The Abominable Dr Fides

"Bona Fides" would be a good name for an dog-grooming service run by Julian and Sandy. "Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek. Have you brought us something large and hairy to work with?" But in fact Bona fides is a description of after-hours drinkers, as we learn from Myles na Cgopaleen, an unimpeachable source.

However, the term was not good enough for Victor Davis Hanson -- an American opinionator brought to our attention by the wonders of the Outernets -- whose essays are punctuated by his own novel word pairing, "Racial Fides". Perhaps his colleagues have installed a macro on his word-processor to insert RACIAL FIDES into his typing at random intervals, as a cruel joke, to see if he notices.

Hanson's cruel colleagues:
speculative interpretation

VDH was once a classicist and it is sad to think of a scholar of the Greek and Roman rhetorical tradition reduced to such an impoverished lexicon. But the evidence is stark:

Jan 14, 2008
... Bill obviously think that they've so cemented the issue of the Clintons as our first Black Presidents that their racial fides is above suspicion.

Jan 18, 2008
Even the famed Clinton racial fides is now being questioned, as she resorts, albeit in convoluted similes to Martin Luther King, to playing the ...

Mar 14, 2008
... sermons against “rich white people” and the “g-d d—-d America” (in hopes of solidifying his racial fides in regional Chicago politics?)

Mar 15, 2008
He obviously either doesn't fully grasp the degree to which his ... or he is so indebted to Wright for providing him the requisite racial fides to start his career

Mar 23, 2008
(2) Does one's racial fides become suspect the more wealthy and successful one becomes—and thus requires periodic proof of authenticity in ...

Apr 29, 2008
Moreover, Obama's de facto original embrace of Wright — in a Faustian exchange for the racial fides that jump-started his Chicago campaigns ...

Jun 11, 2008
... community radically increased, as his racial fides was strengthened; and former 60% margins consistently peaked at 90% and above. So too ...

Jul 15, 2008
Now that it is no longer a question of establishing one's racial fides in Chicago, but rather of winning hearts and minds in fly-over America, ...

Aug 4, 2008
Obama's 90% majority of African-American base voters long ago accepted his racial fides thanks to Rev Wright, rappers, and all the rest.

Dec 18 2008
Oh, he insisted his choice had nothing to do with racial fides or solidarity, but almost immediately following the election, offered a sermon on reaching out to ...

May 31, 2009
... popular culture of the last three decades in which intermarriage, assimilation, and integration have challenged the notion of racial fides itself.

Dec 23, 2012
... not run by focusing on their racial fides, and unlike the racially fixated Wagner...

Dec 8, 2013
The net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of establishing one's racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama

A Nervous Tick

Do you think he knows he’s doing that? Maybe it’s a nervous tic or something.
Most of these CODE RACIAL FIDES entries are concerned with 'identity politics', in which African-Americans prove themselves to be the real racists by voting for Barack Obama, while white voters who supported Obama's rivals were just being normal Americans with no special identity or allegiance. Except the first two, which date back to an early point in the 2008 US election cycle when Hilary Clinton was seen as the front-runner to be the Democratic candidate, so she was the one to accuse of reliance upon (and indebtedness to) the monolithic African-American voting bloc. This time it was VDH's expectation that those voters would vote for Clinton en masse which established their racism. I am not making this up.

The July 15 essay is also of interest. Here VDH complains that Obama is not pandering to the racism of his supporters, instead presenting himself dishonestly as a post-racial "child of the Midwest". Sadly, this variation on the theme is short-lived.

Another refrain from these essays is "de facto". Generally applied to imputations which are not factual, it appears to be a term of art, best translated as "in my opinion". Yet another word -- recurring with the frequency of the whistle which a farmer might use to direct his sheepdogs -- is the curious name "Chicago".

When Professor Hanson is not fulminating against Messianic cults-of-personality among Democrats, and that party's record of presenting its candidates as charismatic Mahdi figures, he devotes his time to writing military histories with names like "Savior Generals". IANMTU.

AFTERTHOUGHT: "Savior-General" is obviously an administrative position in a very bureaucratic theocracy.