BDS (Disambiguation)

I just caught myself perfecting my last post - pointless, I know, but I can't seem to help myself, this incident not being an isolated one (in the unlikely event that anyone's noticed, I hope it's not too annoying!). Reading the post again, it occurred to me that some of you might not know what BDS stands for - those with the great luck not to work in academia at the present moment, thereby spared such coerced intimacy with this whole bonkers boycott (I had in mind certain friends & family members in this fortunate position...). So I thought I'd check to see what Google brought up, in case an additional link would be required to avoid confusion. It turns out my investigations merit their own post as what I found is something of a new definition and, with it, a bit of a chuckle - so here I am, sharing some cheer.

The acronym had previously caused me to laugh, at some earlier point in my encounter with the boycotters and their mode of argument (if it can be called that), the nature of which set off one of those sick associations:** but for a missing 'M' at the end, the acronym seems really rather apt in terms of capturing the (intellectual?) whipping these people seem to enjoy so!

The Google search brought more mirth for it turns out that BDS actually stands for quite a few things, in addition to Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (against Israel, of course, silently included in the acronym, without need even to specify a country beginning with the letter "I" - since this type of thinking has become so commonplace that one can now just automatically assume Israel is the target of such actions - duh!). Here you'll find all the possibilities for BDS.

This is what amused me:

Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) is a political term ... to describe a perceived tendency by some American liberals to blame President George W. Bush for virtually every ill in the world. Another noted facet of BDS-like behavior is that it may appear to be a merely reflexive opposition to any position advocated by Bush for no other reason than that Bush happens to be advocating it.

Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist who earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, defined BDS as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush"

While I hope it's patent that I'm no Bush fan myself, I rather enjoyed the obvious parallels between the varieties of derangement on display in both these phenomena denominated BDS. In the above formulation, substitute "Israel" for "Bush" (and often they are, insanely, as we know, what with W&M et al) and the paranormal in these two version of BDS seem one & the same, indistinguishable -- and just plain mad. Engaging in a bit of cross-fertilization here, I propose that henceforth, for our purposes, BDS should be disambiguated to mean Boycott Derangement Syndrome, for that just about gets to the essence of this boycott movement!

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** The link is to the para in square brackets on how sick humour seems to have become a prime coping strategy through all this madness.