Some Nondescript Suburbia—Momentarily sitting, as I often do, on the dirt path leading from the large crop field into the neighborhood itself, I overhead a comment from a nearby backyard: “I hate all of this political correctness, all this use of weasel words.” For obvious reasons, I was incensed. Humans have an ungrateful habit of making compliments out of creatures which eat them: “lionize”. Really?

If some creature told me he was going to lionize me, I’d run panting in the other direction. I have family members to defend when I ask very kindly for you to stop insulting human features and behaviors by calling them “ferret-like” or “ferrety”. Never’ve met a ferret I didn’t like.

Humans are also unattractively obsessed with themselves as a species. Do you realize, they even named a formal logical fallacy after themselves: the ad hominem attack? Apparently, when lions engage in this, it isn’t sufficient reason to take away the positive connotations surrounding their name. Harumph.

How’s about we pay attention to the fact that most political discourse consists of the “attack on the weasel” fallacy, otherwise known as the “Malignare mustelam” fallacy.

I mean, for example: take Congressman Mike Johnson. He insists all government spending cuts will be delayed until September. I looked up September in the Dictionary of Government Jargon and it means “to delay forever, to put off indefinitely, or otherwise undermine permanently.” I suspect his thinking is that September will turn into another March, which will turn into “nearly half-way through Trump’s presidency. Only two more years to stop the spread.”

Plus, it gives the Deep State six very precious months to strategize about resistance.

Notwithstanding the above considerations, I ask you: how precisely is Speaker Johnson a weasel? HOW?

Is he solitary, territorial, ferocious, predatory, aggressive, a grand hunter of rodents and vermin? Certainly not. He’s very rat-like himself. If I were a human-sized weasel, I’d eat him for dinner.

Since he’s spineless, call him a worm, or a crustacean, or an invertebrate. But certainly not a weasel. Both anatomically incorrect and logically fallacious. I admit, we share one or two characteristics: both politicians and weasels live in dens. However, mine is of earth, and theirs is of corruption. Other than this habitat-synonymity, I scratch my head over what we possess in common.

As for weasel words, I repudiate the phrase itself and its connotation. Indeed, in contemplating appropriate verbage, I concocted a phrase—coined a news species, if you will—to classify, with precision, the political class according to both their features and behaviors: homo rodentia.

Sincerely,

Mustela Maxima (the Magnificent Weasel)

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