I’m upping this (w/ tweaks) from a comment, in response to remarks about the “is the new” part of “X is the new Y” (props to JS and SD): /// I think you mean “is, like, the”, not “is”. Which is pretty interesting because the [conventional wisdom] on people saying “like” is that it’s just a bad verbal tic. I assume a priori that pervasive parapraxes like that are direct expressions of ideology — so when people say (for example) “oh, you have to see” X or Y, they f*cking well mean it: you have to. So, like, “like” very clearly and precisely asserts that X is indeed, like, somehow like Y, that thinking is indeed, like, somehow associated with association, etc: not ‘like’ as in a metaphor, but “, like” as in, “you know, like…” People feel that Trump liberates them because he’s the candidate of “, like,”… ///