Aphorisms, Slogans, Code Words and One True Thing

Dear Children:

You can’t blame politicians, teachers or preachers for that matter, as they try to make things easy for us. Easy isn’t necessarily bad. We live in a sound bite culture that reduces complex ideas to slogans that can fit on a bumper sticker or flattened onto a wiki. Ideas not rendered into some aphorism, slogan or chant don’t have much of a chance to pierce the din of all the other aphorisms, slogans or chants that fill up space in our lives. Sloganeering has been around as long as religion and slander. Besides, these figures of speech make it possible for the busy and indifferent among us to express ourselves without the appearance of ignorance. You will hear a lot of it belched from the 112^th Congress

Think about it. Taken on their own, stripped from the context of a moment, for the moment, slogans are risible. “Only you can prevent forest fires” is patently silly without a picture of some nut flicking a burning cigarette toward some stationary Tumble Weeds. “Just say no to drugs” is a famous and apt example.

Chants like “yes we can /yes we can /yes we can “ as well as “drill, baby, drill /drill, baby, drill/drill, baby, drill” fall in the same category. One heard this sort of thing spoofed at the Jon Stewart rally on the National Mall: “Three word phrase/three word phrase/three word phrase.”

Chants, aphorisms and slogans have an insidious kid sister: Code Word.

Code words allow the speaker to claim ignorance of the meaning taken by the hearer. The speaker says, “No, I said homeless. I didn’t once say treasure sucking ne’er-do-well filthy drunkard”. We know what he meant because of its textual surroundings. But, no, he didn’t violate some rule of political correctness.

Here’s one you’ll like: “Waste, fraud and abuse”. Politicians use this as code for an unlikely ideal. I, Senator Snort, am going to root out waste, fraud and abuse by legislating against it. It is already illegal to waste, commit fraud or game the system. “Government Spending” is code for programs and projects the speaker doesn’t like. “Special Interests” are those interests that differ from ours. “The American People” is a sophisticated code justifying an action drawn from the unprovable clamor of the citizenry. “Truth” is so rare and so precious as to inspire awe and shouldn’t be used in political discourse at all. “Lie is the very definition of a slogan. And … don’t get me started on “Original Intent”.

So what, Poppy, shall we do? Know this One True Thing: Code Words and their siblings are slippery and likely dishonest. Don’t knowingly repeat them. For Heaven’s sake don’t make them up. Decide for yourself what is right for you to say and do. Hear out competing voices. If you can’t decide, admit it. Language is powerful and should be treated respectfully.

I’m just sayin’

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com