Dog whistle politics refers to the use of terms like “States’ Rights” to signal an ongoing resistance to civil rights and racial equality. It allows a politician to appeal to racist voters without alienating voters who are offended by racism. It allows a politician to “have it both ways.” You could consider dog whistling to be a positive sign; after all, it wasn’t long ago that overt racism was a winning political strategy. At least overt racism is out of bounds now. Or is it?

I have encountered Facebook posters who claim Drumpf is not a bigot. If it weren’t for this fact, I wouldn’t even associate Drumpf’s racist and Islamaphobic statements with the idea of the “dog whistle.” They are far too low in pitch. He says Mexico is sending rapists. He calls for a national registry of Muslims. Moderating these statements after the fact does not erase them. Then, there is his reticence to disavow David Duke and the KKK. That he walks these statements back after the fact perhaps brings them back into dog whistle territory, but no reasonable person could deny that he seeks to capitalize on bigotry in his campaign.

Irony is a larger category that dog whistle politics belongs to. There is a narrow definition of irony, in which the speaker means the opposite of what they say, as in the case of sarcasm. I am using a wider definition: An ironic statement would seem to mean one thing out of context but clearly means another thing in context, in reality. For instance, appeals to States’ Rights by conservatives play at referring to the (long put to rest) debate on federalism and the division of power between the federal government and the states. The 10th Amendment gives state and local governments powers that the federal government doesn’t claim; however, the Supremacy Clause says that where there are conflicts between federal and state law, federal law wins. In other words, appeals to States’ Rights cannot be taken at “face value.” They are ironic because “for States’ Rights” really means “against Federal laws that prevent institutional racism at the state and local levels.”

States’ Rights rhetoric appeals to those who don’t like equal protection under the law if that law puts white people and people of color on the same level. It has been an explicit and successful southern strategy for the GOP, and it turned the South — once a stronghold of the Democratic Party (once the party of slavery, now the pro-Civil-Rights party) — from blue to red.

The rhetoric of States’ Rights sounds legit. It sounds very “Constitutional,” so long as you have not actually read and thought about the Constitution. It is only constitutional if you are talking about the Confederate constitution. If you actually engage in discourse with a defender of voter suppression about the actual history of States’ Rights, you learn quickly that this person is not really interested in history or the law.

Cynicism also has more than one definition. Here, I refer to Peter Sloterdijk’s definition, which uses cynicism to describe a development in ideology, in how we kid ourselves about our political reality. Marx described ideology as something that could be fixed with education. We could forgive the proletariat for going along with their exploitation because they did not see how they were blinded by religion. He thought “false consciousness” could be overcome by education. In cynical ideology, however, we have “enlightened false consciousness.” People know the system is unfair but defend it with their actions or even seek to exacerbate its faults, as we have seen with the Tea Party. Its solution to the dissolution of the middle class is to destroy labor unions and lower taxes on the wealthiest few.

Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason is really about the rise of fascism. In particular, he describes how Nazi ideology rose out of the Weimar Republic. Drumpf’s xenophobic playbook seems to come right out of this history; just as Hitler exploited the Great Depression, Drumpf seeks to exploit the Great Recession. He promises to cure democracy not by strengthening its institutions but by giving up on it as a failed policy. No principle of democracy is too sacred given the deeply flawed picture of reality he presents. Islamic terror has claimed very few American lives compared to, for instance, unrelated gun violence; yet, we “have to” bar Islamic immigration. Torture has tarnished the image of the U.S. and yielded little or no intelligence; yet we “have to” torture. Every credible analysis shows that migrant workers are essential to the American economy, yet he calls for the building of a wall on the south border and, straining credulity beyond the breaking point, says he will make the Mexicans pay for it and be grateful for the opportunity. The crisis in the Russian and Chinese economies threaten our own economy worse than any trade imbalance, yet he knows that nationalistic bluster has real emotional purchase in these uncertain times.

Truthiness is a term invented by the Colbert Report to describe the dishonesty of right wing media. In this clever updating of Sloterdijk’s definition of cynicism, one’s gut feeling trumps factuality. For a highly distilled example of truthiness at work, consider the interesting statement from the team of Jon Kyle, an unscrupulous senator trying to score political points by denying health care to women. When Kyle was called to task for giving a wildly inaccurate statistic about Planned Parenthood, his spokesperson said his words were “not intended as a factual statement.” What were they intended as? A truthy statement. Forget the truth; what matters is what feels right.

That Colbert segment — The Word: Truthiness — can’t be beat. (Sorry for the advertisement, but it is worth it.)

Drumpf has shocked the world with his rapid-fire lying, misogynistic outbursts, outright slander against Mexicans and Muslims, and explicit endorsements of brutality at his rallies and in the War on Terror. There is widespread horror that his debased strategy has not backfired. The GOP mainstream expresses disgust at his tactics, and yet this disgust comes way too late to be credible. If Drumpf seemed more likely to beat Hillary or Bernie, would they be so critical? After all, the GOP has been dogwhistling this same tune for years. Drumpf has only decreased the pitch and increased the volume.

Given Drumpf’s public image before this election, I was dumbfounded when Drumpf decided to question Obama’s legitimacy as president and endorse birtherism as an issue for Mitt Romney. WHY? WHY DOES HE WANT TO SEEM STUPID? I should have known. He wasn’t talking to me.

The release of Obama’s birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii did not put a halt to birtherism. That a African-American could not be president just felt truthier to some. That “some” is turning out to be a much larger number than we realized. How credible is the mainstream GOP’s “disgust” at Drumpf’s divisive rhetoric? The point of no return for the GOP came when, in a recent debate, the other GOP candidates all called Drumpf a threat to their party and a threat to America but then said they would support Drumpf if he was the nominee. That was the moment when the GOP acknowledged and accepted fascism as the new direction of their party.

The message hasn’t changed, only the style of delivery. Say goodbye to the subtlety of the dog whistle.

Who is Drumpf?