizers when markets seesaw.
President Donald Trump has accelerated the collapse of taboos on all issues including Israel’s standing and relations within the U.S. political landscape.
The Cold War allowed Israel to play an essential role in U.S. foreign policy, but the diligent and systematic organizing work of AIPAC and American Zionist organizations translated the alliance of convenience into an untouchable taboo in American politics and media discourses.
The push to commit U.S. troops directly in the Arab world and the move toward military operations in the region is directly connected to the collapse of the political taboos related to Israel and Zionism.
The consequences of direct U.S. military intervention and troop deployment into the battlefields in Iraq was the beginning of the cracks in public discourses around Israel and Zionist taboo in politics.
As long as the debates in the U.S. were confined to AIPAC’s efforts to cement the alliance with Israel, increase foreign aid, provide protection for Israel against international consequences and isolate the Palestinians regionally and globally, then the taboo and limits in public discourse were maintained.
However, once the U.S. committed troops and became involved militarily, then all bets were off, whereby discussions and debates regarding Israel and the political taboos on its role in U.S. foreign and domestic policies were no longer sustainable.
Initially, it was on the margins of America’s political landscape, but as the military deployment dragged-on and the complexity of the conflicts became apparent, Israel and its lobby were no longer in a position to maintain the political taboos, which included a split within the ranks of the American Jewish community itself.
The current realignment in the Democratic Party is a definite indication of the shattering of the political taboos in relation to Israel and Zionism underway in the country.
This process started much earlier than the arrival of the 2018 midterm elections and the newly elected class of Democrats, which includes a number that was not only ready to take Israel to task on human rights violations but also to speak on the untouchable taboo, namely the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
The fact that democratic members in Congress are ready to push back against AIPAC and Israel is evidence of the breaking of the taboo and a readiness to shift the conversation.
Trump’s arrival on the political scene and his readiness to break all political, social, racial, gender and cultural taboos is another critical contributing factor to the shift.
Anna Ginsburg: animation is great for tackling taboo subjects
The London-based filmmaker spoke about her passion for animated documentaries, a »powerful, up-and-coming genre« that uses illustration to tell true stories and explore difficult topics that people may find hard to discuss on camera.»Sadly, we are all quite judgemental,« she said. »A drawing acts as a protective layer, so it’s easier to empathise. » «Her short, animated film Private Parts came out of a realisation that female sexuality and pleasure were still considered taboo and »pervaded with shame«, and »images of vaginas were primarily only seen in pornography or medical textbooks. »
The historical deja vu may actually lie elsewhere – not in the so-called extremists or populists but inside the mainstream. » Just like the 1930s, liberal elites may have overestimated the strength and social acceptance of liberal values. » They may have been complacent about the ubiquity of civil self-restraint, empathy towards others and inter-dependence. » Fascists or not, the current brand of illiberal populists and their growing supporters feast from the deep contradictions still present in mainstream society and the arrogant complacency of liberal elites. » In doing that, they also break one taboo after another and open up a host of previously unthinkable or implausible possibilities for radical action in the near future. »
Democratic presidential hopefuls are embracing a political tool long considered taboo: setting litmus tests for potential judicial nominees. »
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian businessman who flouts political taboos by working with Israeli settlers in the West Bank could soon have a role in President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan. »
The move was met with intense criticism and was perceived as an attempt to exploit the emperor for political purposes — a taboo in Japan given its wartime history. »
In Germany, the prohibition on Holocaust jokes is policed by law and informally maintained by social taboo—both the wages of the Third Reich’s sins. » Those controls can sound draconian and provocative to the American ear, trained to despise the »thought police« and to revere the freedom of expression. » But this minor episode from the world of 1980s German media might have new relevance in America today, where taboos both rhetorical and actual are falling as fast as Donald Trump can invoke them. »
Murder, rape, concentration camps, child abuse—all these taboos have lost some of their peremptory power in the past month alone. » The president was publicly and credibly accused of rape last week, and yet he easily dismissed his accuser as a liar. » Also last week, Trump dismissed the murder of Jamal Khashoggi as essentially less important than Saudi Arabia’s money . » On June 18, Liz Cheney defined a »concentration camp« as a place that can only exist in German history, even though Latin American migrants are being held in American concentration camps at this very moment. » And on that same day, a Department of Justice staffer named Sarah Fabian proposed continuing state-sanctioned child abuse by pretending that the words »safe and sanitary« do not specify the provision of soap and toothbrushes to migrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents by Trump’s goons. »
Saying, »This is rape!« or »That is a concentration camp!« or »The government is abusing innocent children!« is not having the desired effect, because the president and his allies are leeching the powerful stigma attached to these crimes. » The loss of taboo shows us its value, and how prohibitions are a crucial part of the social contract we live by. » In the absence of law or when the law is used to commit moral outrages, the taboo is enforced by society and policed by language, which is why, for example, Republicans hysterically deny that U.S. » government is shuttling desperate migrants into »concentration camps,« but, rather, into something else, something nameless. »
Former Vice President Joe Biden‘s time in the Obama White House remains a taboo topic of attack for his 2020 rivals. » | Olivier Douliery/Pool via Bloomberg 2020 elections Biden’s rivals aren’t willing to touch one part of his record ‘People are very nostalgic for that time,’ one activist says of the risk of criticizing Biden’s time in the Obama administration. »
Elizabeth Warren has gone after him for taking »the side of the credit card companies. » « Cory Booker has called the 1994 crime bill that Biden helped write »awful« and »shameful. » But for most of Biden’s Democratic rivals, they’ve treated one part of his record as taboo to criticize: His years in the Obama White House. »
The text of this article was generated by the Breaking The Silence system that collected 19 news articles posted on the web from January 2019 to September 2020 and clustered for the taboo subjects related to Donald Trump
